Group of strangers isolated in the countryside? Check and check. Ghost with a deviant and violent past? Check. The four are to spend one week in the home, but they’re not there more than a couple hours before things start to go horribly wrong.Īlready the story faces some predictability of premise.
Lionel can’t resist and arrives on the scene with his wife, Edith, and two other of Deutsch’s recruits: spiritualist Florence Tanner and physical medium (and survivor of a previous Hell House haunting), Benjamin Fischer. Eccentric millionaire Rolf Rudolph Deutsch reaches out to Lionel and insists that if he can give him definitive proof of an after-life or lack-thereof, he’ll pay him the tidy sum of $100,000. Parapsychologist and physicist Lionel Barrett gets the chance of a lifetime with an opportunity to investigate the world’s most haunted house, Hell House.
Imagine my absolute and overwhelming disappointment then when I discovered that the only thing scary about Hell House was the thought that anyone could love this book. I loved I Am Legend and was happy with my previous foray into the horror genre (King’s The Shining) so I was sure I was in good hands. When I picked up Richard Matheson’s 1971 novel, Hell House I was certain I’d regret it in just the same way. I’m a glutton for punishment, in that sense. I’ll leave the haunted house in tears and refuse to sleep with the lights off and when someone asks me tomorrow if I want to read the terrifying ghost story they just found, of course I’ll say yes. I say yes to every haunted house and every gory film, despite almost immediately regretting my decision. Every autumn when the air turns crisp, the trees burst with color, and I feel Halloween approaching, I can’t help but be sucked in by the spirit of the season.
I can’t say I love horror, but I love the idea of horror.
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