When the Haunting and the Haunted are You and Yourself

Taking Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House Personally

Greetings! Unlike my last post - which was a short story - this one is a “psychology of fiction” essay using The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson as a focal text.

I read Hill House last week over the course of a few days. I could not put it down and that’s saying a lot for someone who hardly ever finishes a book (short stories are my jam). Hill House left me both spooked and in a deeply reflective state for two reasons. One, it’s a brilliantly complex and chilling (humorous at times, too) thriller. Two, I used a simple (and entertaining) mind game that deepened my reading experience by connecting me more deeply with the novel’s core themes. It’s this simple mind game - that I call “the replacement game” - that I’d like to share with you here.

Disclaimer: While I promise there are no plot spoilers here, I reference the characters and themes of the book. So, enter at your own peril.

My edition of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Photo credit: Poetsbookshop.com

What is the Replacement Game?

It’s simple. Imagine a love song or poem heavy on the subject-object pairing of “I” and “you”. Replace every “you” with “I” or “me”. Alternatively, you can do this with a text that uses “he/she/they"; just replace those pronouns with “me/myself” or your name. In case you don’t follow, here’s an overly simplfied example: Original: “And, I, I will always love you.” Modified: “And, I, I will always love you me.”

While it may seem odd, self-centered, egotistical or downright corny in a self-help pop pscyhology sort of way, the results can be fun, fascinating, and even revealing, especially the more complex the text. With the swap in place, lyrics of unrequited love and prayers for mercy and strength transform into odes to one’s self, full of yearnings for wholeness, internal calls to action, and exhortations for self-care.

We can apply the replacement game, albeit with a twist, to the reading of The Haunting of Hill House. By doing so, we not only put ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist and see the world and others through their eyes (which is what we do when we read anyway), but now we can play with internal-external pairings, a la “that which is within is without” and vice versa, to find deeper meaning and insight.

If this sounds insane, perhaps it is. But how apropos! Hill House is all about insanity; it’s a fascinating, complex, psychological thriller. Stephen King wrote that “the novel is as nearly perfect a haunted-house tale as I have ever read. [One of] the only great novels of the supernatural in the last hundred years.” If we read Hill House using the mind game I describe above, however, it can be a great supernatural novel and pack a significant psychological punch (in the best possible way) for the reader.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

First, credit where credit is due. I first found Hill House less than a month ago thanks to

haley larsen, phd

and her Substack

Closely Reading

(read her Hill House post here). Not much longer after that I found Jackson biographer

Ruth Franklin

of

Ghost Stories

and the

APS Together

book group community which was in the middle of reading Hill House. At first, I hesitated to join the community read of this book. I am easily spooked (look at that cover!) and I have a hard time finishing books (again, short stories… they are my jam). While at a work conference in Washington DC, I went to Kramer’s (great DC bookstore) to browse for a few hours. I picked up a copy of Hill House (and put it back on the shelf) more than once, leaving without buying it. Finally, the last day in DC, a strange compulsion hit and I high-tailed it back to the store with little time to spare, bought the book, and started reading it immediately, returning to it later that night in my hotel room. Hill House at work? Maybe!

A few days later and half way through (it’s only about 250 pages), I was fully immersed in the story and using a variation of the replacement game which had me identifying deeply with the story.

Hill House is at once both the novel’s primary location of activity and a main character: chilling, dark, evil, and labyrinthine. Hill House is joined (in fact entered and inhabited for a time) by a cast of human characters (Eleanor, Dr. Montague, Theo and Luke and a few others), who bounce dramatically around and within its walls and against each other, making for an entertaining and suspenseful plot.

This is all the “outside” of the story, the surface of which is sufficiently terrifying and entertaining on its own. The inside, however, once the layers of the onion-like story are peeled back over time, reveals a melange of psychological complexes, feelings and emotions. Its themes of loneliness and longing for belonging were so strong and intense that I felt a tenderness for the protagonist at times that I wouldn’t have expected from a haunted house story.

---

Another plug before I continue: If you do read Hill House, I highly recommend reading this 250-page psychological thriller alongside Jackson biographer

Ruth Franklin

¹ and the

APS Together

book group community. Click on Day 1 to get a taste of the frightful fun and insightful discussion!

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Day 1

---

So, how did I use the replacement game while reading Hill House? As alluded to above, I read the protagonist and the house as if they were a related pair; not of subject-object but of subject-subject. That is, I read the relationship between the two as if they were me and myself or you or yourself - one psychological unit or at least potentially one psychological unit.

In practice, every time the protagonist talks or muses internally to herself about the house itself, I replaced “house” with a stand-in word (like “myself” or “herself”) to refer instead to the protagonist’s inner self, her subconscious or even her undiscovered unconscious, that part of her she is not yet aware, fears or doesn’t understand. Read this way, the terror of Hill House becomes intensified and intimate. The thoughts and emotions of the protagonist (and the house itself) become interrelated, two sides of the same coin, and deeply personal. I took it a step further and used the modified sections for self-reflection. I started to take Hill House personally.

Here are a few examples of how I used the replacement game and some of the self-reflections I had as a result (I’ve used the strikethrough and bold to illustrate the effect):

It was an act of moral strength to lift her foot and set it on the bottom step, and she thought that her deep unwillingness to touch Hill House her inner self for the first time came directly from the vivid feeling that it was waiting for her, evil, but patient.

Reflection: How many times have I sat journaling (or in therapy for that matter) dancing around and unwilling to touch the immediate subject of my own thoughts, my own inner turmoil which can certainly feel evil, waiting patiently for me in the dark.

It’s charming, Eleanor thought, surprised at herself; she wondered if she was the first person ever to find Hill House herself charming and then thought, chilled, “Or do they all think so the first morning?

Reflection: This is imposter syndrome at it’s best. I too believe I’m charming at first and then fear once people get to know me they will likely lose interest or even worse think I’m nuts.

I am disappearing inch by inch into this house myself, I am going apart a little bit at a time because all this noise is breaking me; why are the others frightened?

Reflection: Minutes spent alone in grief or confusion or other intense feelings can feel like hours. Imagine days like that. Sadly, many of us don’t have to imagine days like that; we live them. There have been times where I have felt like I am psychologically decomposing in front of myself. Have you? Frightening, indeed!

It wasn’t my idea to read Hill House this way. Jackson provides plenty of clues and encouragement in the text inviting us to read as if the house is both a character and a mirror, however real, imagined or distorted, reflecting the protagonist herself. I also had the guidance of Ruth Franklin who in her introduction to the APS read along wrote the following about Jackson’s Hill House:

More than anything else, it’s a story about fear, and what the things we’re afraid of can tell us about who we are. “It is fear itself, fear of self that I am writing about,” Jackson once wrote.

There are so many lines in the novel that invite the reader to consider the ways in which the border between other and self, reality and imagination, external and internal worlds, can and do blend and dissolve. So many, that throughout the book, I regularly called into question whether there ever is, even in my own life, a border between external and internal, “real” and “imagined”. I also wonder whether I will ever be able to read a story - in which a house or structure plays a major character - without considering how the setting, place, or structure reflects in a mirror-like way the internal psyche of the protagonist or even myself.

If you have read Hill House, leave a comment and let me know what you thought about the book. Did you find yourself reading it as I did? If you haven’t read it yet, please do and come back to tell me what you thought! Until then, I leave you with a few related extras:

• A Hill House Inspired Haunted Dream

• Two Inktober Portraits

A Hill House Inspired Haunted Dream

I have a recurring dream about a house that has over the years and more recently turned into more of a nightmare. My dream house has a basement library. Originally, it was an expansive library where I would spend countless dream hours pouring over books. But, over the years of my real life, as this dream has recurred, the basement library has become haunted by a ghost and I haven’t had the dream courage to face it. After finishing Hill House, I had this dream again, but it advanced to a new level: the basement library ghost (not unlike the librarian in Ghostbusters perhaps?) came up to the first floor, using its invisible powers to push me and my dream friends around. Finally, I asked the haunting if it wanted me/us to leave: “Turn off the lamp if yes, keep it on if no,” I instructed. It complied and turned off the light. Getting the message, I turned to leave but apparently not quick enough. The haunting pushed me towards the door with such force I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. Terrified, I woke up. Am I the only one with recurring dreams like this? Are your dreams impacted by books you read?

Two Inktober Portraits

I have been trying to draw portraits in Ink this October for “Inktober”. I like to draw portraits of authors. This time I drew Shirley Jackson.

Inktober Portrait of Shirley Jackson, author of The Haunting of Hill House.

I also like to draw structures, buildings and houses. It seemed inevitable to me that I would draw a haunted house after reading Hill House. So I did. Without much thought, I added a quote from the book in the corner:

Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

I can’t help but think - after reading Hill House and reflecting here - that this drawing is in fact a portrait of myself, the undiscovered part of me, both terrifying and fascinating.

Inktober Haunted House Drawing. Inspired by The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

1. Check out Ruth Franklin’s Substack Ghost Stories for more fascinating content about Shirley Jackson and for her upcoming biography of Anne Frank.