The Haunting of Hill House

Supernatural Experiences as a Result of Eleanor The Haunting of Hill House is a gothic horror novel written by Shirley Jackson. Supernatural occurrences take place within the house revolving around Eleanor. Eleanor is a thirty-two-year-old woman who never once has felt the sense of inclusion. Eleanor seems to never recall the feeling of delight in her adult years due to the fact that she was a caretaker for her now deceased Mother; who took away most of her freedom by being incredibly restrictive. Dr. Montague, a doctor that specializes in analysis of the supernatural rents Hill House, a supposedly haunted house.

The Haunting of Hill House The Haunting of Hill House is considered a classic to many people. It has a certain sense of feeling missing from today's novels. The Haunting of Hill House has suspense, horror, a little bit of romance, and an ending that will leave you thinking for days. Shirley Jackson is well known for her twisted work.

The story describes the house as being old and tended by an old man. The house is barely described other than it just being dark (paragraph 4). This adds to the creepy

Tommy Fitzpatrick Mrs. St. John ELA 3-27-14 Haunted Buildings Have you ever had that one bone chilling moments when you feel like someone is there, but no one is? Or when you are home alone and you are positive you heard someone or something. When you turn around when you hear something and all it is a long dark hallway. In this paper you will read about some of the scariest places in America.

In Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House", there are numerous traces of the representation of the uncanny which was suggested by Sigmund Freud. In the story, the Hill House itself is an uncanny figure to the central protagonist, Eleanor, as it features as her mother which has an ambivalent nature as the meaning of the German word of `uncanny' itself. Moreover, the house also acts as a mirror reflecting her own image so that she can see herself by looking at the house, thus the house is actually an allegory of Eleanor's psychological condition and she is literally consumed by it in the end as the boundary between her and the house collapses. Besides, another protagonist, Theodora, is a double of Eleanor as she figures her opposite side which is her denied self and self-destructiveness while she also expresses the repressed feelings of Eleanor. These examples match with the concept of the uncanny which stresses on the uncanny effect of the `Doubling' and `Infantile complexes' . (Alison 32)

Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House introduces the frightening idea of supernatural manifestations to an audience who had never experienced a novel quite like this one. The novel presents ideas that were left to the audiences’ interpretation without blatantly explaining that Hill House is the home to many paranormal entities that haunt Eleanor Vance. Wise’s production uses psychological thrill tactics in conjunction with Nelson Gidding’s screenplay being an exact transcription of the novel, leaving the interpretation of the film up to the audience. De Bont’s 1999 film reveals Hill House’s secret by overusing modern-day computer graphics to create paranormal manifestations within Hill House, pushing the supernatural aspect of the novel instead of leaving behind ambiguous ideas. In Jackson’s novel, Eleanor’s journey begins early in the morning, her sister trying to keep her from taking the car with a guilt trip while Wise presents the same idea to closely follow with the novel. Whereas this particular scene in de Bont’s adaptation plays out in a quick manner with very little attention paid to Eleanor’s journey to Hill House. Both films were made to appeal to different types of audiences with one being considered a cult classic while the other was made to appeal to the horror fanatics of the 1990s. Wise uses Eleanor’s journey to introduce the main protagonist to the audience, creating a background for Nell while de Bont ignores the importance of the journey, following with Jackson’s strong belief in the occult.

At a time when the stalker movie had been exploited to all ends and the image of mute, staggering, vicious killers had been etched into society’s consciousness to the point of exhaustion, a new kid entered the block. The year was 1984 and it was time for a new villain to enter into the horror genre. A villain that was agile, intelligent, almost inviolable yet viscous, and by all means deadly. A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced the distinctive presence of Fred Krueger to the horror industry and to the audience. Freddy Krueger took the center stage and with him a new era of horror films began. This horribly scarred man who wore a ragged slouch hat, dirty red-and-green striped sweater, and a glove outfitted with knives at the fingers reinvented the stalker genre like no other film had. Fred Krueger breathed new life into the dying horror genre of the early 1980’s.

This is Eleanor’s story. Another interesting point to make would be to address Eleanor’s obvious sexual orientation – and maybe the repressed identity is what causes the disturbances in the haunted house.

Fear brings forth a certain atmosphere which compels us to act upon it. The era in which the book was published allows us to see how common these fears were. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is an excellent portrayal of how fear controls the human mind by using the characters as examples. In the book Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague have all been influenced by fear in the story, whether it be the fear of love, the unknown, family, rejection, expression, or loneliness. These different types of fear plagued their minds causing their actions to reflect upon them. Jackson explores the theme of fear in The Haunting of Hill House by creating a cast of characters that in turn are manipulated by the inner workings of their minds and the

The Shining The Shining is about a white middle class dysfunctional family that suffers from natural and supernatural stresses in an isolated Rocky mountain hotel. .The father, a former teacher turned writer, is portrayed as a habitual drinker, wife- and child-abuser, with a kind of evil streak The mother is shown as a battered woman. The film suggests that due to the abuse at the hands of his father and the passivity of his mother, the child of this family developed psychological problems.