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Books about Haunted Houses

Keep the Halloween spirit alive with novels set in sinister spaces.

By Tobias Carroll • 3 years ago

Why do stories set in haunted houses get under our skin so much? There’s an amazing sense of dread that can emerge from the narrative revelation that a house—ostensibly the source of shelter and a sense of home—has a more malicious agenda. (The same can be true for other buildings that occupy a similar function in our lives: charge somewhere familiar and stable with unruly and menacing aspects, and you have a recipe for a harrowing narrative.)

This can take many forms in fiction, from the mounting sense of the uncanny to surreal threats. Here’s a look at a few novels that grapple with places that are somehow wrong, either through restless spirits or through something less overtly supernatural, but no less scary.


Featured Image: Quaid Lagan/Unsplash

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  • The cover of the book Nada

    Nada

    Carmen Laforet

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    A haunted house doesn’t necessarily need a ghost, a demon, or some other restless spirit to be scary. In Carment Laforet’s novel Nada, the house into which the protagonist moves is cluttered to an unreal extent, with members of her extended family stewing over old grudges and a general sense of ruin and stagnation. Mysterious sounds resound through the space, as though the sublimated emotions of the house’s residents have taken up refuge in the walls. And given that Nada is set during the Spanish Civil War, leaving the house provides little respite.

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  • The cover of the book The Haunting of Hill House

    The Haunting of Hill House

    Shirley Jackson

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  • The cover of the book The Turn of the Screw

    The Turn of the Screw

    Henry James

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  • The cover of the book House of Leaves

    House of Leaves

    Mark Z. Danielewski

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  • The cover of the book Ghostland

    Ghostland

    Colin Dickey

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About Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll

TOBIAS CARROLL is the managing editor of Vol.1 Brooklyn. His writing has been published by Bookforum, Men’s Journal, Tin House, Hazlitt, and Rolling Stone. He is the author of the collection Transitory and the novel Reel. He’s on Twitter at @TobiasCarroll.

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