A Familiar Haunting

I came into Hell House by Richard Matheson with pretty high expectations. Matheson’s name carries weight in horror, and I was hoping for something that pushed boundaries or offered a fresh take on the haunted house genre. Instead, what I got felt a bit too familiar.

The book didn’t grab me right away. It struck me as standard haunted house fare — a team of investigators trying to survive the night and break the curse. I was hoping for something more substantial. As haunted house novels go, it’s not bad — but it’s also not great. The moment ghosts can be “shouted down” without much consequence, they start to lose their grip on the imagination.

That said, the house itself — Belasco House — was the true highlight. The idea of a mansion built to be a proving ground for evil is fantastic, and Matheson does a great job describing it. The atmosphere is vivid enough that if you closed your eyes, you could almost walk the halls yourself. I wish the story had trusted that setting a bit more, because it was by far the most compelling part of the book.

As for the characters, I liked the idea of a lone survivor returning to a place that scarred him so deeply. That’s a great setup. But the rest of the cast felt like stock horror archetypes: the sexually repressed wife, the stubborn scientist who refuses to believe, the psychic medium who senses everything. It’s all been done before — and done better in some cases.

Matheson does strike a fair balance between psychological horror and supernatural elements. As someone who enjoys more traditional “ghouls and goblins,” I might’ve liked a few more classic hauntings and fewer moments of psychological manipulation. Still, I don’t think that balance hurt the story — it just didn’t give me what I personally come to this genre looking for.

In the end, I can’t really recommend Hell House. I understand why some people love it — it’s well written, fully realized, and structurally solid — but it didn’t offer anything new. Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I’ve just read too many haunted house books to be surprised by this one. I think Hell House is a good haunted house novel for people who don’t read a lot of haunted house novels.