"…and whatever walked there, walked alone": Haunted Houses

#ReadingList: lit fic, horror, hist fic, YA, middle-grade, classic lit, & memoir

Oct 01, 2024

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality… Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” — from THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson

As someone who spent five years of their childhood living in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—during which I actually lived in a real-life haunted house*—& the other half of my life in Savannah, Georgia—sometimes said to be one of the most haunted cities in the united states (usually coming second only to New Orleans depending on which list you’re looking at)—ghost stories & especially the haunted-house subgenre has always been a favorite of mine.

[*To read about the house I lived in in Gettysburg, check out Volume III of Mark Nesbitt’s Ghosts of Gettysburg book series.]

In this list I’ve compiled a selection of books that touch on the trope / theme / subject of the haunted house either in some explicit, implicit, or just vibey way… Organized into “TBR” & “Read and Loved”, & listed by bookshop categories (literary & genre fiction are combined) & chronologically in order of publication date from most recent to oldest.

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—TBR—

Fiction:

THIS CURSED HOUSE by Del Sandeen (Oct 2024) Read more here.

MODEL HOME by Rivers Solomon (Oct 2024) Read more here.

A HAUNTING ON THE HILL by Elizabeth Hand (Oct 2023) Read more here.

STARLING HOUSE by Alix Harrow (Oct 2023) Read more here.

LINGHUN by Ai Jiang (Apr 2023) Read more here.

THE LAST HEIR TO BLACKWOOD LIBRARY by Hester Fox (Apr 2023) Read more here.

THE SPITE HOUSE by Johnny Compton (Feb 2023) Read more here.

THE DEATH OF JANE LAWRENCE by Caitlin Starling (Oct 2022) Read more here.

THE HOUSE OF FOOTSTEPS by Mathew West (Feb 2022) Read more here.

THE HAUNTING OF ASHBURN HOUSE by Darcy Coates (Mar 2020) Read more here.

SLADE HOUSE by David Mitchell (Jun 2016) Read more here.

HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE by Grady Hendrix (Jan 2013) Read more here.

THE MONSTERS OF TEMPLETON by Lauren Groff (Feb 2008) Read more here.

THE GOOD HOUSE by Tananarive Due (Jul 2004) Read more here.

Middle-grade:

SAINT JUNIPER’S FOLLY by Alex Crespo (Jun 2023) Read more here.

Memoirs:

IN THE DREAM HOUSE by Carmen Maria Machado (2019) Read more here.

“The weather might change, the wind drop, the sun shine, Eel Marsh House might stand quiet and still. It would be no less dreadful. Whoever haunted it and whatever terrible emotions still possessed them would continue to disturb and distress anyone who came near here, that I knew.” — from THE WOMAN IN BLACK by Susan Hill