Two hundred and fifty years of haunted houses, one very persistent literary trope.
A Brief History of the Haunted House Novel | Feature | Joshua Chaplinsky
Every haunted house novel makes the same argument: a home should protect you, and something has gone badly wrong when it stops. The trope is older than the novel itself. It stretches back to a Roman lawyer’s letter about a cursed house in Athens, long before Horace Walpole trapped a ghost inside Otranto and accidentally invented the Gothic novel while he was at it.
From there the haunted house mutated for two hundred and fifty years, moving from crumbling castles to Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, Richard Matheson’s Hell House and Stephen King’s Overlook, picking up new fears with every generation.
Toni Morrison used it to write about the afterlife of slavery in Beloved. Mark Z. Danielewski used it to build a seven hundred page typographical labyrinth in House of Leaves. Novelist Joshua Chaplinsky traces that whole lineage here, timed to the release of his own haunted house novel, The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me at Night, out September 22nd via CLASH Books. What follows is a guided tour of the subgenre’s landmark texts, plus a reading list for anyone who wants more houses to fear.
The haunted house novel has been mutating for two hundred and fifty years, from crumbling Gothic castles to Shirley Jackson’s Hill House to a seven hundred page book that folds in on itself. Every generation rebuilds the haunted house in its own image, and the genre shows no sign of running out of rooms.
A Brief History of the Haunted House Novel
My new horror novel, The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me at Night, comes out September 22nd via CLASH Books.
It is, at its core, a haunted house story—one of, if not the most, enduring tropes of the horror genre. A trope that evolved from the broader tradition of the ghost story, and those have been making the rounds since great apes developed a pesky little thing called existential dread.
It is generally agreed (at least by all the other articles on the subject that referenced the same Wikipedia entry I did) that the first writer to confine a ghost to a specific location and commit that story to papyrus was Pliny the Younger, a lawyer from Ancient Rome, in a letter to a friend about a cursed domicile in Athens. Not technically a work of fiction, as the story was presented as truth, but a trope’s gotta start somewhere. Most likely Pliny’s account was an embellishment of a popular piece of urban folklore making the rounds at the time.
But what was the first long-form piece of haunted house fiction? When did the haunted house novel become a thing? Here is a brief timeline of the subgenre’s 250+ year history.
The very first haunted house novel is widely considered to be The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, first published in 1764. Fun fact: It is also widely considered to be the first Gothic novel, a distinction seemingly bestowed by Walpole himself, who added the subtitle, A Gothic Story, to the second edition of the book, thus christening the genre. Castle weaves the typically convoluted tale of a sickly young man killed by a giant falling helmet on his wedding day, whose father decides to divorce his own wife and marry the suddenly groom-less bride-to-be because he’s out of heirs and needs to lock in that generational wealth.
Shorty is all, “Fuck this,” and leaves him at the altar, dick-in-hand, because she’s not down with that age-gap shit. A bunch of other problematic stuff comes to light, involving murder, stolen thrones, and ancient prophecies, and then a ghost appears and blows some shit up. The end.
Another early pioneer of the Gothic novel was Anne Radcliff, who took more of a skeptic’s approach to hauntings. She utilized (some would say perfected) the “Explained Supernatural” technique, a literary device wherein all otherworldly events are ultimately revealed to have a logical explanation. Such is the case in her most famous novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, first published in 1794. It tells the story of a young woman and the misfortunes that befall her, including, but not limited to, being locked away in a remote castle by a sketchy Italian guy.
It became a massive bestseller at a time when books were considered a luxury only for the rich, and earned her an unprecedented advance on its follow-up. Despite not having the most prolific output—Radcliff would only publish five novels in her lifetime—she is ranked as one of the highest paid authors of the 18th Century.
Moving on to the 19th Century, we see the haunted house pivot from crumbling castle to dilapidated mansion, because… relatability? The genre also turned inward, becoming more ambiguous and cerebral. “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) by Edgar Allen Poe is worth mentioning here, despite being a scant 20 pages long. Also of note, The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1851.
Gables focuses on Hepzibah Pyncheon, current resident of the titular house, an ancestral home in Salem, Massachusetts supposedly cursed by a witch. What the novel lacks in literal ghosts, it makes up for in the specter of generational transgressions. It was an instant hit, initially outselling Hawthorne’s previous novel, an obscure historical romance you may have heard of called The Scarlet Letter.
Continuing in the Gothic tradition, we have The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, published in 1898. Technically a novella, not a novel, but let’s not split hairs (heirs?). It tells the story of an inexperienced governess hired to care for a pair of troubled orphans at a remote estate. Things start off strange and only get stranger. It isn’t long before the governess encounters the ghostly apparition of an unfamiliar man and woman no one else can see.
She becomes convinced their intentions are evil, and that they mean to exert control over the impressionable minds of the children. It has long been argued whether the ghosts in this story are literal malevolent spirits or projections of the governess’s decent into mental deterioration. Nowadays, those kids would have been diagnosed as being on the spectrum toot suite, as opposed to being branded demonic little weirdos, saving everyone involved a whole lot of unnecessary grief.
Speaking of grief (as well as loneliness and isolation), we come to what is quite possibly THE foundational text of the modern haunted house novel: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Published in 1959, its DNA can be seen in pretty much every novel of its type written since. It tells the now familiar story of a paranormal investigator who invites a group of spiritually receptive people to spend the summer in a haunted house in an attempt to prove the existence of the supernatural. Things… don’t go according to plan.
Jackson’s novel was a direct influence on another foundational work on this list: Richard Matheson’s Hell House, published in 1971. Both books have a similar setup: a haunted mansion populated by a group of experts/believers looking to prove the existence of a spiritual realm.
However, whereas Jackson’s novel relied on ambiguity and the unreliable psychology of her characters, Hell House breaks from the Gothic tradition and goes all in on the explicitly supernatural, not to mention the explicit sex and violence. This has caused a schism in the reviews of modern readers. While some appreciate the pulpier elements and added shock value, many consider the sexualization of the violence, particularly against women, to be somewhat dated, if not outright misogynistic.
Which brings us to yet another haunted heavyweight, possibly the heaviest. I’m talking about 1977’s The Shining by Stephen King. King has gone on record as saying The Haunting of Hill House was a major influence on The Shining. The story was also heavily informed by King’s personal battle with alcohol addiction and his fear of failure as a young father.
In it, struggling writer Jack Torrance takes a job as caretaker of the Overlook hotel during its off season, where supernatural forces politely encourage him to murder his family. Just kidding, they are pretty insistent about it. The Shining was a massive commercial and critical success, netting King his first hardcover bestseller and cementing his status as an icon of horror.
Interesting side note: another, similar haunted house book hit shelves that same year, and actually outsold The Shining by a wide margin. The only difference—The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson was billed as a true story. It has long since been debunked as a hoax.
The next entry on this list is a bit different, as it is an award-winning novel with literary pedigree, one generally not associated with the horror genre. Published in 1987, Beloved by Toni Morrison tells the story of Sethe, an escaped slave whose house is haunted by the ghost of the child she killed out of a desperate attempt to protect it.
The angry spirit is initially driven out by Sethe’s lover, Paul D, but returns in the form of a mysterious young woman. She latches on to Sethe, becoming increasingly more manipulative and abusive as their relationship progresses. Morrison has stated she does not consider Beloved to be a horror novel, but that hasn’t stopped modern fans of the genre from embracing it as such. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
The final entry on this list is another mammoth touchstone of the genre. Is Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves the last, great haunted house novel of the modern era? Maybe not, but its impact on the literary landscape is impossible to ignore. Published in March of 2000, it has gone on to sell close to two million copies over a span of 25 years.
That might not seem like a lot when compared to your average airport bestseller, but we’re talking about a 700 page experimental horror novel with insane typographical flourishes that tells the metafictional story within a story within a story of a house that is slightly larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And did I mention the footnotes? Much like The Haunting of Hill House before it, HoL’s influence can be seen on nearly every haunted house novel written since. I can’t think of another standalone, adult novel that has spawned as devoted a following.
But just because the final book on this list was published over 25 years ago, that doesn’t mean the haunted house novel is dead. As previously state, The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me At Night sits firmly within the tradition, as do several other books releasing the same day (Sept. 22), including Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm, and Worry Box by Chris Panatier. With horror growing in popularity by the year, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next genre-defining haunted house novel is just around the corner.
Until then, here is a list of other (relatively) recent haunted house novel you may have missed.
The Grip of It by Jac Jemc, There is No Year by Blake Butler, How to Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix, The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, Model Home by Rivers Solomon, We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer, A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher, Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Man, Fuck This House by Brian Asman, The Good House by Tananarive Due
Joshua Chaplinsky
Joshua Chaplinsky is the author of The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me At Night, Letters to the Purple Satin Killer, The Paradox Twins, Whispers in the Ear of A Dreaming Ape, and Kanye West—Reanimator. His short fiction has been published by Vice, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Thuglit, Severed Press, Expat Press, and Broken River Books.
He was the Managing Editor of LitReactor.com (2011-2023). Follow him on various social media at @jaceycockrobin. More info at joshuachaplinsky.com. He lives in Queens, NY with his wife and cats.
You can order The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me At Night at any of the below links:
The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me At Night byJoshua Chaplinsky
House of Leaves meets David Lynch in a surreal horror novel exploring generational trauma and the monsters it breeds, from Joshua Chaplinsky, cult author of Letters to the Purple Satin Killer.
The lives of three unlikely women unfold to reveal a shared history of neglect and abuse. At the center looms the Vogel House, a facade of rotten wood and sagging eaves that plays host to a parasitic dream—the malevolent entity known as The Man in the Watch.
After spending the night in an abandoned house, Jenna Thomas returns home haunted by someone else’s past. She revisits the scene in the hopes of exorcising her dreams, only to uncover something far worse. Mrs. Vogel receives an unexpected letter from her estranged daughter. It fills the old woman with hope for the future, even though her daughter is long since dead. Meanwhile, a young woman contends with the legacy of her father while simultaneously fighting for the future of her unborn child.
The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me at Night thrusts readers into a nightmarish dead zone of overlapping realities, presided over by a malignant force that manipulates memory and delights in human suffering.
Joshua Chaplinsky is the author of The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me At Night, Letters to the Purple Satin Killer, The Paradox Twins, Whispers in the Ear of A Dreaming Ape, and Kanye West—Reanimator. His short fiction has been published by Vice, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Thuglit, Severed Press, Expat Press, and Broken River Books.
He was the Managing Editor of LitReactor.com (2011-2023). Follow him on various social media at @jaceycockrobin. More info at joshuachaplinsky.com. He lives in Queens, NY with his wife and cats.
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