{"id":21137,"date":"2018-10-23T05:00:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T09:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=21137"},"modified":"2018-10-19T17:26:42","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T21:26:42","slug":"11-chilling-facts-about-shirley-jacksons-the-haunting-of-hill-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=21137","title":{"rendered":"11 Chilling Facts About Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Anna Green and Mental Floss present 11 Chilling Facts About Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Using just Green’s list, here are three of my favorites …<\/p>\n

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2. JACKSON HAD A TERRIFYING SLEEPWALKING EXPERIENCE WHILE WRITING THE NOVEL …<\/strong>
\nEarly on in the writing process, Jackson awoke one morning to find something terrifying atop her writing desk: A note, with the words \u201cDEAD DEAD\u201d scrawled upon it, written in her own handwriting. Jackson, who loved ghost stories but did not believe in ghosts, brushed the strange discovery off as sleepwalking. In \u201cExperience and Fiction,\u201d she wrote that she used the strange note to motivate her, explaining, \u201cI decided that I had better write the book awake, which I got to work and did.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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3. … AND MADE AN UNSETTLING DISCOVERY WHILE RESEARCHING HAUNTED HOUSES.<\/strong>
\nBefore she began writing The Haunting of Hill House, Jackson scoured magazines and newspapers for photos of houses that seemed haunted. During her research, she stumbled upon a photo of a house in California that had a particular air of \u201cdisease and decay.\u201d She was so struck by it, she asked her mother, who lived in California, if she could find any additional information about the house. Her mother\u2019s response shocked Jackson: Not only was she familiar with the house, but Jackson’s own great-grandfather had built it. After standing empty for many years, the house had been set on fire\u2014possibly by a group of townspeople.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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11. THE NOVEL HAS A LOT OF FAMOUS FANS.<\/strong>
\nStephen King, Neil Gaiman, Guillermo del Toro, and Carmen Maria Machado are all huge fans. Del Toro included Hill House in a series of six classic horror novels he curated for Penguin, Maria Machado called it \u201cthe scariest novel I\u2019ve ever read,\u201d and Neil Gaiman has written that, while plenty of novels have scared him, Hill House \u201cbeats them all.\u201d Stephen King, meanwhile, has written that Hill House has one of the best openings he\u2019s ever read, calling it \u201cthe sort of quiet epiphany every writer hopes for.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anna Green and Mental Floss present 11 Chilling Facts About Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.\u00a0 Using just Green’s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,52,17,53,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-books","category-celebs","category-horror","category-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21138,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21137\/revisions\/21138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}