![]() Montague's alleged spirit writings seem to communicate with Eleanor. Unlike the other four characters, they do not experience anything supernatural, although some of Mrs. ![]() They, too, are interested in the supernatural, including séances and spirit writing. Montague and her companion Arthur Parker, the headmaster of a boys’ school, arrive to spend a weekend at Hill House and to help investigate it. This possibility is suggested especially by references early in the novel to Eleanor's childhood memories about episodes of a poltergeist-like entity that seemed to involve mainly her. Another implied possibility is that Eleanor possesses a subconscious telekinetic ability that is itself the cause of many of the disturbances experienced by her and other members of the investigative team (which might indicate there is no ghost in the house at all). At the same time, Eleanor may be losing touch with reality, and the narrative implies that at least some of what Eleanor witnesses may be products of her imagination. Eleanor tends to experience phenomena to which the others are oblivious. Montague explains the building's history, which encompasses suicide and other violent deaths.Īll four of the inhabitants begin to experience strange events while in the house, including unseen noises and ghosts roaming the halls at night, strange writing on the walls, and other unexplained events. The four overnight visitors begin to form friendships as Dr. Dudley, who refuse to stay near the house at night. Eleanor travels to the house, where she and Theodora will live in isolation with Montague and Luke. Of these, only Eleanor and Theodora accept. He rents Hill House for a summer and invites as his guests several people whom he has chosen because of their experiences with paranormal events. Montague hopes to find scientific evidence of the existence of the supernatural. John Montague, an investigator of the supernatural Eleanor Vance, a shy young woman who resents having lived as a recluse caring for her demanding disabled mother Theodora, a bohemian artist implied to be a lesbian and Luke Sanderson, the young heir to Hill House, who is host to the others.ĭr. The story concerns four main characters: Dr. ![]() Hill House is a mansion in a location that is never specified but is between many hills. Jackson sketched floor plans of downstairs and upstairs of Hill House and a rendering of the exterior. Jackson also read volume upon volume of traditional ghost stories while preparing to write her own, "No one can get into a novel about a haunted house without hitting the subject of reality head-on either I have to believe in ghosts, which I do, or I have to write another kind of novel altogether." According to Jackson, her mother identified the house as one the author's own great-great-grandfather, an architect who had designed some of San Francisco's oldest buildings, had built. She asked her mother, who lived in California, to help find information about the dwelling. ![]() She later claimed to have found a picture in a magazine of a California house she believed was suitably haunted-looking. What Jackson discovered in their "dry reports was not the story of a haunted house, it was the story of several earnest, I believe misguided, certainly determined people, with their differing motivations and background." Excited by the prospect of creating her own haunted house and the characters to explore it, she launched into research. The author decided to write "a ghost story" after reading about a group of nineteenth century "psychic researchers" who studied a house and somberly reported their supposedly scientific findings to the Society for Psychic Research.
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