The Haunting of Hill House

My thoughts on Jackson's novel were just okay. I think that this story, for it's time, had to have been a lot scarier than how I see it, but don't get me wrong, I still believe it was a good read. I think it has to do with the fact that Eleanor was already so comfortable with the house, that there was nothing off putting to begin with, and I didn't feel that suspense at all. Her unnatural attachment and sense of belonging to Hill House made me feel like she belonged there, and anything that occurred was meant do be so; because it was her destiny, though unfortunate. Unlike on the other hand, if she immediately felt detachment from Hill House, all of the events that occurred would have terrified me, because I would have known she felt the same as well. Eleanor clearly aligns herself better with things of the irrational or somewhat romantic nature, because it isn't reality, and she feels more at ease in a dream-like state. Where if she is put in reality, with more rational and logical behavior, she seems more unnatural and alienated. And I think the reason as to why I didn't think this novel was scary was because I felt she should have been there all along.

But what I really would like to discuss is the haunting of Hill House itself. I've personally had experiences with the supernatural, and "haunted" houses are very real for me. Over dinner with a good friend of mine, we had talked about spirits and incarnation. And it really got me thinking about what make houses "haunted", is it what we perceive or what is really there? I asked myself and my friend Nick, whether we feel a spirit presence in "haunted" houses, and if we feel it, how did it get there? He had told me that he was learning about the hierarchy of reincarnations in his religion class. And in Buddhism, if you lived an honest life you would come back reincarnated as a human, as a reward. And if you did not live an honest life, you would be reincarnated to something minuscule with no clear purpose, at the lower part of the chain. And it got me thinking, whether these houses develop a personality of there own over time, or if individuals who did not live an honest life, associated with the house, were to be damned to it; hence a lower part of the reincarnation chain. A house really has no purpose, or emotion, and is doomed to stand until it is demolished. In a sense, a house is much like a body, but not mobile. It can have the sense of being alive; with wind blowing noises that sound like breathing, and creaks in the night as if it were moving back and forth, but is it really? What are we really perceiving in these "haunted" bodies? And where did the "spirit" come from?