The Haunting, or, Some Adaptations Are Born Bad

I’m not certain that I’ve ever read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson; it’s possible I did and entirely forgot about it. I have a vague memory of reading the first chapter in high school English, because the phrase “some houses are born bad” has always stood out. That idea of a place that is not just haunted by horrible events that occurred there, but is a place of evil itself. The past tragedies are the symptoms, not the cause. I do know that I have seen three adaptations of the source material: Mike Flanagan’s series The Haunting of Hill House, which uses the book as inspiration and adds in elements of sprawling Stephen King multi-general stories, and Lake Mungo‘s unsettling depiction of ghosts as lurking in our periphery, unstuck in time. I saw the awful 1999 adaptation, which misses the point entirely but nailed the casting of Catherine Zeta-Jones as Theo. And I’ve now twice seen the 1963 classic by Robert Wise, starring Julie Christie and Claire Bloom. For spooky…