Appropriately ghoulish and bloody story about what happens to a group of investigators who foolishly - albeit for a great deal of money - go to investigate the most haunted house in the world. A house that has already destroyed two previous expeditions... but then haunted house narratives wouldn't be as fun as they are without the characters deliberately ignoring the giant red flags flapping desperately in their faces, trying to keep them from their upcoming and horrible deaths.

What separates Hell House from a lot of stories of its type is that there's real debate going on, throughout the book, as to what's causing the haunting. Often the story's set up in advance: this terrible thing happened, and that haunting is the result. And Hell House does have a terrible history, one acknowledged in advance - but exactly which part of that history, and which previous victim and/or perpetrator, are responsible here is one of the driving questions of the text. The answer's not exactly improbable - I think lots of readers will suspect correctly - but there's enough red herrings seeded throughout to keep things interesting. I'm not sure that the fix at the end is quite as convincing as the rest of it, and it irritates me that both women in the investigating party are primarily victimised sexually while the men are exploited and tormented in other ways, but it's still a fun read, if not reaching the subtlety and terrifying loveliness of Hill House, for example.