From Matheson I have read I Am Legend, which was a decent and thought-provoking vision of a world infested with vampires. The film version of The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) also offered pretty good entertainment. Plus, the giant cat was cute. This Matheson's idea of a haunted house on the other hand was mostly a bewildering experience, despite its fairly promising start. I mean, a dying millionaire gives a task to search afterlife from a scary house in exhange for money promised, if not that special writing, then at least some chills and spookiness. Yeah, not really.

For some reason the author seems to entertain this strange concept (I'm not saying this as a feminist but as a friend of horror) that extreme sexuality of women or between women is somehow Satanic, and is perfect for scaring people instead of proper ghosts or other paranormal phenomena. Right. It felt more like the author's personal problems with sexuality. I would understand if we were talking about a 19th century novel, but in a 1970s novel it doesn't work (at least for me). The poltergeist phenomena were so yawningly cliched and long-winded, that they weren't anything near scary or creepy.

Towards the end it actually got worse, because the increasingly ridiculous events started to bug me real bad. The long lectures about parapsychology (remnants from Matheson's sci-fi books?) and Lionel Barrett's nauseating obstinacy and arrogance didn't help. I would have probably quit reading if this had been any longer, but I was curious about how it would end. Not a satisfying conclusion by any standards. The king of all anticlimaxes. There was also the typical cancer of modern horror movies: people do stupid things by jamming themselves into places where it really isn't ok to go.

I should probably mention here, that cliched haunting isn't necessarily a bad thing if it's executed neatly and stylishly. You also can't blame the age of the book for the tameness, as in all the forms of hauntings have supposedly already been seen in so many books and films, that they don't scare people the same way. Yeah right. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House (1959), one of my favourite books, is not just a stylish psychological horror novel, but also a fantastic book in its own right. It gives way to different interpretations, and its age only shows in its charm. It's written beautifully, it got me to curse my decision to read it after midnight, but most of all it's a great combination of traditional horror elements and 1950s charm, with a multifaceted protagonist. Hazy and creepy, and the film version doesn't fall too far from its poetic greatness. Let's not forget The Shining (1977) either, shall we?