Payal Mathur

Hill House as a Fairyland of Beauty and Secrets

An evil house, the kind of some people call haunted is like an undiscovered country waiting to be explored. Hill House has stood by itself for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. The walls standing straight, bricks neatly, floors firm and the doors sensibly closed; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

The whole story is about four people who ventured to spend their summer in the Hill House:

Dr. John Montague who has taken his degree in anthropology is a doctor of philosophy who wants to analyze supernatural demonstrations. He rented Hill House for three months and expected to work upon the psychic disturbances in the house commonly known as “haunted”. He has been looking for haunted houses for a long time for his studies.

Dr. Montague wanted to hire some assistants to live with him in the Hill House. He looked for the records of psychic society and searched some people who once in a while being involved in abnormal activities.

Eleanor Vance, thirty-two years old went to the house. She had a boring life without friends. She had spent her whole adulthood taking care of her mother. Dr. Montague chose her because one-day showers of stone fell on her house without any purpose damaging her whole house.

Theodora, a different personality from Eleanor is the second one who has come to the house. She came to Dr. Montague’s list because she has an incredible talent to recognize eighteen cards out of twenty, fifteen cards out of twenty and nineteen cards out of twenty, detained by an assistant out of sight and hearing.

Luke, whose aunt was the owner of the house, was also included in the gang investigators. Luke would someday or the other become heir of the house.

The night when Eleanor met Theodora, they decided to look around the house and went near the brook. They had a great time but were scared by a mere rabbit. This was their first feeling of scariness involving Hill House.

The doctor and Luke met them the next morning and they decided to take into encounter their everyday experience in the house and write it accordingly. They went inside to look for the whole inside but lost because the house had so many rooms or rather say rooms inside rooms.

One night Theodora and Eleanor experienced a pound and thumbing sound outside their rooms and were frightened by that. They asked who was there but got no reply. They even called the doctor and Luke but they did not come as they were outside the house.

The next day, they found “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME” written on one of the walls and decided to get rid of her. During the whole experience at the Hill House, Eleanor had two feelings; one of happiness because of something exciting like Hill House and the other was incomplete because of her mother.

After some days of living inside the Hill House, Dr. Montague called his wife, and his wife decides to live in the most haunted room, i.e. the Nursery where the older Miss. Crain died. At that night Dr. Montague, Luke, Theodora, and Eleanor were together in a room when their doors closed and the pounding sound started again and went towards the nursery. They somehow went there to see Mrs. Montague but she wasn’t there. Eleanor left the room, departed towards the library and started climbing the tower. The iron stairway was shaking and groaning with every step she was taking. She was holding the railing so tightly and walking bare feet step by step. She wasn’t even looking down. She could have died but Luke and others somehow saved her.

The decision of getting away with Eleanor was then finalized and the next day she was removed from the house in her disagreement. She bid goodbye to everyone and on the way back she thought that this is not what she deserves. Hill House is where she belongs. She heard them calling and turned the car and it crashed to the tree at the curve of the driveway and she died.

Hill House in a Nutshell
No human eye can separate the unhappy luck of line and position which propose sin in the face of a house, and yet someway a crazy combination, a badly curved angle, some chance reunion of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of misery, more terrifying because the look of Hill House seemed conscious, with an alertness from the empty windows and a touch of delight in the eyebrow of a cornice.
Almost any house, trapped unexpectedly or at an odd position, can turn an extremely amusing look on a watching person; even a mischievous small chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can grab up a beholder with a sense of companionship but a house arrogant and disgusting, without guard, can only be evil. This house, which appeared someway to have formed itself, flying together into its powerful model under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its construction of lines and angles, raised its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, not purposed to be lived in, not a fit place for people or love or hope. Exorcism cannot alter the expression of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.
The house was over the trees between them and the hills, catching glimpses of the roofs, perhaps a tower, of Hill House. They put towers and steeples and supports and wooden lace on them, even sometimes Gothic spires and gargoyles; nothing was ever left undecorated. Perhaps Hill House has a tower, or a secret chamber, or even a passageway going off into the hills and probably used by smugglers.
The investigators used to sit in a small room which was chosen by the doctor, who had directed them into it, down a narrow passageway.

It was not a comfortable room, for sure. It had an objectionably tall ceiling, and a thin tiled fireplace which felt cool even after the fire; the chairs were rounded and greasy, and the light coming through the coloured dropped tinted lenses of the lamps made shadows into the curves of the room. The colour of the room was purple; under their feet, the rug shined in faint complicated patterns and a marble angel ground in a silly way down at them from the mantel. The door of their rooms leads to the long passage and then into the front hall. There are no secret chambers in Hill House.

The Beauty and Secret of Hill House
Hill house not only has a scary image for the viewers but also a beautiful figure for those who know preciousness.
Scandal, murder, insanity, suicide, the history of Hill House was ideal. Hill House was built eighty years ago by a man named Hugh Crain as a home for his wife and daughter in the most remote part of New England he could find. People say it was the evilest house from the beginning, a house that was born bad. Hugh Crain’s wife died minutes before she could set her eyes on the house. Her carriage overturned in the driveway and the lady became lifeless. He was then left with two daughters but he did not leave Hill House.
The two children played in the house with themselves. Hugh Crain married twice more but he seems to be unlucky with his wives. The second Mrs. Crain’s death is even more interesting than her predecessor’s. She died of a fall but no one could find out why and how. The third Mrs. Crain died of what people label consumption, someplace in Europe. After the deaths, Hugh Crain decided to close the Hill House and live abroad but his daughters were sent to live with their mother’s cousin and spent their adulthood there. The relatives were jollier than their father.
But as they grew up they thought different and their way of looking at things was dissimilar. They started fighting over Hill House. Both wanted it to be their property as Hugh Crain died somewhere in Europe, before long his wife and the house was left jointly to both sisters
Hill House was left alone and empty for several years but was always ready for a family. It was obvious, after the death of the father and the mother that the house will be given to the older one.
But the younger Miss. Crain does not want to stop trying. She stole the beau of her older sister and married him to take revenge from the sister. The older sister was crossed in love. She lived in the house alone for many years in peace and then eventually took a girl from the village as a caretaker or better says a companion. The younger sister called up for some heirlooms in return of the house which her sister refused to give. After some years, the older sister died of pneumonia in the house with only the attendant in the house. Stories say that the companion left her deserted upstairs while being with a village vandal.
As the Hill House was born eighty years ago and no house could stand for that long period without seeing the residents die inside its walls.
After the death of the older sister, the companion persisted that the house belongs to her as she has been there for years, the younger sister and her husband did not stop their fight and said that it belongs legally to them. It was kind of a quarrel; unbelievably harsh things were said from both sides, kind of a family clash. But at the end, the companion won the fight and the house was given legally to her but the younger sister never gave up trying. She started threatening her with letters. The companion once a village girl now became the lady of the mansion. The village girl, after sometime killed herself because of her guilty conscious. The poor girl was hated to death; she hanged herself from the turret on the tower. After her death, the house was given legally to the family of Sanderson, who were her cousins. But they never lived there. They spent a few days but then left the house.
The house is should be called haunted because of the deaths of people in it. Hill House has an upright image of haunted by the villagers around. It has a beauty that is not seen by people as it is overshadowed by its scary image.
Eleanor, in the house, was provided with a blue room, literally. She was given a room that had blue dimity drape over the two panes, which looked out above the top of the porch; onto the grass, and a blue shaped carpet on the floor, and a blue spread on the bed and a blue comforter at the base. The walls, dark carpentry to shoulder tallness, were blue-figured paper above, with a drawing of tiny blue flowers, covered and collected and delicate. While on the other hand Theodora was provided with the green room; green dimity drapes hung over the windowpanes, the wallpaper was bedecked with green wreaths, the bedspread and quilt were green, the marble-topped dresser and the giant closet of the same colour.
Luke and the doctor had a pink and green room respectively. All the rooms in the Hill House had its primary colours which kind of brightens the essence of the rooms.
The day Theodora and Eleanor met, they decided to go around the house to see its atmosphere and there they saw the river and its water making light ripples. The grass had yellow and blue flowers, so fresh which bent their heads over. There was also a hill which had its grass till far away close to infinite catching the sunlight. It was so beautiful. The whole surrounding made them forget about the haunting house.
Inside the house there was a large veranda which looks above the grass, the front door is strangely closed. Behind the house, looking almost in the smoke, the great hills were soft and boring in the rain.
At the curve of the veranda, there was a tower. It was made of gray rock, grotesquely solid, wedged hard against the impassive side of the house, with the immovable porch holding it there.

The Haunting of Hill House started frightening years off its readers' lives in 1959 and hasn't congested since. Hugh Crain built the beautiful Hill House eighty years ago as a home for his wife and daughter in the most distinct part of New England which turned out to be a death spot for his family in people’s opinion. Members of his family died due to their internal affairs. Their death made Hill House a scary place.
The Haunting of Hill House tells the frightening saga of socially reserved Eleanor Vance, who went to Hill House to participate in research engaging paranormal activities. But the scariness of Hill House doesn’t approach in the appearance of spirit or vampires. Instead, Eleanor and her other partners have to compete with the House itself—and with the experiences of people staying there—if they are to live their encounter with the spiteful mansion.
The house was tagged as haunted but without any evidence of any ghost or soul of anyone. The label has been there since the deaths of the Crain family and the caretaker. Of course, a house could stand for eighty years without encountering deaths of the members living there but the deaths don’t mean that there has to be any ghost around the house. Because of the tag, no one lives in the house for more than some weeks. There were only some thumbing noises that were heard by Eleanor and Theodora during their stay at the Hill House, and nothing more than proves that it was a haunted house, although, they did find “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME” written on one of the walls but on the basis of this incident it can’t be proved as haunted. The feeling of affection towards the house was just by Eleanor herself. The house did not do anything to her. She felt free with the Hill House and with her counterparts as there was no one to control her.
Shirley, not only gave us the scary element of the house but also the beauty of the house and in its surroundings. He penned about the beautiful brook and the fields around the house where Eleanor and Theodora picnicked and were scared just by a rabbit. He also introduced us to the long beautiful corridors that were there. The colours of the rooms, the carpets, the wallpapers, and the curtain can be tagged as attractive. The rooms were all colour based. If the colour is red, all the things that were in the rooms were colour in the same shade, like curtains, wallpapers, carpets, bed sheets, quilts, etc. The house, from outside looks, haunted at nights, which Eleanor felt so but after living there she was so connected to it that she didn’t want to leave it. The inmates had to force her to do so because of her act of foolishness.
The beauty and the secret which Eleanor and Theodora did not know about the Hill House had a great impact on their minds. The brook, the corridor, and everything made them feel better about the house. I could finally find out things that are separate from the casual image of the Hill House and present them positively.
As Bo Diddley says, “You can’t judge a book by its cover”, in the same way, people should not prejudge the house just by its outward appearance instead they should go more into it and look for its beauty and allurement. Not every house that has been there for a long time, say eighty or ninety years has to be haunted. Beauty is always associated with the older mansion and the beauty of Hill House was only seen by Eleanor among all the inmates with her sense of affection and loneliness, she found her connection with the house which did not let her leave the house even after being forced by her other mates. Her life found its happiness by getting surrounded by the beautiful environment of the mansion which overshadowed the scariness of Hill House. The atmosphere of Hill House made her forget about her sister who used to treat her badly and according to her, she had to do everything after her mother. She was so lost into the essence of the house. The fields, the winds, the air, the statue, the rooms used to mesmerize her. She thought that she belongs to the house. The house had never done that to anyone till now.