By Bretton Cadigan
As a New Englander, I know three things: Boston sports are king, Dunkin’ Iced Coffee is a year-round beverage, and Spooky Season doesn’t end after Halloween. There’s no better way to while away the cold, dark three seasons of winter than to curl up with a scary story. So naturally, New England is home to a number of horror stars, from modern writers like Stephen King and Paul Tremblay, to one of the all-time greats: Shirley Jackson. Take it from King, who called Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House one of “the only two great novels of the supernatural in the last hundred years.” Jackson’s legacy lives on in the many writers inspired by her art, the film and Netflix adaptations of her work, and the Shirley Jackson horror awards.
Jackson’s protagonists are the outsiders of society, forced to live as ghosts, disregarded by a world around them that would prefer them to pass on sooner rather than later. Her perspective on the patriarchy and traditional values suffuses her work, exposing the uncomfortable truth that ghouls run the world.
As a horror writer actively studying horror’s roots, I spent my winter reading three of Jackson’s most famous works: The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and “The Lottery”. Consider me impressed, amazed, and scared silly.
In “The Lottery”, we witness the villagers’ casual cruelty, their blind faith in tradition, and how the lottery “winner” changes her tune as soon as she is selected. The story struck me as just as relevant now as when it was published in the New Yorker in 1948. The story prompted a major reader response, the most the magazine had ever received for a piece of fiction. Shirley struck a chord!
Next up, in The Haunting of Hill House Jackson manages to cast Hill House as a character and antagonist in its own right, creating a constant sense of unease throughout the peculiar setting. Protagonist Eleanor is particularly targeted by the house, with the hauntings blurring the line between her inner thoughts and outer perceptions. We see the rest of the cast in denial, blaming Eleanor for the supernatural events, leading to a shocking conclusion. Even after the book’s end, we’re still left in doubt about the boundaries between the real and unreal, the everyday and the supernatural.
Finally, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, my personal favorite, is a gothic mystery about the remains of a family surviving in their isolated mansion after a terrible tragedy. Working out the details of said tragedy is part of the spooky fun, so I won’t reveal too much. But the way that the mystery unspools is brilliant, revealed in bit and pieces via different members of the family: protagonist Merricat Blackwood, living in daydreams and imagination; her big sister Constance, unceasingly patient, but trapped on the property; Uncle Julian, endlessly rewriting his memoir in an attempt to uncover the truth. All the while, the village community fears, excludes, and despises the Blackwoods based only on the rumors that surround them. When a new houseguest forces the conflict to come to a head, we see patriarchy, greed, and cowardice shatter the short-lived stability of the Blackwood home.
Throughout each story, Jackson reckons with the evils of normal people, crystallized through the injustices that society inflicts in the name of the public good. Protagonists Eleanor and Merricat are of a similar type, imaginative dreamers, loving and hating easily, outsiders adrift in oceans of emotions. Their unconventional personalities offer an easy target for those who seek to maintain social norms and the status quo. Eleanor’s flights of fancy and honest affections are openly mocked by the other Hill House visitors. Merricat’s rare village visits invite cruel jeers and bold insults. Seeing the world through the unreliable narration of these dreamers, forced to their breaking points, allows Jackson to build immense suspense as we wait for the other shoe to drop. But will that shoe really drop or is it all a dream? Jackson’s prose has an illusory, timeless feeling, hypnotic in its repetition: “Silly Merricat!” still play on repeat in the back of my head. And while there are certainly moments of fright while reading the stories, the sense of dread stuck with me long after I turned the last page. My real-life perspective was changed, new doubts crept into my mind about the stability of our own world, one inhospitable to our dreamers.
While many other influential horror stories of the mid-20th century reinforced the narrative of the evil “other” and the sanctity of the white picket fence lifestyle, Jackson challenges that narrative, positing that the greatest horrors are born from this self-assured, white-washed complacency. As her tragedies unfold, we can’t help but see the needlessness of these conclusions, easily avoidable with just a bit of empathy and understanding. The “social horror” film genre owes a debt to Jackson’s seminal work. From classics like Rosemary’s Baby and The Shining to today’s hits like Get Out, Parasite, and Midsommar, we see marginalized protagonists struggling to make sense of a world that merrily guides its dreamers to socially-condoned destruction.
Horror is a genre that reaches deep to our cores, surpassing our mental and moral defenses and reshaping our real-world fears to expose unexpected truths. Shirley Jackson shows us that the greatest horror is the world we’re already living in, continuing down its well-lit path to Hell.
AUTHOR BIO
Bretton Cadigan (he/him) lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his spouse, son, and lucky black cat. He completed a bachelor’s degree at Tufts University in International Literary and Visual Studies and is now attending Emerson College’s Popular Fiction MFA program. His short stories have been published in Mobius Blvd, Shlock! Webzine, Leonardo Audio, and more. When he isn’t writing speculative fiction, he enjoys reading graphic novels, playing board games, and falling off his skateboard.
Instagram: @brettonwould
