Hell House, by Richard Matheson, is a 1971 horror thriller that's unusually well-informed about parapsychology. Perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise; Matheson, who inclined toward Theosophy and wrote a nonfiction book on its teachings, had a lifelong interest in paranormal phenomena and survival after death, as evidenced by his novel What Dreams May Come, a serious account of the afterlife with an extensive bibliography of parapsychology titles.
In Hell House, the premise is considerably less original than in What Dreams May Come. A dying plutocrat offers for people $100,000 each to spend a week at an isolated mansion built by the late Emeric Belasco, a wealthy satanist whose followers indulged in all manner of carnality and paganism. The house is reputable to be haunted; previous investigators have died or gone mad; but our heroes are plucky enough to take on the challenge. What follows is a great deal of mayhem, which proves fatal for more than one member of the team.
It's basically a variation on the old "spend one night in a haunted house" trope, which was a cliché even in 1971. The house itself, as Matheson once pointed out, was based on the famed Borley Rectory, investigated by flamboyant parapsychologist Harry Price. Price, like the novel's millionaire, offered people money to live in Borley Rectory and record any phenomena they observed.
Matheson's familiarity with the occult allows him to recast the most obvious cliché of the genre – the conflict between skeptics and believers – in a more sophisticated form. None of the visitors to Hell House is a skeptic of the materialist type, which is just as well, since events quickly leave us in no doubt as to the reality of paranormal phenomena. Instead, the intellectual conflict focuses on a seasoned parapsychologist, Lionel Barrett (his last name is possibly an homage to early psychical researcher William Barrett, a pioneer in the study of deathbed visions), who subscribes to a version of the super-psi or living agent psi hypothesis, believing that hauntings and mediumship can be explained purely as paranormal powers of the human mind; and his opposite number, a spiritualist medium who believes she is in direct contact with the dead.
This conflict is well presented, and Matheson's thorough acquaintance with the kinds of arguments raised in Alan Gauld's Mediumship and Survival is obvious. And although Matheson is clearly sympathetic to the spiritualist position, he gives full justice to the other side. Here's Dr. Barrett offering a tour de force summary of the super-psi position. (I've excerpted only the dialogue, omitting descriptions and distractions.)
To begin with fundamentals, all phenomena occur as events in nature – a nature the order of which is larger than that presented by current science, but nature, nonetheless. This is true of so-called psychic events as well, parapsychology being, in fact, no more than an extension of biology.
[Call it] paranormal biology, then, setting forth the premise that man overflows and is greater than the organism which he inhabits, as Dr. Cantrell put it. In simplest terms, the human body emits a form of energy – a psychic fluid, if you will. This energy surrounds the body with an unseen sheath; what has been called the “aura.” It can be extruded beyond the borders of this aura, where it can create mechanical, chemical, and physical effects: percussions, odors, movement of external objects, and the like – as we have seen repeatedly these past few days. I believe that when Belasco spoke of “influences,” he may have been referring to this energy.
All through the ages, evidence in proof of this premise has been forthcoming, each new level of human development bringing about its own particular proof. In the Middle Ages, for example, much superstitious thought was directed toward what were called demons and witches. Accordingly, these things were manifested, created by this psychic energy, this unseen fluid, these “influences.”
Mediums have always produced phenomena indigenous to their beliefs. This is certainly the case with Spiritualism. Mediums adhering to this faith create its own particular phenomenon – so-called spirit communication. By record, the only time religious exorcisms have an effect on haunted houses or possessions is when the medium who causes the phenomena is highly religious, thus profoundly moved by the exorcism. In far more cases – including this house – gallons of holy water and hours of exorcism fail to alter anything, either because the medium involved is not religious or because more than one medium has contributed to the effect.
Another example of this biological mechanism was that of animal magnetism, which produced psychic phenomena equally as impressive as those of Spiritualism, but entirely devoid of any religious characteristics.
How does this mechanism function, though? What is its genesis? Reichenbach, the Austrian chemist, in the years between 1845 in 1868 established the existence of such a physiological radiation. His experiments consistent, first, of having sensitives observe magnets. What they saw were gleams of light at the poles, like flames of unequal length, the shorter at the positive pole. Observation of electromagnets brought about the same result as did observation of crystals. Finally, the same phenomenon was observed on the human body.
Colonel De Rochas continued Reichenbach’s experiments, discovering that these emanations are blue at the positive pole, red at the negative. In 1912 Dr. Kilner, a member of the London Royal College of Physicians, published the results of four years of experimentation during which, by use of the “dycyanine” screen, the so-called human aura was made visible to anyone. When the pole of a magnet was brought into proximity with this aura, a ray appeared, joining the pole to the nearest point of the body. Further, when the subject was exposed to an electrostatic charge, the aura gradually disappeared, returning when the charge was dissipated.
I oversimplify the progression of discovered facts, of course, but the end result is irrefutable; the psychic emanation which all living beings discharge is a field of electromagnetic radiation.
Electromagnetic radiation – EMR – is the answer, then. All living organisms emit this energy, its dynamo the mind. The electromagnetic field around the human body behaves precisely as do all such fields – spiraling around its center of force, the electric and magnetic impulses acting at right angles to each other, and so on. Such a field must impinge itself on its surroundings. In extremes of motion, the field grows stronger, impressing itself on its environment with more force – a force which, if contained, persists in that environment, undischarged, saturating it, disturbing organisms sensitive to it: psychics, dogs, cats – in brief, establishing a “haunted” atmosphere.
Is it any wonder, then, that Hell House is the way it is? Consider the years of violently emotional, destructive – evil, if you will – radiations which have impregnated its interior. Consider the veritable storehouse of noxious power this house became. Hell House is, in essence, a giant battery, the toxic power of which must, inevitably, be tapped by those who enter it, either intentionally or involuntarily.
This is an exceptionally clever summary, written at a high level and obviously meant to be taken seriously. There are problems with Dr. Barrett's theory; for one thing, psychic abilities show no diminution of power with distance, as electromagnetism does; for another, it's unclear how an electromagnetic field would explain a phenomenon like precognition. But very few supernatural books are written by an author with this kind of knowledge of the ins and outs of parapsychology. For me, this material was the most interesting aspect of the book. There is real suspense, albeit of an intellectual kind, in wondering which side of the argument will prevail.
In some other respects, Hell House is not as successful. Matheson's overwrought writing style is heavily burdened with adjectives and adverbs, including such awkward constructions as "frightenedly." Certain words recur with almost metronomic regularity; you could probably design a good drinking game around every appearance of the verb "jerk." Heads, hands, arms, and legs jerk. People jerk upright. They jerk open doors … You get the picture.
More bothersome than the pulpy prose is Matheson's evident intention to throw everything at his characters – sometimes literally, as in the case of a monotonously extended poltergeist attack. Action scenes go on at length, losing their impact. Many times I found myself thinking that less would have been more. In the run-up to the poltergeist scene, a heated argument between Barrett and the medium climaxes when a teacup in Barrett's hand shatters, cutting his fingers – a highly effective and startling moment. If only Matheson had left it at that! Unfortunately, the teacup explosion is merely the prelude to an all-out psychic assault that reduces the room to shambles. The epic destruction is not scary or even particularly interesting. The teacup alone would have been enough.
Characterization is sharply defined but shallow; each of the four major characters is outlined in bold strokes in the manner of Agatha Christie's fictional creations, though without Dame Agatha's wry humor or occasional touches of surprisingly perceptive psychology.
Matheson's worldview seems to owe much to the traditional Christian equation of sin with suicide and sex. In What Dreams May Come, a key character is sentenced to (what amounts to) eternal damnation for taking her own life. In Hell House, we're told that the house's evil energy was largely built up out of decadent orgies, and the house's manipulation of the characters often involves manifesting hidden sexual urges or placing our heroes in sexually charged situations. The lascivious explicitness of some scenes verges on the pornographic. This material, possibly shocking in 1971, seems dated and tedious today.
The book features a quote from Stephen King calling it "the scariest haunted house novel ever written." It's not. King's own contribution, The Shining, is far more unsettling and psychologically astute; even leaving that book aside, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw are far better literature and more disturbing tales. But Hell House found its audience in 1971; it was a big commercial hit and was promptly made into a movie scripted by Matheson himself.
In summary, Hell House as literature may be only a notch above mediocrity, but as as a primer on psychical research, the controversies in the field, and the hopelessness of the purely materialist position, it's still relevant and even, at times, provocative. Readers of this blog might enjoy it for that reason alone.
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