The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Page B

knows, even, why some houses are called haunted.”
    â€œWhat else could you call Hill House?” Luke demanded.
    â€œWell—disturbed, perhaps. Leprous. Sick. Any of the popular euphemisms for insanity; a deranged house is a pretty conceit. There are popular theories, however, which discount the eerie, the mysterious; there are people who will tell you that the disturbances I am calling ‘psychic’ are actually the result of subterranean waters, or electric currents, or hallucinations caused by polluted air; atmospheric pressure, sun spots, earth tremors all have their advocates among the skeptical. People,” the doctor said sadly, “are always so anxious to get things out into the open where they can put a name to them, even a meaningless name, so long as it has something of a scientific ring.” He sighed, relaxing, and gave them a little quizzical smile. “A haunted house,” he said. “Everyone laughs. I found myself telling my colleagues at the university that I was going camping this summer.”
    â€œI told people I was participating in a scientific experiment,” Theodora said helpfully. “Without telling them where or what, of course.”
    â€œPresumably your friends feel less strongly about scientific experiments than mine. Yes.” The doctor sighed again. “Camping. At my age. And yet that they believed. Well.” He straightened up again and fumbled at his side, perhaps for a yardstick. “I first heard about Hill House a year ago, from a former tenant. He began by assuring me that he had left Hill House because his family objected to living so far out in the country, and ended by saying that in his opinion the house ought to be burned down and the ground sowed with salt. I learned of other people who had rented Hill House, and found that none of them had stayed more than a few days, certainly never the full terms of their leases, giving reasons that ranged from the dampness of the location—not at all true, by the way; the house is very dry—to a pressing need to move elsewhere, for business reasons. That is, every tenant who has left Hill House hastily has made an effort to supply a rational reason for leaving, and yet every one of them has left. I tried, of course, to learn more from these former tenants, and yet in no case could I persuade them to discuss the house; they all seemed most unwilling to give me information and were, in fact, reluctant to recall the details of their several stays. In only one opinion were they united. Without exception, every person who has spent any length of time in this house urged me to stay as far away from it as possible. Not one of the former tenants could bring himself to admit that Hill House was haunted, but when I visited Hillsdale and looked up the newspaper records—”
    â€œNewspapers?” Theodora asked. “Was there a scandal?”
    â€œOh, yes,” the doctor said. “A perfectly splendid scandal, with a suicide and madness and lawsuits. Then I learned that the local people had no doubts about the house. I heard a dozen different stories, of course—it is really unbelievably difficult to get accurate information about a haunted house; it would astonish you to know what I have gone through to learn only as much as I have—and as a result I went to Mrs. Sanderson, Luke’s aunt, and arranged to rent Hill House. She was most frank about its undesirability—”
    â€œIt’s harder to burn down a house than you think,” Luke said.
    â€œâ€”but agreed to allow me a short lease to carry out my researches, on condition that a member of the family be one of my party.”
    â€œThey hope,” Luke said solemnly, “that I will dissuade you from digging up the lovely old scandals.”
    â€œThere. Now I have explained how I happen to be here, and why Luke has come. As for you two ladies, we all know by now that you are here because I wrote