Hell House (Library Edition)

When I think of audiobooks about haunted houses, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is the first one that comes to mind, and I inevitably compare all others to that masterpiece. It's not really a fair comparison, I know, because The Haunting of Hill House sets the bar impossibly high; it's like comparing other rock ballads to Kiss' Beth. When I look at Hell House in that light, it too falls short of the mark, but if I really try to be objective about it, I have to admit that Richard Matheson did a pretty fine job.

Where Shirley Jackson is subtle, penetrating the layers of our minds with the precision of a scalpel, Matheson is more blunt, like a chainsaw. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Hannibal Lecter and Freddy Krueger have very different methods, and who's to say which one is more terrifying. When you get right down to it, it's a little like comparing apples to oranges: both are fruits, sure, and both taste good, but how different they are.

Okay, enough with the fruity comparisons. I like the way Richard Matheson blends traditional horror elements with scientific theory, or put another way, the way he blends the supernatural with the natural. In his story I Am Legend, Matheson wrote about zombie/vampires. They were not typical zombie/vampires, however, their condition was the result of a plague. The hero of the story, Robert Neville, strove to develop a vaccine that would cure the effected and return them to normal. In Hell House, the character of Lionel Barrett proposes that hauntings are nothing more than a physical energy left behind by a deceased person, something that can be measured and controlled, similar to radioactive fallout. In both cases, the heroes seem to have come up with a solution to the problem, but we never quite get to find out for sure if they work.

Matheson's hypotheses have an air of plausibility to them, an important factor that I always look for in any book. Knowing the theory behind a phenomenon will usually make that phenomenon less strange, or less scary, but somehow that is not the case with Matheson's stories. Even after explaining how or why something works the way it does, he can still make you fear it, raising the suspense to a level that is nearly unbearable.

Hell House was my first experience with narrator Ray Porter. He impressed me right away. There are a lot of narrators that can do pretty good character voices, but ultimately they still sound like one person doing a lot of voices. My first impression of Porter was that his voices actually sounded like different people. Even his voices for the female characters were convincing, something that very few male narrators can pull off. Ray Porter is good, and I would like to hear more from him.

You'll find only one haunted house story better than this one, as I have already mentioned. When you've finished that one and are ready for number two, Hell House will be waiting. Proceed with caution.