Hell House
By Richard Matheson
A Cold Spot
The backstory of Hell House was horrifying. I assumed the debaucheries described by Matheson would weave themselves into the characters’ stories in the present time. With one exception, my expectation wasn’t realized, and the novel left me cold.
Most of the instances of ghostlly possession were straightforward. Florence and Edith took turns at bodice (in this book, sweater)-ripping. They threw themselves at the male investigators with lascivious abandon and had no memory afterward of what had happened—therefore, their minds were never truly corrupted. Where is the fun in that? I’d much rather take a fictional journey with people who are losing themselves to the horror than those who are merely frightened and bewildered. For instance, in The Haunting of Hill House, we are privileged to look inside Eleanor’s mind and observe her inevitable deterioration at the hands of the house. But the characters in Hell House deteriorate due to their physical injuries and lack of good sleep. That’s too concrete.
The exception, and one scene I truly enjoyed, was when Edith discovered a bottle of brandy and pornographic photos in her bedroom. It was eerie because she had not been fully taken over by Belasco and was still debating with herself about whether or not the brandy was a good idea. In fact, we were not even certain that she was possessed or if the drinking and photo-gazing were of her own volition. She was disturbed by her fascination with the photos. Here was one instance where I felt the awful history of the house impressed itself on her in her waking existence.
I found the sex scenes to be misogynistic and gratuitous. Why were the women the only ones being brutalized to such an extent? This made the novel feel dated. Especially egregious in the “me too” department was Matheson’s description of Florence Tanner’s strip search behind the medium curtain. I could have used some exposition, as I didn’t know this was a practice in mediumistic circles. Was this scene meant to rachet up the—oooh—“lesbian” tension? Or was it merely supposed to be titillating? I fear the latter.
It was explained many times that Edith was repressed. But even so, I didn’t understand Belasco’s motive in making her sexually aggressive during his possessions of her. Especially since Edith didn’t remember afterward what she had done. What was his purpose? Why did he care, since there was no humiliation for Edith if she remembered nothing afterwards?
One aspect of the novel that I appreciated was the debate over the cause of psychic phenomena. Is all “psi” caused by electromagnetism? Or are the phenomena caused by the spirits of the dead? Were there really ghosts in the house, or was it mere residue? I liked Florence Tanner’s character because she considered the possibility that it could be both. She saw Barret’s machine as having the potential to drive Daniel away to a hell other than the house. Barret, though, was hidebound and couldn’t budge from his dogmatic opinion. His character didn’t have an arc so much as a precipitous plunge off a cliff, and I have to admit I enjoyed seeing him receive his just deserts.
I found Florence to be sympathetic, veering into pathetic, with her pleadings to God to help her overcome the evil in the house and lead “Daniel” into the light. Matheson might have invested these scenes with more pathos. There remained an emptiness in the characters despite their efforts to do the right thing.
I didn’t find myself rooting for Fischer at the end when he became, all of a sudden, a detective in a mystery novel and solved the puzzle of the house by listening to the tapes of Red Cloud and having an epiphany about the meaning of the word “extremities.” It was undoubtedly clever, but the fact that Belasco had amputated his short legs and replaced them with artificial stalks to increase his height meant… what? That he felt insecure about his physical presence, and because of that, he needed to haunt the house forever? As with so much of this novel, I was left sitting in my own cold spot.