Leah Rachel von Essen reviews genre-bending fiction for Booklist, and writes regularly as a senior contributor at Book Riot. Her blog While Reading and Walking has over 10,000 dedicated followers over several social media outlets, including Instagram. She writes passionately about books in translation, chronic illness and bias in healthcare, queer books, twisty SFF, and magical realism and folklore. She was one of a select few bookstagrammers named to NewCity’s Chicago Lit50 in 2022. She is an avid traveler, a passionate fan of women’s basketball and soccer, and a lifelong learner. Twitter: @reading_while
As readers, storytellers, and listeners around campfires, we always seem to return to haunted house stories. First of all, because of the obvious: What’s more terrifying that the place where you feel the most safe being corrupted or invaded, becoming a place of entrapment or danger? Every single one of us has tried to fall asleep despite hearing floorboards creak or tree branches tap or the wind whistle through gaps.
But second, because houses hold memories, history, stories. We move into a new house, or stay in someone else’s, and we can tell lives have been lived there. Our imaginations wander. We tell countless tales and follow endless superstitions due to our fear of death, and that carries over to our homes. A poll from Trulia showed that 7 out of 10 people wouldn’t want to live in a house where anyone died, naturally or otherwise. We like to avoid speaking about death, let alone acknowledging its presence as a constant. Hence, our fear that our house is already somehow haunted, occupied, by it. But digging into fiction about these things can tantalize us without giving us real fear, ironically soothing our own quiet anxieties.
Haunted house stories have seen a recent surge with some fascinating twists that break them out of some of the age-old molds. Fungal networks grow behind the walls; a serial killer haunts a daughter’s memory; history itself corrupts the ground the house stands on. Here are five mysteries and thrillers featuring some very haunted homes.
Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey
Vera didn’t want to go back. But her mother demanded it—her health is failing, and she needs a caretaker. It was already hard for Vera to return to the site where her father, a convicted serial killer, committed his crimes. But now she comes back to see that her mother is letting an artist stay out back and mine their home for material, as part of a larger project to allow people to come and see and stay in the infamous Crowder House. As the bloody past bubbles up to haunt Vera, she’s forced to confront her memories of those years long ago, and reveal her own well-hidden secrets about that time.
Unusual Suspects
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What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
A darkly gothic, brilliantly unsettling novella retelling Poe’s “The House of Usher,” Kingfisher’s book features a retired soldier who comes to visit the house of two old friends after hearing that Madeline might be dying. Shocked at the state of the mansion, Alex is overwhelmed. The lake seems to glow at night, a British woman is wandering the grounds sketching foul-smelling mushrooms, Madeline is sleepwalking, and Roderick seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Can Alex solve this mystery before the house claims them all?
Model Home by Rivers Solomon
The three Maxwell siblings—genderfluid Ezri and sisters Eve and Emanuelle—don’t want to go back to their childhood home in Dallas. They were the only Black kids in a predominantly white, wealthy gated neighborhood, and it never accepted them—and possibly actively tormented them. The siblings could never get anyone to listen to them about the unusual, frightening things they experienced in that house. Now, their parents are dead, and they are forced to go back and investigate just what’s wrong with that haunted, haunted house.
Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker
Mara is the “mess” of the family who never quite gets her shit together. But when her cousin Jeremy offers her a role on a home-renovation show focusing on haunted houses, she sees an opportunity to prove them wrong. As a production assistant, she has a steady job that involves a lot of setting up fog machines and faking creepy ghost-like moments. But just as she’s getting settled in, one of the houses begins to exhibit signs of its own, actual haunting. Is someone just trying to mess with her, or is there an actual ghost at this property?
She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
Jade came to Vietnam solely to appease her father and get him to support her college tuition. But quickly, it seems like things aren’t right. Her father is renovating an old manor that was the site of quite a bit of Vietnamese history, including the cruelties of French colonialism, and she thinks the place is haunted. She has terrifying sleep paralysis, insects are dying, and much more, but her father doesn’t believe her. This fever dream of a read will make you shiver.
English (US) · 