From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

Hell House

Richard Matheson

Start date: May 1, 2024

Finish date: May 31, 2024

Discussion: The Horror of it All

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Showing 2 of 7 topics — 177 comments total

The Horror of it All

* 2026 Horror Reading Schedule
By Book Nerd , Purple Book Horse · 4 posts · 30 views

last updated Nov 13, 2025 04:43PM

* 2025 Horror Reading Schedule
By Book Nerd , Purple Book Horse · 4 posts · 122 views

last updated Aug 21, 2025 07:16AM

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What Members Thought

Aug 14, 2017 Jen from Quebec :0) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reading-challenge-books, classics-i-ve-read, horror-aff-tbr-challenge-books

Had Matheson not botched the ending so badly, this would be a new favorite of mine!! --Jen from Quebec :0)

7 likes · Like · see review

May 19, 2024 GONZA rated it it was ok

Shelves: ebk, goodreadsgroups

I admit that of all the classic topics in scary books, haunted houses are the ones that scare me the most. Of course, I ended up reading it at night, but at least I wasn't alone. Paradoxically it was more the fear of the fear than the fear itself that was the biggest, the book flows without any particular surprises in my opinion, but I admit that sometimes the situations gave me chills. Moreover, the weight of years is felt, not so much by the absence of a certain kind of technology, but rather ...more

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Sep 21, 2007 Meika rated it it was amazing

I had to sleep with the lights on last night.
The ghosts in this story are particularly nasty because the scientist who goes in on the haunted house excursion has accepted his hypothesis that mediums are individuals who can turn residual energy from houses (I think this relates to a paranormal theory of place memory) into physical and mental manifestations. I.e...take a powerful medium into a haunted house where there's a lot of residual energy, and you have a really scary spook show where peopl ...more

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Oct 06, 2024 Laura rated it it was ok

Shelves: scary-horror

Ok, I want to preface this with the fact that I've enjoyed Matheson's short stories and Twilight Zone episodes. This is the first long work of his I've tried, and there's always the chance that something from 1971 isn't going to work for a modern reader for many reasons other than "it was bad".

I just felt about this the way I feel about a lot of Stephen King, where it's so very seventies in the depiction of a woman wanting sex as horror, in describing sex acts both modernly normal and also over ...more

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