The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story

by Kate Summerscale

Fort suggested in Wild Talents (1932), a squad of poltergeist girls might be deployed against enemy troops. He imagined the scene – both futuristic and archaic – in which the girls combined their violent gifts: ‘A regiment bursts into flames, and the soldiers are torches. Horses snort smoke from the combustion of their entrails.’

In The Haunting of Hill House, a novel of 1959, Shirley Jackson explores the possibility that a disturbed individual can trigger supernormal events. She describes a ghost hunt conducted under the aegis of the psychical researcher Dr John Montague, in which weird incidents seem to emanate from a young woman called Eleanor Vance. When Fodor was invited to serve as a consultant on the film adaptation of the novel, in 1963, he asked Shirley Jackson if she had read his work, and she confirmed that she had.