I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and w… - Shirley Jackson

Everything is worse...if you think something is looking at you.

This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

"All cat stories start with this statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...