I’m always up for an adventure and exploring new places, but let’s dive into 3 places that I’d take a hard pass on, thanks to these spine-tingling tales that paint a vivid picture of why some destinations are better left unexplored.
A Haunting on the Hill, Elizabeth Hand
Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play, The Witch of Edmonton, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the ornate, if crumbling, gothic mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s enormous, old, and ever-so eerie—the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play.
The first third or so of this novel is a slow buildup as we get to know the characters, or the 3 idiotic actors, who decide to stay at Hill House, a creepy house in the middle of nowhere, despite the fact that they read stories online about it’s sordid history. We also meet the 4th member of this group, who is old enough to know that dark forces exist. This is, of course, not how the author describe the characters, but Elizabeth Hand is so very good with her characters that we get a feel for them, and get to know them really well as the story builds.
And then there’s the house, and a few other caretakers. The house makes it’s presence felt not long after they arrive. If you’re like me, you would have been screaming – just leave!!! But of course, when you spend your hard earned money to rent a place, it makes you think twice about parting with it before time. And so, the crew stay, and we’re treated to the creepy house getting it’s creep on, and it does so with a breath on the back of your next, with a caress of your hair … with the smoothness of a house that has all the time in the World! A Haunting on the Hill is beautifully written and I recommend!
Security, Gina Wohlsdorf
The terrible truth about Manderley is that someone is always watching. Manderley Resort is a gleaming, new twenty-story hotel on the California coast. It’s about to open its doors, and the world – at least those with the means to afford it – will be welcomed into a palace of opulence and unparalleled security. But someone is determined that Manderley will never open. The staff has no idea that their every move is being watched, and over the next twelve hours they will be killed off, one by one.
The Manderlay Resort is large, sprawling, and equipped with a hidden elevator … and the employees have no idea that they are being hunted down – until it’s too late.
This is the first novel I’ve read where it shifts perspectives – sort of “split screen” – to give an account of the same event by different people. Sometimes I liked it – sometimes I didn’t. Each chapter of Security is titled by the security camera through which the action can be witnessed by an unnamed narrator who is watching everything unfold. As we shift from camera to camera, the book occasionally changes format: a page will be laid out in a grid-like structure, with each square providing a glimpse into the action simultaneously occurring on different cameras.
The author captures the rush and tense atmosphere of trying to prepare for a new launch of the hotel by Tessa and her team, complete with a mandatory horror-hotel hedge maze, secret passages, an excruciatingly slow glass elevator, and asking-for-it white carpeting.
The Troop, Nick Cutter
In The Troop, a group of teenage scouts are on a trip with their scoutmaster, Tim Riggs – in the Canadian wilderness no less – when they encounter a man who has an insatiable appetite. That man, who’s escaped from a research facility, will eat just about anything to satisfy his hunger. That’s pretty much all you need to know going in.
The author was so good at describing what was going on – and I listened to the audiobook narrated by Corey Brill, which made it even creepier in my opinion. Don’t try to eat while reading this – there are some scenes where I had to put my food away, or gag on it. So yeah – this book is not for the squeamish. At all!
Those are the 3 places I would think twice about going to because of books (fictional of course) – Hill House, The Manderlay Resort, and the Canadian wilderness (which is not really true – but I would side eye it now)! What do you think is the scariest setting for a book or movie?
