Just by cracking open Shirley Jackson's slim book The Haunting of Hill House, I knew I was taking a risk. I'm the kind of person who, upon hearing the floorboards creak, assume it's a ghost stopping by to say hello . So reading this ghost story was a leap for me. But reading it alone in my old house? That was a mistake. I was plunged into the same paranoid ideation as the paranormal investigators in the book.