Rating: 
Summary: Slow moving-not at all as scary as the original black/white
Review: I am a big fan of the original black/white film. After seeing the remake, I decided to read the book to find out which was closest to the book. I was extremely disappointed. The book was slow moving and the scary segments were few and far between. Nell was unrealistically naive, for a woman who supposedly took care of her mother for so long. It was painfully long. I know the book was written in the 50's, but there is no comparison to the black/white film, which far surpasses even the remake with all its special effects! This book was not only a waste of money, but also a huge waste of time.
Rating: 
Summary: Stays with you.
Review: I read this book when I was about 12 years old, and, although it gave me nightmares, that didn't stop me from rereading it in my teens. I read many books, and often forget the plots within weeks. Not with this one. Even 25 years after my last reading, I still think about it on occasion, especially on a windy night when the house makes all those creaky sounds...
Rating: 
Summary: scariest book I've ever read
Review: Like many other reviewers here, I read The Haunting of Hill House years ago and it haunted me for weeks. I still reread it occasionally and it STILL SCARES ME! What I love best about this book is that so much goes unsaid. We are given all the necessary information to piece the plot together but it is the unanswered questions that keep the book alive in our minds after we finish it. If I were not such a scaredy-cat, this book would make me want to read more about haunted houses (cold spots, poltergeists, etc.) The movie, of course, was just silly. Part of the problem was that it tried to answer all the unanswered questions in Jackson's book (and answered them very very badly. The idea of Eleanor being the great great grand-daughter or whatever....oh never mind. I can't go on, it was just too silly.)
Rating:
Summary: An old classic
Review: I like to experience the chilling sensations of psychic horror, whatever the source. The fix can come from thrillers like HANNIBAL, dark war novels like THE TRIUMPH AND THE GLORY, popular Stephen King horror epics like DESPERATION, or any of a number of movies. Shirley Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE is mesmerizing, scarier than all get out, and well worth reading again if you've read it before, or venturing into it for the first time. Keep the LIGHTS ON though.
Rating:
Summary: BETTER THAN THE MOVIE!
Review: this book is much better than the new movie version. The movie was dull and pedictable. i expected much more. While the book was very scary and interesting, they should have followed the book when making the movie..
Rating: 
Summary: It wasn't all it was cracked up to be
Review: People kept telling me that it was like 10 time scarier than the movie. Well, that was entirely inaccurate. The movie was much better. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have even bought the book. It wasn't even scary. I was severly disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: If you see the movie, don't read the book. I read this book in two days because it was very suspenseful, but nothing like the movie. The ending, I felt, was an easy way to finish a novel that had so much potential. This started out to be one of the scariest books I had ever read then turned into a story not about a haunted house by a woman with an overactive imagination. See the movie if you want a scare. However, I was disappointed by the ending of the movie too.
Rating:
Summary: It was ok
Review: A quick read, not really FANTASTIC, as some people said. It was definetely different from the movie (the 1999 one), and like the movie, the book didn't scare me one bit. It was interesting but not scary. It's real easy to fall asleep after reading this.
Rating:
Summary: one of the scariest novels ever written
Review: i read this book a while ago and eargerly awaited the movie--there was so much potential in the characters and the ominous and unexplained happenings in the house. The film missed that subtlty (something the blair witch project really tapped in to) This is one of the most tighlty written intriguing pieces of horror i think i have ever read--one gets completely sucked into the world of the charcters and of the evil and diseased hill house. Please please please read this book if you saw the movie and thought that it was cheesy, Shirley Jackson's work is anything but!!
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the read
Review: After seeing the new released 1999 movie The Haunting I decided to buy the book. The book was nothing like the movie at all. Totally very boring, large vocabulary of words and totally meaningless to people who want to be entertained with what they read instead of trying to figure out what is written. Halfway through the book I decided to just finish it to see how it ended and the book had nothing to do with how the movie was written. So just skip this book and see the movie. The special effects in the movie outweigh the words on paper.
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