Strange Ghosts and Unusual Hauntings

We all know that when ghosts start possessing people or objects, things in a haunted house can get pretty weird pretty quickly. But I don’t think it gets weirder, or creepier, than puppets. Ventriloquist dummies, marionettes, or just your generally creepy hand puppet in the case of Grady Hendrix’s new novel, How to Sell a Haunted House. Here I was thinking I was getting a story about a haunted house, estranged siblings, and deep, dark family secrets. And I did! But I also got Pupkin, the nightmare-inducing, scariest killer puppet in the known world. Louise and Mark Joyner have barely spoken in years. But when their parents die in a tragic accident, the siblings are forced to work together to clear out and sell their childhood home. Mark and Louise both have very different memories of a childhood marred by violence and family secrets, and the longer they spend in the house, the more they begin to realize how strange and dark the truth may be.

When it comes to unique and strange twists on the haunted house trope, be still my black little heart because Mexican Gothic still takes the cake. Because High Place, a crumbling, old mansion that now sits almost forgotten amid high mountains and jagged ravines, isn’t haunted by ghosts. Not in the traditional sense. Noemí’s cousin Catalina marries, falling out of touch with her family until a frantic, barely coherent letter arrives at Noemí’s home, begging for help. Catalina claims that her new husband, Virgil, is trying to poison her and that High Place itself, full of death and rot, is trying to do her harm. Noemí makes the journey into the mountains to discover the truth, but what she finds behind the aging veneer of High Place is much darker than she could have imagined.

So in the strictest terms, the house in Tell Me I’m Worthless is a more familiar take on the haunted house. It has ghosts. It has bad memories lurking within its walls. But the reason I wanted to include it on this list was because the house may be haunted, but the real specter that stalks its halls isn’t some lingering spirit of the once living. It’s hate. Part of what makes the house in Tell Me I’m Worthless so frightening is that there’s no mistreated ghost to sympathize with, no rhyme or reason to the haunting that makes it understandable. It’s just unbridled hatred. When Alice and her two friends entered that house — on the night that only two of them came out again — it was the house’s hate, and what it made them do, that drove the two survivors apart. Ever since, Alice’s whole life has been haunted. She does everything she can to keep the memories and the ghosts at bay, until her ex-friend Ila turns up and asks Alice to go back into the House with her. It’s the only way they’ll ever really know what happened on the night that sent their lives careening in such tragically different directions. It’s the only chance they have to try and save the friend they lost.

So I know that In the Dream House is a memoir, not a novel. Nor is it exclusively horror, though it certainly leans in that direction. But it is, without doubt, a haunted house story, and one of the most interesting takes on a haunting that I’ve ever read. Using the titular “Dream House” as a structure, Machado navigates the memories contained within its walls through a number of narrative elements and classic fiction tropes. Many of which will be familiar to horror readers! It’s probably one of the most unusual and captivating reading experiences I’ve ever had, watching Machado explore the Dream House’s uniquely haunted corridors, and the way in which, when our memories become ghosts, our own bodies can become haunted houses. Like much of Machado’s work, it’s difficult to fully define what makes In the Dream House so compelling — you really just have to experience this particular “haunting” for yourself.