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Books like Hell House

Richard Matheson · 1971 · US · horror
★ 3.67 Goodreads · 67,575 ratings

A dying millionaire pays a physicist, his wife and two mediums to spend a week in the Belasco House in Maine, the most haunted building on earth, to prove whether anything survives death; the last group to try it ended in murder and madness.

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12 books for readers of Hell House

Kill Creek

Scott Thomas · 2017 · US 98% match ★ 3.75 Goodreads · 24,546 ratings
shares: mansion, haunting presence, dread, haunted house · cold, easy read

Four famous horror writers are invited to spend Halloween night in the Finch House, a notorious haunted house in Kansas, for a live web stream.

The Shining

Stephen King · 1977 · US 98% match ★ 4.29 Goodreads · 1,780,439 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in The Shining
shares: haunting presence, claustrophobic, dread, haunted house · earnest, intimate

A family moves into a haunted hotel for the winter, and the building's malevolence feeds on a father's alcoholism and a son's psychic gift.

Ghost Story

Peter Straub · 1979 · US 96% match ★ 3.91 Goodreads · 85,159 ratings
shares: haunting presence, dread, ghost · cold, earnest

In the small town of Milburn, New York, four elderly men who call themselves the Chowder Society meet to tell ghost stories, and after the strange death of a fifth member, a winter of nightmares tells them that a secret from their youth has come back.

Rosemary's Baby

Ira Levin · 1967 · US 95% match ★ 4.06 Goodreads · 169,485 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Rosemary's Baby
shares: occult, dread · easy read, intimate

Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband Guy, a struggling actor, move into the Bramford, an old Manhattan apartment building with a dark history, and when Rosemary becomes pregnant, the elderly neighbours who have befriended them take an unusually close interest in the baby.

Burnt Offerings

Robert Marasco · 1973 · US 95% match ★ 3.78 Goodreads · 10,529 ratings
shares: mansion, claustrophobic, haunted house · intimate, easy read

Ben and Marian Rolfe and their son rent a grand old country house for the summer at an absurdly low price, on one condition: that they look after the owners' elderly mother, who never leaves her room.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Grady Hendrix · 2025 · US 95% match ★ 3.88 Goodreads · 158,096 ratings
shares: occult, 1970s, dread · easy read, earnest

In the summer of 1970, fifteen-year-old Fern arrives pregnant and alone at Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, a home where families hide unwed girls until their babies can be given away, and a librarian's book on witchcraft puts power in the girls' hands for the first time.

Heart-Shaped Box

Joe Hill · 2007 · US 94% match ★ 3.83 Goodreads · 161,304 ratings
shares: dread, ghost, brutal · easy read, earnest

Ageing rock star Judas Coyne collects grim curiosities, so when an online auction offers a dead man's suit along with his ghost, he buys it, and the ghost that arrives in a heart-shaped box turns out to have a personal reason for coming.

The Graveyard Apartment

Mariko Koike · 1986 · Japan 94% match ★ 3.26 Goodreads · 5,193 ratings
shares: haunting presence, claustrophobic, haunted house · earnest, intimate

Teppei and Misao Kano, their young daughter and their dog move into a brand-new apartment building in Tokyo that looks out over a cemetery, and as one neighbour after another moves out, they find that something lives in the basement.

Slade House

David Mitchell · 2015 · UK 93% match ★ 3.81 Goodreads · 71,521 ratings
shares: haunting presence, claustrophobic, haunted house · easy read, cold

Every nine years, from 1979 to 2015, someone slips through a small iron door in a London alley into Slade House, a grand house that should not be there, starting with a boy and his mother, and each visitor is welcomed by someone who seems to know exactly what they want.

The Good House

Tananarive Due · 2003 · US 93% match ★ 4.03 Goodreads · 11,794 ratings
shares: mansion, occult, haunted house · earnest, easy read

Two years after her teenage son died at her late grandmother's house in Sacajawea, Washington, Angela Toussaint goes back to it, and learns why the women in her family were once feared there.

The Hellbound Heart

Clive Barker · 1986 · UK 92% match ★ 4.08 Goodreads · 74,301 ratings
shares: occult, sexual · cold, intimate

Frank Cotton, a man who has tried every pleasure, solves an antique puzzle box that promises more and summons the beings called Cenobites, and later, when his brother Rory and Rory's wife Julia move into the house, Julia finds that Frank is not entirely gone.

The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson · 1959 · US 92% match ★ 3.81 Goodreads · 432,407 ratings
shares: haunting presence, dread, haunted house · intimate, easy read

A scholar of the supernatural invites three guests to spend a summer at Hill House, a notoriously haunted mansion, and the house begins to work on Eleanor, the loneliest of them.