Beware the House that Feels

The Impact of Sentient House Hauntings on Literary Families

Abstract

This essay examines Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Shirley Jackson’s The
Haunting of Hill House, and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, texts featuring sentient
house hauntings. The author focuses on how the family unit in each text undergoes drastic
destruction, arguing that the breakdown of the family is the true source of horror in such
hauntings where a traditional ghost is not present.