Five of My Favorite Novels with Haunted Houses

I’ve been obsessed with haunted houses ever since I can remember, and even before my first trip to Disney World at age eight when I insisted we visit the Haunted Mansion attraction at least twice each day. Just like in the ghost books I read, I knew that none of spooky characters or eerie effects were real even though I wished they were—all from the safety of my reading chair or the confines of the “Doom Buggy” of the ride.  

There is just something about an old house that is inherently spooky. Maybe it’s the knowledge of the number of people who’ve lived—and possibly died—in the house since it was built. That alone is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. In a good way.

Judging from the countless books, movies, and small screen offerings currently available, I’m not alone. Apparently there is a science behind this desire to be scared. As human beings, we thrive on the dopamine hit following an adrenaline rush. And there is no better emotion than fear to induce this reaction.

To the long-suffering members of my family who remember being dragged through the Haunted Mansion ride countless times, it was no surprise that when I decided to write a book series, each book would be centered around my favorite subject: haunted houses. The second book in my latest series, The House on Prytania, is set appropriately in the equally haunted city of New Orleans. It includes an old house, a secret staircase, an unwilling psychic, an unsolved murder and, naturally, ghosts: both the nice ones and a very angry one. Boo!

Here are five of my favorite novels featuring haunted houses:

1) The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons 

In this gripping departure from Siddons’s milieu of Southern Women’s fiction, a newly built house next door to an Atlanta couple eerily becomes the book’s evil antagonist as it systematically diminishes the inherent goodness of each owner in a very Stephen King-ish way.

2) The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

This first installment in Rice’s captivating Mayfair Witches series is fittingly set around the faded grandeur of an old New Orleans mansion. Although the story takes us to San Francisco and around the world and through different periods in time, the Mayfair family’s home—with its sinister atmosphere and hints of demonic possession—casts its eerie glow over each riveting page.

3) The Shining by Stephen King

No list of haunted houses would be complete without a mention of the grand maestro of horror or this book. It was my first Stephen King novel, and even though I couldn’t sleep without the lights on for almost a year, it wasn’t my last. This book checks all the boxes for an excellent horror novel—isolated location, unsettling old hotel, a host of unhappy spirits, and possession to name just a few. There’s so much here to be creeped out about that if one is brave enough it should be read a second time to fully appreciate King’s masterful prose.

4) The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

Before the movie of the same name, there was the book.  Like most horror novels, the book is always better than the movie.  Perhaps because we must rely on our imaginations that are usually way better than Hollywood’s ability to show us what’s scary.  Whether the book is real or fiction, the story is absolutely horrifying—mostly because it’s based on the true story of the slaughter of an entire family by one of its own.  Was there actually a scary pig with red eyes looking out of the window or blood dripping down the walls?  I don’t know.  But after reading this book I was so disturbed that I slept under my brother’s bed for months.

5) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”  Everyone remembers the first line from this classic that hasn’t been out of print since it was first published in 1938.  The importance of the gothic house at the center of the novel is emphasized in that first sentence because from page one we know the name of the house, but we never know the name of the story’s narrator.  This book is subtly spooky, as all old houses are, with the goosebumps caused by gaslighting and the smothering presence of the title’s deceased namesake.  This is the quintessential gothic novel, and one that started an entire genre. 

About The House on Prytania by Karen White:

Nola Trenholm may not be psychic herself, but she’s spent enough time around people who are to know when ghosts are present, and there are definitely a few lingering spirits in her recently purchased Creole cottage in New Orleans. Something, or someone, is keeping them tethered to this world. And not all of them are benign. 

But with the sudden return of Sunny Ryan, Beau Ryan’s long-lost sister, Nola has plenty to distract her from her ghostly housemates. Especially when the tempting—yet firmly unavailable—Beau, wanting to mete out justice to those he blames for Sunny’s kidnapping, asks Nola for a favor that threatens to derail her hard-won recovery and send her hurtling backward. He asks her to welcome Michael Hebert back into her life, even though Michael is the reason for Nola’s bruised heart. Beau is convinced that Michael’s powerful family was behind Sunny’s disappearance and that Michael is the key to getting information the police won’t be able to ignore—if Nola is willing to risk everything for which she’s worked so hard. 

Torn between helping Beau and protecting herself, Nola doesn’t realize until it’s almost too late why the ghosts are haunting her house—a startling revelation that will throw her and Beau together to fight a common enemy. Assuming Nola can get Beau to listen to what the spirits are trying to tell him, because ignoring them could prove to be a fatal mistake…