Haunted House Stories in Literature and Film

Haunted house tales, stories about places inhabited by ghosts, entities and energies, offer a way to explore the forgotten, the repressed and the unresolved. In this talk and discussion, we’ll consider stories such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe and “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson. We’ll also examine some classic films of the genre including, “The Shining,” “The Amityville Horror,” Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” and “Curse of the Cat People.” What does it mean to say that a place or person is haunted? What does our fascination with hauntings say about us?