Need a good haunted house book for Halloween that will genuinely send shivers down your spine? Johnny Compton’s debut horror novel, The Spite House, which came out last year, features a desperate dad who moves with his two daughters into a strangely built house haunted by a handful of ghosts and generations of spite.
When Eunice Houghton offers Eric Ross a sweet six-figure deal to stay in the allegedly haunted Spite House of Degener, Texas, and record its supernatural happenings, Eric is in no position to refuse. He’s been on the run for months with his two daughters: seven-year-old Stacy, who doesn’t quite know what they’re running from, and eighteen-year-old Dess, who is as eager as Eric to protect her from that knowledge. Eric has been scraping by with under-the-table gigs so that no one can track them—a precarious position for anyone, but all the more so for a Black family traveling through the South. Eunice’s proposal could be his one shot at stability and building a new future for his girls. That is, if he can survive his stay in the bizarre cliff-side house that casts its shadow over the abandoned orphanage and town below. Eunice certainly hasn’t told him everything about the secrets the house holds or why none of the professional ghost hunters she’s hired have lasted for long in there. Within his first couple of nights in the house, it becomes clear to Eric that among the house’s many hauntings is a spirit with something disturbing in common with his own family. But this only provides more motivation to finish the job and get to the bottom of the Spite House’s mysteries.
The haunting in this book is built into the architecture of the house itself—in several layers. First, there is the land the house stands on, which was the site of a horrific act of violence and betrayal that shames the town. Then there’s the reason the house was built: It was born out of a property dispute and constructed tall and narrow to fit between the property line and the cliff’s edge, with a precarious hallway added on to the outside of an upper floor in a half-hearted attempt to accommodate the first family it housed. Lastly, there are the people who have lived within it. The house became suffused with the emotions that filled it; the primary emotion, of course, being the same one that motivated its construction—spite. Spiteful ghosts linger in its bedrooms and hallways, but the house itself also brings out the spiteful side of those who live there, until they, too, give themselves over to the house and become part of its haunting. The emotion of spite is explored in more depth than I’ve ever given thought to before. What is spite? What can it motivate us to do? Is spite always a bad thing?
The Spite House also adds its own twist to classic Gothic tropes. Those who stay in the house often encounter shadowy apparitions that look suspiciously like themselves—ghostly doppelgängers haunting the halls. What happens if you escape the house but leave your doppelgänger behind? Then there are the creepy children—nothing is spookier than the ghost of a child, or kids who seem strangely malevolent. The taunting laughter of children echoes along the walls at night, and Eric struggles to find answers about what exactly happened to the niece and nephew of the house’s original owner who once lived there. Of course, there’s also the orphanage at the bottom of the hill, which is just as haunted as the house built to spite it. Even Eric’s beloved daughter Stacy has her eerie moments…
If you’re intrigued by the idea of a house being haunted by one particular emotion, definitely pick up The Spite House. You can find it on shelves now at your favorite local retailer or buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you’ve already read it, let me know your thoughts in the comments. And feel free to recommend other haunted house books for the season!