I did my yearly ritual of doing marathon reading of spooky books around Halloween, starting August or September and continues until I finish Carmilla. This year, I got two haunted house books in, first Matheson's Hell House, then this. I found Eleanor partly relatable - intrusive thoughts, persecution complex (and actual persecution), social awkwardness. There was some nice, unexplained creepiness that I love. Whatever force is here isn't killing everyone who goes in. It's not creating endless pandemonium. It gives the residents plenty of time and space to reenter a sense of ease. It's finding the vulnerable person and fucking with them, creating the illusion to everyone else that there's nothing supernatural going on, just one person who's solely responsible for everything weird. But the reader knows better when Eleanor comes to the same demise that others who entered have, being puzzled as to why she's doing it. But again, we're not explained what's really going on.

What I love is when I get into a book not knowing famously known things about it. I didn't realize the homoromantic undertones that it had (Hell House had gayness too, see my comments about that - bookwyrm.social/user/thomasjwebb/comment/8706939#anchor-8706939). It became apparent pretty early on that Eleanor had a thing for Theodora though I think the latter was just teasing and probably just wanted to get back with her ex-girlfriend (her roommate). Instead of an evil monster exploiting a hapless character's internalized homophobia as Belasco did in Hell House, it felt more like Theo's gayness (in both senses of the word) represented a polar opposite of the repression Eleanor felt both as a caretaker for her mom, and then as a third wheel with her sister and brother-in-law. There isn't the indication that Eleanor feared her own queerness so much as common fears about heartbreak and unease about what the two even are, given Theo's often aloof behavior.