By Randi Bjornstad

If this description doesn’t get you interested in seeing The Haunting of Hill House at The Very Little Theatre during the run-up to Halloween 2025, then you probably might as well stay home and just wait to hand out the lollipops and candy bars to the little ghosts and goblins waiting to ring your doorbell on Oct. 31.

Here’s how Penguin Classics, the original publisher of the novel by Shirley Jackson, introduced the book, The Haunting of Hill House:

The greatest haunted house story ever written—the inspiration for the hit Netflix horror series! and One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years, and describes the plot this way:

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

Jackson’s novel was adapted for the stage by F. Andrew Leslie. The VLT production is directed by Kari Boldon Welch, and the cast includes Zoë Holbo as Eleanor Vance, Zayne Clayton as Theodora, Russell Dyball (Dr. Montague), Ryan Leffingwell (Luke Sanderson. Mari Kenney (Mrs. Montague), Rohan Myers (Arthur Parker), and Davida Bloom (Mrs. Dudley).

For those who’d like a little more encouragement, here’s how several well-known reviewers — themselves purveyors of the horror genre — responded to Jackson’s story:

  • “[One of] the only two great novels of the supernatural in the last hundred years.” —Stephen King
  • “The scariest book I’ve ever read.” — Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
  • “The books that have profoundly scared me … are few …. But Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House beat them all … It scared me as a teenager and it haunts me still.”— Neil Gaiman, author of Norse Mythology

The Haunting of Hill House at VLT

When: Evenings at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 10-11, 16-18, 24-25; and matinees at 2 p.m. on Oct. 19 and 26

Where: The Very Little Theatre, 2350 Hilyard St., Eugene

Tickets: $26, except $21 for the Thursday show on Oct. 16, available online at thevlt.com or by calling the box office at 541-344-7751