Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

It’s no surprise that swamps can be horrific (Disembodied, Moonbog). But when flora go feral, not even gardens (Garden of Evil, The Plants), ponds (Gwen, in Green), or plantations (Cherron) are safe. Credit 78

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Ah, the 1970s: High inflation! Rising unemployment! Oil crisis! Recession! School desegregation! White flight! High crime! Son of Sam! It was the decade when everything went to hell—and explains why the haunted-house novel reached critical mass. In The Sentinel (1974), a model moves into a brownstone…from hell. In The Shining (1977), an economically strapped family takes a last-chance job in a hotel…from hell. In The House Next Door (1978), nouveau-riche suburbanites build the contemporary home…from hell. But it all started with Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings (1973), a chilling tale about a family who escapes the city to move into a summer rental…from hell.

Marasco was a high school English teacher, so his illusions about human nature had long ago been stomped to death. He originally wrote Burnt Offerings as a screenplay, and first intended it to be a black comedy, but as Marasco said in an interview: “It just came out black.” Reviewers panned or patronized it, but the book caught on, sparking the wave of haunted-house novels later in the decade.

If social and political anxiety spawns zombies, then economic anxiety births haunted houses. Marasco created the now-common real estate nightmare scenario: a cash-strapped family (or individual) gets a deal on a place above their socioeconomic station. Hoping to start fresh, they go all-in, quickly realizing that their attempt to buy a better life at a discount is the worst decision they ever made. Now all they can do is run, screaming for their lives, abandoning their investment.

If there’s any doubt that Burnt Offerings is all about the square footage, the first chapter is a long lament by Marian Rolfe, a housewife trapped in her family’s stifling Queens apartment, desperate to escape the city. Her husband, Ben, agrees to look at a summer rental, which turns out to be a decrepit mansion at a bargain price. He takes it despite his better judgment. Deals like that don’t come along every day.

Once they move into the old Allardyce place, the house reshapes the couple into their own worst nightmares. Marian cleans obsessively, hypnotized by the expensive uncared-for antiques. Dear, aging Aunt Elizabeth is sharing their vacation, and although she’s a real live wire at first, she becomes frailer as the story progresses. Ben transforms into the kind of father he never wanted to be, practically raping his wife and nearly drowning his son while bullying him into “being a man.” Their behavior gets worse, but every day the house looks better and better.

What Marian doesn’t realize is that she’s not the owner of this house—she’s its slave. Summer is spent on her knees, waxing floors, dusting frames, repairing damage, letting her family die without batting an eye. To her, cleaning is an act of ownership, but the cruel truth is that the Allardyces had money and she doesn’t and nothing will change that. She can live in their house, she can wax their floors, but she’ll never belong.

Before Marasco, Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson had written haunted-house books—The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and Hell House (1971) are both genre classics, but neither had a thing to say about money. They were about psychic investigators going to abandoned mansions to figure out how they got so spooky. Marasco and his now-forgotten best seller focused on the real issue for most people with a haunted house: “Can I get my investment back?”

Marasco was the first American writer to bring anxieties about class, mortgages, and equity to the forefront of the haunted-house novel. Both Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror (1979) and Stephen King’s The Shining (1977) follow his formula: cash-strapped family gets deal on new place and comes to regret it. When you’re stuck with a haunted house, it doesn’t matter how much you put into repairing the boiler or fixing the pool. At the end of the day, all you can do is run.

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There Goes the Neighborhood

The ’70s were a time of high interest rates and growing inflation. So, for Americans who’d finally scraped together enough to buy a house, the worst thing imaginable was an icy blast of wind and a satanic voice telling them to “Get out!” Families were moving from the cities to the suburbs and from the suburbs to the sticks, and new homes were popping up everywhere. A brand-new house was more than a place to hang your crucifix; it symbolized a new start, a new life, a new family.