I was so pumped to begin this book.  It’s held up as a must read and I was excited but I was quickly disappointed. 

Author suffers from “breasted boobily” syndrome while writing women and uses sexual violence against them as a (ineffective) shock factor. This might be something I could overlook if the female characters were at least written well but they give me the impression that Matheson had never conversed with a real life woman and was relying solely on the (poor) representations in 70s television and media. 

Despite the fact that the background of the house suggests violence would affect men and women equally, the men are somehow spared the degradation and humiliation to which the women are submitted.

Even this could be forgiven if the book was actually scary. But it was so blatant and lacking in subtlety, the moments of haunted activity so on the nose that it wasn’t even a “this is spooky and it’s fun” feeling. 

I gave this 2 stars because the writing skill (not the plot or characterization) was good enough to keep me reading. 

The scariest thing about this book was when my sky light window decided to smash as I was reading it and I dismissed as it being my overactive imagination deciding to spice up this boring book, while I was in a dark house by myself. Yeah, it was the only inside panel so spooky.

This book is from 1970 and apparently being lesbian was the scariest thing possible. Or this was written by a man who wants to fetish woman so it's just someone being sexually oppressed. This book is compared to Shirley Jackson beautiful novel, however, they not that similar except both have a group of four people investigating ghosts. Also, lesbians. One makes me want to dig up a body, just to disrespect it, in the way the author disrespects women. This novel falls into "Men should be banned from writing horror" camp. I found the writing of the women very annoying especially as the men were not sexually haunted. 

Disability is treated interestingly here and interesting, I mean it's definitely has ableism. A slur even and disrespectful to intersex people. 

Surprise, we have a disabled villain reveal at the end that rises several questions for anyone who knows anything about the dangers of amputation in 1800s.  

We have a disabled main character, but he also a constant sceptic in an haunted house so definitely mocked by the narrative. I don't think he disabled in the film adaption but I'm gonna have to re-watch that because I rated it very high and I'm curious to remind myself why. Possible because all the sex stuff is not there, but definitely had questionable things on disability too. 

The sexual nature of this book has aged it terribly. Frankly, now it would be comical for some of the tad bits.

Like Jesus's giant penis.

. Yes, Americans are still weird about sex but gay people exist in normality now and thanks to the internet, I treat kink in horror like an annoying jump scare. I think it would be funny to adapt it now, with modern people. Maybe that's just Scary Movie 2. 

The haunting is meant to be personal but I get the women confused and had to go back to figure out who was being sexually violated this time. 

The ending is too convoluted. Frankly, you can only do a fake out once, where this book does three times and expects me to respect it. 

The setting of Christmas is incredibly random and it's never justified, or brought up until the last line of the novel. Why start this thing five days before Christmas? I mean in real life, stuff happens whenever but story tend to have reasons for being set at Christmas. 

Anyway, Maine continues to be the most cursed place in Horror. Its funny seeing it appear pre-Stephen King who has a thing against his home state. I will probably read "I am legend" but probably done on the novel front for Matheson.

Storyline was easy to follow and the horror element was written to be very gripping - however due to the age of the book - large majority of language was outdated. The women were extremely sexualised which was completed unnecessary to the story. 

I think this book is very unnerving. It’s one of my favorite haunted house novels. But, it’s not for the faint of heart. There’s sexual violence, and some sexism, homophobia, and mild racism. 

Took me a bit to think about how I feel about this one, but I have to say that I don't think I particularly liked it. 

The writing was good. I love Richard Matheson's short fiction so it wasn't a problem with the actual quality of the prose itself which has me feeling a certain kind of way about this novel. I will also say that the actual storyline itself was good as well. The twists and turns kept me on the edge of my seat. This feels like the definition of a genre. The ultimate kind of haunted house story.

The way I was on edge throughout the story was next level. Not really terrifying but I think that a lot of the tension was well done. I think that Matheson was an absolutely phenomenal writer.

I just can't jive with horror novels from this era, I think. There's too much that is bad writing to me because it fundamentally misunderstands certain people. I know that that is a controversial opinion to have: I don't like this novel because it's depiction of women is bad and it's depiction of the LGBT group is bad and it's depiction of people other than white straight men is bad, but it is what it is.

There's always a lot of handwringing and excuses for it being a different time so having an indigenous man's spirit talk like a cave man, a possible lesbian be a lesbian because she was sexually molested, and have women be generally overly emotional and easy to control (among other things like in other novels) is just something we have to forgive, just a quirk of the time, instead of being seen as a legitimate problem in the writing.

Is this the worst offender of these issues? Probably not. I'm currently reading one that's even worse, really, from a fundamental level. The problem though is that being slightly better or on the lighter end of awful for the time period isn't enough for me to forgive that form of writing. I think there's a place for making things uncomfortable for the reader, but it was lazy even then to make it uncomfortable for women by simply filling the story with violent rape of the female characters.

I can see that there's some aspects of this novel that are really good and interesting. It doesn't make up for the "problematic" nature of the novel in other ways for me.

An offensive and underwhelming read. As someone who is not a fan of Stephen King, it is fitting that his positive review rests on this book's cover. Even considering its 1971 publication, this book's reduction of its characters to unsympathetic stereotypes and general lack of plot leave the reader wishing they'd picked up something else. One star because it was a quick read that did compel me to complete the novel, though the ending was even less of an event than expected.