As she arrives at the house and meets the caretakers, Mr. Luke Sanderson, the young man who stands to inherit Hill House from his relatives, also pledges his time for the summer-Montague’s lease states that a member of the family who owns Hill House must be present during the experiment to keep an eye on what the renters are doing to the house, as past tenants have had troubles up at the manor.Įleanor Vance steals the car she co-owns with her sister Carrie and her brother-in-law and drives over a hundred miles to Hill House, excited to finally have an adventure of her own. The only two people to accept his invitation are Eleanor Vance, a childhood victim of poltergeist activity who has spent most of her adult life caring for her ailing mother, who has very recently passed away and Theodora, a bohemian psychic with clairvoyant capabilities who lives with a roommate in a large city.

Sometimes the novels chosen are new, often they are from the backlist and occasionally re-issued from way back.Anthropologist and parapsychologist Doctor John Montague, hoping to legitimize the field of parapsychology through groundbreaking new research, invites a carefully-selected group of psychically sensitive individuals from around the country to spend part of the summer at Hill House-a manor in the northeastern United States with a reputation for being deeply haunted. But to keep ourselves on our toes, we have a rule that author gender is alternated, girl-boy-girl-boy, and the continents always rotated (with occasional glitches).

Too good to be true? The catch is that the bookshop gets to choose what the book group reads. Each month the discussion is lively and unpretentious, with naughty snacks and plenty to drink. You don’t even have to have had read the book. The title to be read and discussed is sign-posted and on sale for the whole of the previous month (with a discount for those who make it known they intend to come) and everybody is welcome, whether first-timer, part-timer or regular-timer. With rare exceptions such as bank holidays, the book group meets on the first Wednesday of every month at 7.30pm. Now past its tenth year the Crow Book Group has grown into a regular social event.

The haunting of hill house book buy