There’s something about Halloween that always makes me think of haunted houses. Maybe it’s the fog rolling in late at night or how my curtains move when I swear there’s no wind. After reading We Used to Live Here this month, I fell down the rabbit hole (or crawlspace) of haunted house stories — those deliciously eerie tales where the walls remember, the floors sigh, and the real horror isn’t always a ghost, but what the people inside bring with them.
So for this week, I’ve rounded up five stories featuring haunted homes — some literally haunted, others haunted by memory, guilt, or love gone wrong. They’ll give you chills, sure, but they’ll also make you reflect on how spaces hold energy and how sometimes, the scariest thing about a house is what it chooses to keep.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Four strangers gather at Hill House, a mansion with a sinister reputation, to assist Dr. Montague in studying supernatural activity. Among them is Eleanor, a shy and lonely woman who begins to feel an uncanny connection to the house — one that grows stronger and more dangerous with every passing night. The house itself seems to breathe and shift, feeding off the guests’ emotions until it becomes impossible to tell what’s real and what’s imagined.
This is my go-to haunted house story, and for good reason. I’d watched every adaptation — the 1963 film, the Netflix series, even that 1999 version — before learning about the book and finally reading it, and let me tell you, the book is on another level. Jackson’s genius lies in subtlety. There are no jump scares, no flickering lights — just creeping dread and psychological decay. Eleanor’s unraveling feels so intimate, so human, that you can’t help but wonder if Hill House is haunted at all, or if it simply reflects her deepest fears back at her. Either way, by the end, you realize Hill House doesn’t just contain ghosts — it is one.
We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
Eve and her fiancée buy a gorgeous old house and begin to settle in, but their domestic bliss is shattered when a family appears at their door claiming they used to live there. At first, it seems like a harmless misunderstanding, but then the house begins to change — literally shifting its layout, rooms appearing and disappearing, time bending in on itself. Soon, Eve is trapped in a nightmare where the walls move and reality itself seems to be crumbling.
This was one of my October reads, and I can’t stop thinking about it. The story is confusing at first — deliberately so — but once you surrender to the weirdness, it becomes haunting in the best way. It’s not just a ghost story; it’s a study of guilt and grief, of how the past seeps into the present like water through cracks in the foundation. The house feels alive, but what’s truly terrifying is what it forces its inhabitants to confront. It reminded me that sometimes the scariest hauntings aren’t supernatural at all — they’re emotional, buried deep, and waiting for the right creak in the floor to come back.
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
Maggie Holt grew up in a supposedly haunted Victorian estate — one so terrifying her family fled after only three weeks. Her father later wrote a bestselling “nonfiction” book about it called House of Horrors, turning their story into pop culture legend. Now an adult, Maggie inherits the same house and returns to renovate and sell it, determined to prove the whole thing was made up. But as she peels back the wallpaper and memories, she starts to realize her father might not have been lying after all.
This book is so much fun. It’s part horror, part mystery, and part HGTV episode gone very, very wrong. I loved how Riley Sager alternates between excerpts from the father’s book and Maggie’s present-day narration — it blurs the line between fact and fiction beautifully. There are genuine chills here, but also an emotional undercurrent about family and truth that keeps you hooked. I kept changing my mind about what was real until the very end. And honestly, if my dad had written a book about my haunted childhood home, I wouldn’t even visit it again, let alone move in. Maggie’s braver than I’ll ever be.
The Grip of It by Jac Jemc
Julie and James move into a new house hoping for a fresh start, but almost immediately, strange things begin to happen. The walls hum, stains appear and spread, and both of them begin experiencing strange physical symptoms they can’t explain. Their neighbors are unsettlingly quiet, and the house itself seems to shift, its architecture impossible to map. As the couple’s paranoia grows, their relationship starts to crumble, and the haunting becomes personal.
This book creeped me out in the most understated way. It’s like a slow-motion nightmare — the kind where everything feels off but you can’t pinpoint why. Jemc’s writing mirrors the disorientation of the story, so you never quite know what’s real or imagined. The horror here isn’t just in the house but in how fear erodes trust. It’s domestic dread at its finest — a story about how easy it is for love to decay when you’re living in a place that seems to want to consume you. If you’ve ever moved into a new house and thought, “What was that noise?”, prepare to question everything.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Set in 1950s Mexico, the novel follows Noemí Taboada, a glamorous and headstrong socialite, who travels to a remote countryside mansion to check on her newlywed cousin. Her cousin’s letters speak of ghosts and madness, but when Noemí arrives, she discovers that the family mansion is far stranger than she imagined. The air feels toxic, the walls seem to breathe, and the enigmatic family that inhabits it harbors monstrous secrets.
If The Haunting of Hill House is a whisper in the dark, Mexican Gothic is a full-on fever dream. It’s decadent, grotesque, and utterly addictive. I loved how Noemí isn’t your typical horror heroine — she’s stylish, stubborn, and unafraid to call out the creepy rich people who clearly need therapy. The atmosphere is thick with decay and beauty, and by the end, I felt like I needed to air out my room. Silvia Moreno-Garcia gives us a haunted house that’s both terrifying and seductive, where the horror is not just supernatural but colonial, familial, and deeply personal. It’s one of those books that crawls under your skin and stays there.
So if you’re in the mood to celebrate spooky season without actually summoning ghosts, these haunted homes are the perfect escape — or entrapment, depending on how you look at it. Haunted houses make for great stories, but terrible investments.
Do you have a favorite haunted house book that kept you up at night? I’d love to hear about it — email me your picks at ihorton@whatsupmag.com. I promise I’ll read them… with the lights on. 😅
