How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
She sat back against the car seat and closed her eyes. Hill House, [Eleanor] thought, you're as hard to get into as heaven. (1.111)
Before she even crosses the threshold, Eleanor compares Hill House to something supernatural. She also compares it to a place you need to die to get into. Hmm.
Quote #2
Around them the house steadied and located them, above them the hills slept watchfully, small eddies of air and sound and movement stirred and waited and whispered, and the center of consciousness was somehow the small space where they stood, four separated people, and looked trustingly at one another. (3.16)
Writers personify animals, trees, and even rain clouds all the time. Somehow, it's extra creepy when they personify houses. Somehow, it's extra, extra creepy when those houses come to life to find people stomping through them like parasites.
Quote #3
"I assure you," the doctor said, "that Hill House will be quiet tonight. There is a pattern to these things, as though psychic phenomena were subject to laws of a very particular sort." (3.75)
We get the first hint that the psychic phenomena in the book might not be all that supernatural. The pattern Dr. Montague speaks of might all be in the mind of the observer. On the other hand, maybe the afterlife has some strict on-the-job guidelines.