For over twenty years, Belasco House has stood empty. Regarded as the Mount Everest of haunted houses, its shadowed walls have witnessed scenes of unimaginable horror and depravity. All previous attempts to probe its mysteries have ended in murder, suicide or insanity. But now, a new investigation has been launched, bringing four strangers to Belasco House in search of the ultimate secrets of life and death. A wealthy publisher, brooding over his impending death, has paid a physicist and two mediums to establish the facts of life after death once and for all. For one night, they will investigate the Belasco House and learn exactly why the townsfolk refer to it as the Hell House.

Few novels have impacted modern day authors of the horror genre more than Hell House did upon its publication in 1971. The novel quickly became the gold standard to which a new uprising of horror authors aspired in the 1970s and 1980s. Not your mother’s haunted house tale, Hell House signaled a new generation of horror in which sex, violence and depravity were no longer off limits. Stephen King called it, “the scariest haunted house novel ever written,” while Peter Straub hailed it as “one of the absolute best contemporary horror novels,” and Rod Serling named it “unquestionably the best” of Matheson’s work.

The author adapted his novel into a screenplay for the 1973 film, The Legend of Hell House, starring Roddy McDowall and Pamela Franklin.

With Matheson’s exploration of the darkest corners of the human psyche and his ability to evoke a sense of impending doom, Hell House is still standing tall as one of the most terrifying and influential horror classics of its kind.