7/25/26
The fiftieth episode of KEENEVERSATIONS is available on Patreon. In this star-studded fiftieth episode, I am joined by Clay McLeod Chapman, Nicky Gonzalez, John Langan, CJ Leede, and Tanya Pell for a look back at the history of Horror fiction, where things stand currently, and what is to come.
Available exclusively on Patreon for the first week, then available to all on Spotify and Brian Keene dot com. next week.
~
Women In Horror Year: Day 91
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
Seventeen-year-old Natalie Waite longs to escape home for college. Her father is a domineering and egotistical writer who keeps a tight rein on Natalie and her long-suffering mother. When Natalie finally does get away, however, college life doesn’t bring the happiness she expected. Little by little, Natalie is no longer certain of anything—even where reality ends and her dark imaginings begin. Chilling and suspenseful, Hangsaman is loosely based on the real-life disappearance of a Bennington College sophomore in 1946.
At some point this year, I will of course get to The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived In The Castle, but —in my view, at least — those three always seem to overshadow this sublime psychological gothic. Hangsaman (spelling is correct and based on an old folk ballad) is Jackson’s second published novel, and its primary sources of inspiration are her own life and the 1946 disappearance of Paula Jean Welden, a college student who vanished while hiking the Long Trail in Vermont, and was later added to the list of mysterious disappearances in the ‘Bennington Triangle’ (which researchers and investigators equate to a sort of land-centered Bermuda Triangle in New England).
Hangsaman ultimately offers a heartbreaking, if ambiguous, reason for the disappearance of protagonist Natalie Waite, but the journey getting there is fraught with horrors both real and imagined — from the gut-wrenching act of sexual assault at the hands of an adult early on (juxtaposed with the fact that right before it occurs, Natalie has a moment of insight in which she sees the adults around her for their morally worse, and goes off into the woods with the only one she thinks is different), to the desperation she puts into building an imaginary world for herself to escape into. The naivety of a young adult stepping out alone into the real world is a terrifying thing here, and Natalie’s increasing psychological unraveling is all the more poignant since some of it occurs as a result of her own individual choices (such as her friendship with the trickster student Tony).
This is a slow burn, but an utterly gripping one, and the sense of dread Jackson builds with each subsequent chapter is ultimately devastating (particularly for this parent who has a kid about to head off to a liberal arts college just like the novel’s protagonist). Hangsaman is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook from Penguin.
