Parts of the story are indeed terrifying. And, in the words of Mark’s friend Clark, “Every puppeteer knows that when they wear a puppet it’s live, like a grenade with the pin pulled.” The puppet wears you,” Mark says in a flashback that he narrates about his college days. The horror is demonic and paranormal, but also psychological. Things are just a bit “off” before they ratchet up and the wheels fall off the bus entirely. The attic hatch is boarded up, but for what reason? And her mother’s dolls seem to have become avid viewers of the Home Shopping Network.

Her father’s cane, which he needed to walk, was left behind, as was a hammer, which lay on the floor beside her dad’s easy chair. Louise realizes that her parents seem to have been in a rush when they left the house on the night of their accident. Soon after Louise arrives, strange things start happening. Her mother had been an obsessive lifetime collector and crafter of dolls and puppets. Returning home to Charleston, however, is fraught with unpleasantness, as she must deal not only with her irresponsible younger brother Mark to sell their parents’ house but also sort through her mother’s extensive (yes… and creepy!) doll and puppet collection. She leaves her young daughter Poppy in San Francisco with Poppy’s father to attend her parents’ funeral and make arrangements for their estate. Hendrix is the bestselling author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and The Final Girl Support Group, and his homage to the “cursed doll” trope here is reminiscent of his homage to the “final girl” trope in his last novel.Įarly in How to Sell a Haunted House, single mother Louise Joyner learns that her parents have died in a car accident not far from her childhood home just outside of Charleston, South Carolina.

This freaky terrain is what fascinates Grady Hendrix in his new novel, How to Sell a Haunted House.

There is just something deeply unsettling about a realistic, human-like object that comes close to but is not quite human. Being weirded out by dolls has something to do with how humans perceive faces, and how our brains distinguish a someone from a something. Why? Because dolls are creepy! Just ask folks with pediophobia (fear of dolls or inanimate objects that look real) or pupaphobia (fear of puppets and marionettes). Let’s face it: creepy dolls are a trope of the horror genre. Sinister dolls had appeared in movies and television shows long before Chucky arrived on the scene, including in 1978’s “Magic” with Anthony Hopkins and in episodes of “The Twilight Zone” and “Fantasy Island.” More recently, Slappy, the ventriloquist dummy mascot of the Goosebumps franchise, led to a few sleepless nights for my youngest daughter - and, as a result, for me, too. Even before I saw the now-iconic film “Child’s Play” in 1988, I wasn’t fond of dolls or puppets.

How to sell a haunted house hendrix