I’ve never read anything by ARS, being as how she’s primarily an author of southern women’s fiction, which is not my cup of tea, but The House Next Door has received accolades for being a superb horror novel. Originally published in 1978, it positively reeks of that decade, and the social mores of a particular class of well-heeled white Southerner. I didn’t like any of the characters, even the ones I think were meant to be sympathetic, and the “haunting” was unintentionally (I think) satirical in its manifestations. It was interesting to read from a sort of sociological standpoint rather than as a story that was meant to instill fear in the reader—or at least this reader.