The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

Shirley Jackson crafts the definitive architectural horror by rendering Hill House not merely haunted, but actively malevolent and psychologically predatory. Eleanor Vance's desperate longing for kinship and escape makes her tragically susceptible to the mansion's disorienting angles, locked doors and suffocating history. The genuine terror resides in Eleanor's psychological disintegration as the house gradually absorbs her fragile sense of self.