Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
A Literary Crypt-Keeper
Do you know of the Crypt-Keeper? He was a character developed for EC Comics's Tales from the Crypt and would later appear in the HBO television series based on the 50s comic series. Since each issue of the comic told a unique and separate story, the Crypt-Keeper, as the series's host, acted as its unifying element. He introduced each story and even appeared in a few himself.
Why bring up this bit of pop-culture trivia? Two reasons: first, we desperately wanted to link to this YouTube montage of the Crypt-Keeper; and second, because like the Crypt-Keeper, Shirley Jackson mixes her horror with a little bit of comedy for flavor in The Haunting of Hill House. The tone of each offers an excellent example of what we'd call black or gallows humor.
Oh, sure, there are differences between the two. The Crypt-Keeper is a kitschy character, and his humor relies on puns that fall under the "so bad they're good" category ("It just goes to show you: be careful what you axe for Christmas, you might just get it. Hehehehe."). In contrast, Jackson's humor is a cocktail mixed with equal parts wry and dry. Here, Dr. Montague provides the perfect example:
"Gossip says she hanged herself form the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else." (3.136)
Delicious, right? On the surface, Montague tells a horrible tale about a woman who hanged herself, but there's that dry humor underlining his words. Montague's little aside about how gossip works is the perfect little detail, and we laugh because—if you'll pardon the cliché—it's true.
In terms of horror, Tales from the Crypt leaned heavily on blood-and-guts and the monsters-jumping-out-of-closets variety of thrills. Jackson's terror comes from the violence hidden beneath the surface, the things you hear and feel but never see:
The cold troubled [Eleanor] even more than the sounds; even Theodora's warm robe was useless against the icy little curls of fingers on her back. (4.269)
It's hard to show terror in a single example—without the build-up and pay-off and such—but you can see Jackson's horrific tone at work here. The origins of the sounds remain undefined, and the icy cold is personified as the "curls of fingers on her back," though it's not specifically a ghost or anything supernatural. It's what Jackson leaves out that truly scares.
Before we leave this subject, a quick note: Jackson doesn't keep the black humor tone going throughout the whole novel. Sometimes her horror is pure and raw, without an ounce of comedy to mitigate it. At other times, the comedy comes to the forefront, while the horror bides its time, clinging silently to Hill House's dark corners. Sometimes you can scream and laugh during the exact same scene, and either response would be appropriate.
That makes Jackson just like a—you guessed it—literary Crypt-Keeper.