I’m a big fan of extended metaphor in horror, so when I got the chance to grab an early review copy of The Unhaunting by award winning author Michaiah Johnson, I jumped on it.
I was right to be excited. The Unhaunting book is a book about a house, but it is also about forces rooted in historical injustices. Even when it’s invisible or accidental on the part of individual actors, those forces can still benefit one group at the expense of another. The Unhaunting succeeds in being a perfectly crafted, nuanced metaphor ripe for interpretation.
It goes like this: Shantell moves in with her childhood best friend Avery Abernathy when he inherits an idyllic house in rural Mississippi. As with much of the South, the house comes with serious baggage, though not in the way Shantell, or the readers, likely expect. It is fundamentally un-haunted (hence the title), supernaturally improving the lives of its inhabitants without them even noticing.
The House
The house has the ability to prevent anything bad from happening to its inhabitants. It does this by taking any pain that could or has befallen the family, and kicking it down the road to the nearby town, which is primarily black. Shantell notices that every single tree on their land is living and strong, but once they reach the property line, all the trees are dead. Later, Shantell and Avery’s brother Tobias discover record of an unlikely but healthy Abernathy birth shortly before a plague assails the children of the town. Tobias breaks his leg in a bid to distract the house while they search for more information, and for a moment, it seems to work. But then Tobias’ leg is healed in an instant, and the house breaks the spine of an elderly black local as recompense, killing him.
This mirrors American slavery: white Americans literally and materially profiting off the suffering of black Americans. But the metaphor extends to modern injustice, as the younger generation know nothing of the house’s power except its effects. They benefit from decades of privilege, aided by the blood, sweat and tears of people they have never heard of. Avery and Tobias have no reason to believe they benefit from others suffering, and yet they do.
The Residents
The house has power because Adele Abernathy, a genteel Southern lady running from the ruin of the Confederacy, wished for a place where nothing bad would ever happen to her family. Adele believed herself to be moral, frequently claiming that despite her father’s participation in slavery, she herself had never owned a slave in her adult life, and had never raised a hand to one. This is later shown to be untrue, but the myth of Adele’s innocence is key to the dissonance between the destruction she and her family will bring and their veneer of respectability. I believe this to be an essential part of the metaphor.
Avery and Shantell are a great example of how friendship is not allyship. Avery cares for Shantell, but he infantilizes her. He uses her legitimately debilitating anxiety as an excuse to take away her autonomy, believing that he can provide for her and keep her safe. He lies to her, as well as himself.
After years of close, but platonic, friendship, Shantell suddenly finds herself attracted to Avery while they are in the house. It is pleasant for both parties, and could provide security to Shantell, but the truth of the matter is that house makes her love him romantically because it suits Avery. It is unclear whether Avery had feelings for Shantell before the house, but it is established he likes to be liked, seeks approval and attention from any and everyone. The house manipulates Shantell’s feelings because, on some level, Avery wants it.
The ghosts that do appear don’t belong to the house; they come from its residents, pulled from their consciousness, and eventually their memory, by a presence that is ravenous for suffering after centuries able to do nothing but foster prosperity. The house, which makes itself known to the reader by scheming in second person throughout the narrative, represents many aspects of the cultural institution of whiteness: white tears, white guilt, the white washing of American history, and the white literary imagination as it is defined by Toni Morrison.
Playing in the Dark
America’s foundation was built on the backs of enslaved black Americans. Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination is a seminal text on how this truth reveals itself in the American literary canon. I’ve referenced it before in my first article for Malevolent Dark, “White Zombie and Black Horror.”
Black characters in American classics are used as vehicles to explore things that upset and disturb white writers and their audiences, creating an association between Blackness and darkness, the macabre, and the romance of suffering. This is at the heart of the house’s motivation. The house is a child that has tired of the Abernathys’ pristine bed of snow, and yearns to stain it red with blood. It is voracious in its desire to FEEL the suffering it has caused. It wants to keep Shantell, to consume her and be consumed by her, because she has suffered like no Abernathy has suffered since the house was built. Shantell lost her father to Afghanistan, her brother to gang violence, and her mother to suicide, and while the house never outright mentions her race, the narrative makes it clear that her Blackness and its connotations are part of the appeal.
A Gamble
In the end, despite knowing the cost and how the house continues to manipulate him, Avery can’t make himself leave. Whether the cause is supernatural, or a natural defect of Avery, he is unable to give up the privileges of the Abernathy house. Shantell can tell he feels guilty about his choice, but when she begs him to leave with her, he says no. Avery is so used to things going his way, that he ultimately feels entitled to the house and its service. He doesn’t want to risk living in a world without a safety net. He wants Shantell to stay with him, to be protected at his side, even though he knows the house has manipulated her. When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like a bad gamble.