The September House

As the debut novel of Carissa Orlando, The September House (2023) is a work of psychological horror that follows the experiences of Margaret and Hal as they deal with the myriad real-life and psychological repercussions of buying a haunted Victorian house. In addition to its depiction of mental health conditions, The September House engages with themes related to addiction, domestic violence, survival and resilience, and what horror reveals about societal fears and anxieties.

Carissa Orlando has a Ph.D. in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina, where she is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor. In addition to teaching, Orlando has provided extensive assessments and therapy services to young people and their families. Her clinical and research interests include early intervention and prevention in self-injurious and suicidal behaviors in youth as well as school-based mental health services. Although she is dedicated to her career in psychology, Orlando is also a self-proclaimed horror buff with a particular interest in the subgenre of psychological horror. In The September House, she combines her deep appreciation for horror with her knowledge of psychology in order to address a series of themes related to her work as a clinical psychologist.

This guide refers to the 2023 paperback edition by Penguin Random House.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide discuss addiction, domestic violence, self-harm, suicide, and torture.

Plot Summary

The novel begins as married couple Margaret and Hal purchase a stately old Victorian house. Their daughter Katherine has recently left for college, and after many years of renting, they are finally able to buy their first home. Both Margaret and Hal had difficult childhoods, so for them, the house represents much-desired stability. Unfortunately, all is not as it seems in their new abode. Each September, the house begins to moan, scream, and ooze blood from its walls. Several “pranksters”—long-dead ghosts—begin to appear first to Margaret and then to Hal. These pranksters range from malevolent to helpful, and Margaret does her best to establish a series of “rules” that will allow her and Hal to cohabit with the ghosts. They soon learn that their home has a troubled history; a series of unexplained deaths happened there, and Margaret intuits that several still-unsolved murders happened there as well. Eventually, the eerie incidents become too overwhelming for Hal, who leaves.

Margaret does her best to take his disappearance in stride, but her daughter, Katherine, is increasingly upset. She and Hal have never had a good relationship, but she finds his unwillingness to answer her calls (or even return them) alarming, and she buys a ticket home. Margaret does not know how to explain the screaming, ghosts, and bloody walls to her daughter, and she frets over the prospect of Katherine’s visit. Gradually, it is revealed that Hal has had extensive struggles with addiction and that he was an abusive father and partner. He reserved all physical violence for Margaret, but he did subject Katherine to both emotional and verbal abuse. For this reason, Katherine has stayed away ever since she left for college and has never seen their new house.

When Katherine arrives and begins to investigate her father’s disappearance, Margaret does her best to hide the house’s secrets from Katherine. Margaret knows that she must keep Master Vale, the worst of the ghosts, hidden in the basement. She also makes an effort to hide the prankster children (Master Vale’s victims) from her daughter. The one benevolent ghost (Fredricka, the housekeeper) agrees of her own volition not to appear to Katherine, but she continues to rearrange furniture and move objects around in the house.

Meanwhile, Katherine enlists the help of the local police to search for her father and learns that after leaving, he checked into a nearby motel. They discover that Hal never actually checked out. His room still contains all of his belongings as well as a half-eaten sandwich and several partially empty liquor bottles. Margaret begins to hear strange things and is sure that whenever she leaves the house, its pranksters send her messages. She also begins to dose her daughter with sleeping pills so that Katherine is not awakened during the night by ghostly moans and screams.

The narrative gradually reveals that Margaret’s many years of abuse at the hands of Hal have taken their toll on her mental health and that she is experiencing delusions. After speaking with a therapist, Katherine subjects her mother to a series of questions meant to determine her mental fitness. When her mother is not able to correctly identify the day of the week or month, Katherine knows that something is seriously amiss. The police learn that Hal was last seen in a taxicab; however, the cab had not taken him out of town, but back to the house. His body is discovered in the basement, and the police realize that Margaret killed Hal. After murdering her husband, Margeret buried the memory deep in her subconscious. Just as the police are leading Margaret away, the house begins to wreak havoc on the team of officers, killing all but one of them in a gruesome manner. The pranksters then appear and help Margaret and Katherine to vanquish Master Vale, their murderer and longtime tormenter. As the novel ends, Katherine apologizes to her mother for trying to have her sent to a psychiatric facility and for not believing her explanation about the house and its secrets.