In Freud’s argument, therefore, the experience of the uncanny arises either when primitive animistic beliefs, previously surmounted, seem once more to be confirmed (Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ is a case in point) or when infantile complexes, formerly repressed, are revived (a theory which brings The Haunting of Hill House into sharp focus). Yet he noted that heimlich also means ‘concealed’, ‘private’, ‘secret’, as the home is an area withdrawn from the eyes of strangers. Observing that heimlich (familiar, homely) is the opposite of unheimlich, Freud recognises the temptation to equate the uncanny with fear of the unknown. Freud, 2 however, developed a different hypothesis, describing the experience of the ‘uncanny’ ( unheimlich) as that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long-familiar. Lovecraft 1 the answer lay in the human fear of the unknown. Why, one may ask, should a reader seek out the experience of being terrified, particularly by horror fiction, which adds abhorrence, loathing and physical repulsion to the purer emotions of terror evoked by the supernatural tale? For H. One of the most enduring mysteries of horror fiction consists in its exploitation of the attractions of fear.
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