Forget screaming final girls and frantic escape plans. In The September House by Carissa Orlando, Margaret Hartman — Maggie — does what any sensible woman would do when her dream home starts bleeding: she scrubs the floors, makes polite conversation with the ghosts, and keeps the place running.
She’s finally got what she always wanted: stability. After a childhood shaped by instability and a marriage that feels more like quiet survival, Maggie buys a gorgeous old Victorian with cobalt paint, white trim, and the promise of permanence.
Then September Hits …
The walls drip blood. Ghosts drift through the halls. The basement locks itself tight. Maggie stays, though, because this is the house of her dreams. Her husband, Hal, however, bolts. And, honestly, who could blame him? Katherine, their daughter, comes back to investigate when she can’t get hold of her father and her mother keeps giving her the runaround, and finds a mother disturbingly unbothered by the escalating horror.
At face value, The September House may just be a haunted house novel. A good one. But I can confirm that it is far more than that … This book is a slow-burning, emotionally rich descent into the mind of a woman who has learned to live with monsters — both spectral and human … and readers will love every second of it.
You Can Normalize Anything, Even the Basement
What makes Maggie unforgettable is her chilling composure. Where most people would scream, she quietly adapts. She sets house rules for the ghosts. She makes tea while the walls ooze. She hires Fredricka — a housekeeper with her own eerie vibe — and keeps her head down while the house howls.
When Hal disappears, Maggie barely flinches. It’s Katherine who rattles the cage, poking at secrets Maggie has long buried beneath routine and denial. Through Katherine’s return and unraveling investigation, we’re forced to confront just how deep Maggie’s trauma runs, and how much she’s internalized over the years.
The September House doesn’t yell. It doesn’t need to. The horror is quiet, personal, and razor-sharp. Maggie has lived through enough that the supernatural is almost soothing. At least ghosts follow rules.
This House Doesn’t Want You to Leave. And You Might Not Want To.
The house itself is a living thing, a vessel for pain, violence, and everything Maggie doesn’t say out loud. It’s not just haunted; it’s orchestrated. Every September, the same cycle repeats. There’s a reason that the basement stays locked and why the ghosts return year after year.
As Katherine pushes deeper into the house’s history, the story of Theodore Vale — a former resident whose legacy is soaked in blood — comes into focus. But it’s not just his story that matters. It’s Maggie’s. Her steady decline, her refusal to leave, her unsettling calm … well, it’s all part of the atmosphere that makes this novel so haunting (and memorable). The September House isn’t a novel about escape, but rather about endurance. About surviving things so long they stop scaring you. And about how one woman’s silence can echo louder than any ghost.
The September House is a devastating read, but perfect for those who crave slow, intelligent horror steeped in emotional dread. Maggie isn’t trying to be brave. She’s just trying to keep the house clean and the world quiet.
And that’s what makes her terrifying.
About the Author
Carissa Orlando has a doctorate in clinical-community psychology and specializes in work with children and adolescents. In her “day job,” Carissa works to improve the quality of and access to mental health care for children and their families. Prior to her career in psychology, Carissa studied creative writing in college and has written creatively in some form since she was a child. It was only a matter of time before Carissa, an avid horror fan for much of her life, merged her understanding of the human psyche and deep love for storytelling into a piece of fiction.
