The Haunting of Hill House

TOADS are bringing The Haunting of Hill House to St John the Evangelist Church Hall on Thursday 11 November. It's a stage adaptation of Shirley Jackson's classic ghost story, the one that's spent decades as a touchstone for gothic horror and psychological suspense.

If you've never come across the original, it's not a ghost story in the traditional sense. It's less about rattling chains and more about a house that seems to have a mind of its own, and the people who get caught up in it. The story follows a small group who travel to Hill House, a remote and imposing place with a dark history, and find themselves slowly unravelled by what they find inside. It's as much about the fragility of the mind as it is about anything supernatural, and that's usually where the real tension lies.

TOADS are an amateur dramatics group, so this is a local production rather than a touring professional one. They're taking Jackson's novel and bringing it to the stage, which means the atmosphere of the house has to be built with sets and lighting rather than just described on the page. It's the kind of thing that works well in a smaller, community setting, where the distance between the stage and the audience is short enough to feel the mood shift.

The show runs on Thursday 11 November at St John the Evangelist Church Hall, on Abbeydale Road South, S17 3LE, in the south of Sheffield. If you're coming from the city centre, it's a bit of a trek down towards the Abbeydale Road end of things, so keep that in mind when you're planning your evening.