Haunts of the Wealthy: The House as Temple in Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings

Abstract

Abstract The Allardyce mansion in Burnt Offerings is arguably one of the most unusual homes in supernatural literature. The American novelist and playwright Robert Marasco (1936–1998) published his bestselling novel in 1973. The following year it was translated into Spanish and French and in 1976 was adapted into a successful Hollywood film of the same title (dir. Dan Curtis). The novel is regularly listed on websites and in books as among the best haunted house novels ever written, particularly thanks to Stephen King’s glowing 1988 review. But it has been largely ignored by critics, who see it mainly as portraying a typical haunted house. Instead, this article argues that critics, though noting the novel’s theme of materialism, have missed its religious underpinnings, which present the “Mother” figure as a supernatural force requiring human sacrifice—the titular burnt offerings—to maintain the estate