Hell House by Richard Matheson is a story that takes four very different people into a house that has a life of it's own. After sitting empty and boarded up by the owners for thirty years, Rolf Rudolph Deutsch wants a small group of hand selected experts from several unique fields of study to go into the house and stay for one week. With the promise of great renumeration, all he asks in return is that they answer definitively the one question he has: Is there life after death? Close to death himself, Deutsch needs to know. In fact, he is consumed with the need to have that one question answered. In return for his money, he wants to know definitively if anything lives in the Belasco house in Maine dubbed Hell House.
Dr. Barrett is the first one summoned and he is unable to turn down the offer of $100,000. He agrees to go to Hell House with a couple of stipulations: Deutsch is to finance the completion of a machine Dr. Barrett created and calls a Reversor and his wife is to join him. Deutsch happily agrees and tells the doctor that he will be joined by a spiritualist and a medium - Benjamin Fischer, the lone survivor of the last encounter with Hell House.