The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Hendrix, Grady. How to Sell a Haunted House. Berkley, January 17, 2023. Kindle.

In the horror novel How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix, from the moment Louise Joyner returned to her parents’ house after their deaths, she thought something was amiss. The television turned on by itself, dolls rearranged themselves, and the entrance of the attic was boarded shut. Louise tried to assure herself the strange things that she was noticing were the doings of her estranged brother, Mark, trying to play tricks on her. When Mark arrived to save her life one night when their mother’s hand puppet, Pupkin, tried to kill Louise, she could no longer deny there was something wrong with the house.

Louise had been shocked and angered when her brother called her almost two days after the fact to tell her that their parents had been killed in a car crash. Louise believed Mark had become a spoiled, lazy adult because their parents never told him no. Louise returned to Charleston where she grew up and her parents had lived. Once she arrived, she and Mark fought over the details of the funeral and the details of the will. Louise was angry to learn her mother, who had died after her father, left Mark everything except her artwork. Louise was determined to delay Mark selling the house as long as possible by dawdling over collecting the art, until a piece of art, the squirrels from her mother’s squirrel nativity, attacked her. Louise informed her brother that he could have everything and she was going back to San Francisco where she lived with her daughter, Poppy.

Mark stopped Louise from leaving, claiming that he needed help with the paperwork associated with the estate. Mercy, their cousin and a real estate agent, convinced Louise to stay by telling Louise she was going to help sell the house. She had forced Mark to split the proceeds fifty-fifty with Louise. Mercy reminded Louise how much that money could benefit Poppy.

With Poppy’s future in mind, Louise was determined to stay and sell the house. Mercy walked through it to see how much she thought she could get for the property, but she informed Louise and Mark she would not list the house for them. She told them their house was haunted and that they needed to cleanse it before they could sell it.

Louise and Mark believe it is their parents’ spirits haunting the house and decide to re-enact the family’s tradition of eating pizza and Chinese food as a way to say goodbye to their parents. During the meal, Mark reminds Louise that she tried to kill him when he was five by coaxing him to walk out onto a frozen pond until the ice gave way under him. He remembered watching her walk away from him as the water pulled him under. Louise has a different memory that she buried in her subconscious. She remembers her mother’s puppet, Pupkin, telling her to take Mark out onto the ice. Pupkin had threatened to hurt Louise if she did not do as he asked. Louise realized afterward that what she had done was wrong. She buried Pupkin, but she found him later on her parents’ bed. She reasoned that either she had not buried him at all or that her mother had not cared that Louise was upset with Pupkin and dug him back up without asking why Louise had tried to dispose of him. Louise decided at that point to block all fantasy and all her beliefs that Pupkin had ever been alive out of her life.

In the present, Louise decided to spend the night in her childhood home to prove to Mark that it was not haunted. Louise was awakened when Pupkin attacked and tried to kill her. Mark had parked his truck around the corner from the house. So, he heard Louise’s screams and came to her rescue. He shot Pupkin multiple times with a handgun.

Mark took Louise to a restaurant for breakfast where he told her about his experience with Pupkin. Mark had joined a radical puppet collective and introduced the leader to Pupkin. The leader became obsessed with Pupkin and made Pupkin masks for the other three members of the collective. When the members put on these masks and assumed the role of Pupkin, they ran amok, trashing houses and killing pets. Mark realized the Pupkin masks were causing them to do unlawful things. He put an end to the craze by burning the masks. Mark did not warn the other members of the collective that he was setting the masks in the basement on fire, and the fire had spread to the rest of the house before he had time to warn them. Mark ran away and was still unaware if he was responsible for killing his friends. Louise admitted to Mark that she remembered trying to kill him and that it was Pupkin who told her to entice Mark onto the ice.

After the siblings admitted to each other that they were aware Pupkin was the source of their problems, they decided to return to the house and burn the puppet. They did not believe he served as much of a threat since Mark had already wounded him so badly with a gun. When they encountered Pupkin, Pupkin convinced Mark that he would hurt Louise if Mark did not put Pupkin on his arm. Once Mark was wearing Pupkin, Pupkin took control of Mark. Pupkin did try to kill Louise by hitting her with a hammer. In the garage, Louise fought with Mark to get the puppet off his arm. She finally used a circular saw to cut off Mark’s arm to break Pupkin’s control of him. After both Mark and Louise were treated at the hospital, Louise burned what was left of Pupkin on the grill.

Louise returned home to discover that her daughter, Poppy, had made a hand puppet, identical to Pupkin, with her other grandmother’s help. The spirit of the old Pupkin had transferred to the new Pupkin and taken charge of Poppy. Louise returned to Charleston with Poppy where her aunt attempted to banish the spirit from the puppet. They learned the puppet was not possessed by a demon. Instead, it was by the ghost of Freddie, Louise’s mother’s brother. Freddie died when he was five. Everyone had been told that Freddie stepped on a rusty nail, got lockjaw, and died.

Louise went to her elderly great aunt who was in the hospital and demanded that that she tell her how Freddie really died. The aunt admitted that Freddie had drowned because Nancy, Louise’s mother, did not watch him like she was supposed to do. She also told Louise that Freddie’s body was not buried in the family cemetery plot. It was in the backyard of Louise and Mark’s house.

Back at the house, Louise and Mark fought Pupkin as well as a golem of all the puppets that their mother made to locate Freddie’s grave. Once they exhumed the grave, Louise convinced Freddie that he needed to go home with the rest of his family. When Louise visited the wreck of their house the following day, the bad vibes the house put off were gone. Mark renovated the house, and they were able to sell it for more than they imagined was possible.