Incidents Around the House Summary: Other Mommy Horror
TL;DR: Incidents Around the House: A Child, a Closet, and a Question
Something lives in eight-year-old Bela’s bedroom closet, and it has a name she gave it herself: Other Mommy.
It makes faces in the dark, plays games, and asks the same question again and again — whether it can go into her heart.
Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around the House tells the story entirely through Bela’s voice, so readers experience the haunting the way a child would.
The novel moves from a suburban Michigan home into a panicked road trip across the state, as Bela’s parents try to protect her from something that keeps following.
- The premise: An entity called Other Mommy emerges from Bela’s closet and repeatedly asks, “Can I go into your heart?” Entering would let it reincarnate in her body while displacing Bela to the dark place it comes from.
- The escalation: The entity appears in bathrooms, dining rooms, cars, and other people’s houses — proving it is attached to Bela, not to a building.
- The family: Mother Ursula and father Ross fight the threat while hiding marital fractures, an affair, and a paternity secret.
- The failure of help: Doctors, priests, a psychic circle, guard dogs, and a paid investigator all fail.
- The core themes: childhood innocence treated as bait, domestic secrecy, and adults who cannot shield a child.
- The tone: Claustrophobic, anxious, and emotionally raw, told in the first person by an eight-year-old.
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Who Will Enjoy This Book
- Readers of supernatural and psychological horror built on quiet dread rather than gore.
- Fans of haunted-house stories that stay inside ordinary domestic spaces.
- Readers drawn to child narrators whose limited view shapes the entire narrative.
- Those who enjoy horror about family secrets as much as about monsters.
Incidents Around the House Summary
Spoiler warning: the following section describes the plot in full, including the ending.
Bela lives in the town of Chaps, Michigan, with her mother Ursula, called Mommy, and Ross, called Daddo. In her closet lives Other Mommy, who begins as a strange playmate and gradually becomes something that steps out during daylight hours.
Other Mommy explains her offer plainly. If Bela lets her into her heart, the entity can reincarnate and walk in the physical world, while Bela takes her place in the dark place she came from. Bela refuses, again and again.
The entity grows bolder. She appears above ceiling cracks, waits in the dark dining room, crouches in the bathroom, and manifests on the jungle gym at Chaps Park, where Bela falls backward down a yellow slide and gets hurt. At a pediatric visit, Bela tells Dr. Smith she was frightened by Other Mommy.
During a party at the house, a guest named Marsha Dickman screams at a tall, dark, blue-tinged figure standing against the living room wall. Bela identifies it immediately. That night Ross speaks into the empty closet and tells whatever is there to leave.
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Ursula tries to end what she assumes is a phase by emptying Bela’s closet and bathroom onto the floor. Later that night she sees Other Mommy in Bela’s bedroom, her face distorted, and grabs her daughter and runs out of the house.
The family begins moving from place to place. Friends Amanda and Dan host them for a single night before strange noises and Ursula’s panic drive the family out.
They stay next with Ursula’s mother, Grandma Ruth, who accepts that the danger is real and pushes them toward supernatural help. She connects them with Lois Anthony, a self-described Sensitive.
Lois assembles her occult circle — Kyle, Mary, Duane, Ashley of the Moon, and others — for a candle-and-crystal ritual meant to order Other Mommy away from Bela. Kyle breaks the circle, claims the entity spoke to him through an old telephone, and whispers to Bela that Other Mommy “gave you a present.”
Minutes later, Ursula learns that her secret lover, Frank Doherty, has been found dead inside his bedroom closet. In Josh Malerman’s novel, the entity’s gifts are always cruel.
The family moves into Frank’s house, where Ross discovers the affair and the arguments turn furious. After a night sleeping in a car at a gas station, they try a Catholic church, and the priests redirect them to the police.
In the city of Goblin, Grandma Ruth’s wealthy friend Evelyn takes them into a large mansion. Ross and Ursula drink to blunt their fear, and Bela walks to the bathroom, where she finds Other Mommy looming inside the bathtub. Evelyn sees the entity in the hallway and throws the family out.
The realization settles in: the haunting is not tied to a house. As Ursula puts it, they are the haunted ones. The family returns to Chaps.
Back home, Ross and Ursula fortify the house with cameras, motion sensors, and alarms, and bring in two Cane Corso guard dogs named Kami and Kamael.
Ross also hires Brian, a muscular paranormal investigator. Brian does not intend to help; he wants to see an entity for himself. When Other Mommy manifests in the dining room with her mouth stretching to the carpet and a roaring wind filling the room, he touches her face, shouts that he has seen one, and leaves.
Ross and Ursula decide to fight with kitchen knives, cutting their hair and preparing to attack the closet. Other Mommy shifts location, and the attempt collapses into terror.
Lois returns with a new theory. She claims the entity is drawn to Bela’s innocence and argues that the innocence must be stripped away to make Bela less appealing.
The family drives more than a hundred miles to Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan. Around a campfire on the beach, Ursula confesses everything to Bela: her earlier marriage to Douglas Cain, her affairs during it, a pregnancy that began during an affair with Ross, and a paternity test showing Douglas Cain is Bela’s biological father. Ross chose to raise her as his own.
Bela runs into the freezing lake water. Her parents pull her back, and Bela pretends Other Mommy is gone so they will take her home.
At the house, Grandma Ruth sits up with Bela while they work on a Michigan jigsaw puzzle. Bela falls asleep and wakes to Other Mommy wearing Grandma Ruth’s form.
Bela hides in the foyer closet and finds Grandma Ruth’s body stored inside, hands folded. Upstairs, Other Mommy attacks Ursula and Ross, and Bela listens to heavy thuds and screaming until the house goes silent.
Bela walks upstairs and finds Mommy and Daddo dead with their faces in the bedroom carpet. She climbs onto her bed, and Other Mommy steps out of the closet one last time to ask her question.
Broken and wanting a friend, Bela answers yes. Other Mommy takes her body, her eyes aligning as she settles into it, while Bela’s consciousness is displaced into the dark void. In the final pages, Other Mommy lives in Bela’s body, wiping her nose, and Bela remains in the dark, hoping someone else might one day let her carnate.
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Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Bela | Eight-year-old narrator whose closet is occupied by Other Mommy. |
| Mommy (Ursula) | Bela’s mother, who carries an affair and a paternity secret. |
| Daddo (Ross) | Bela’s father figure, who raises her as his own child. |
| Other Mommy | Shape-shifting entity asking to enter Bela’s heart. |
| Grandma Ruth | Ursula’s mother, who takes the family in and seeks outside help. |
| Lois Anthony | Self-described Sensitive who leads a ritual and later proposes stripping Bela’s innocence. |
| Frank Doherty | Ursula’s lover, found dead inside his closet. |
| Douglas Cain | Ursula’s ex-husband and Bela’s biological father. |
| Kelvin | High-school babysitter whose form and voice the entity later mimics. |
| Deb | Bela’s friend at Chaps Park. |
| Amanda & Dan | Friends who host the family for one night. |
| Evelyn | Grandma Ruth’s wealthy friend in Goblin. |
| Brian | Hired paranormal investigator who leaves after seeing the entity. |
| Dr. Smith | Pediatrician who examines Bela after her playground fall. |
Books Like Incidents Around the House
- Bird Box by Josh Malerman — a survival horror novel in which unseen threats and parental responsibility drive the tension, sharing the author’s focus on dread over explanation.
- Coraline by Neil Gaiman — features an “Other Mother” who wants a child for herself and mimics a family to get her.
- A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay — a possession narrative that fractures a suburban family and keeps the supernatural ambiguous.
- The Shining by Stephen King — a haunted setting that feeds on parental weakness and targets a child with unusual perception.
- My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix — a demonic presence invades young lives while friendships and families struggle to respond.
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson — a domestic haunting where the house and the family psyche are inseparable.
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson — a childlike narrator recounts family catastrophe from inside a sealed domestic world.
Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Horror; supernatural horror, psychological horror, domestic gothic.
- Core Narrative Tropes: Haunted house, doppelgänger entity, naive child narrator, fractured family, failed exorcism, corrupted innocence.
- Tone & Atmosphere: Claustrophobic, dread-filled, uncanny, intimate, anxious, and heartbreaking.
- Primary Conflict: Bela and her parents trying to escape or defeat Other Mommy while the marriage breaks apart.
- Pacing Style: Fast, episodic chapters that escalate from domestic subtlety to a road-trip flight across Michigan.
- ISBN: 978-0593723128 (ISBN-10: 0593723120).
- Pages: 384.
- Book Structure: 51 chapters plus dedication, author’s note, acknowledgments, and about the author. Entirely first-person from Bela’s perspective, left-justified narration, indented dialogue without quotation marks.
- Author Background: Josh Malerman is a Michigan-based novelist and musician, best known for Bird Box.
