There are two truths that you can only learn by growing up in a haunted house. The first is that you may never realize how paranormal your world is until you leave it, as I learned at age 16, when my family moved out of the house in which I grew up. in addition to being impractical and a little noisy, it’s a sad affair.

There are few TV shows And horror movies which articulate this experience better than The Haunting of Hill House. Hill House knows that ghosts are much more than spooky devices and pale faces in reflected surfaces. These are people who have been left behind, whose names are unknown and whose stories are untold. Ghosts are death, grief, and time – all of which constitute a haunting.

The Haunting of Hill House is struck by death. He is also obsessed with grief, as shown by the Crain children, who represent the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Grief is dictated by time and how it changes people after a traumatic event.

This is why Mike Flanagan This melancholy masterpiece is one of the saddest horror stories of all time. I rewatch it every Halloween, and every time I do, I’m reminded of the things that Hill House got better than any of its ghoulish counterparts.

The History of My Home and the History of Hill House

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The Haunting of Hill House is a good ghost story. It’s scary, almost impossible, and just fantastic enough to be cinematic. My own ghost stories are usually served alongside traditionally spookier entrees at Halloween, because they aren’t always as scary.

These are stories of mild paranoia, of questioning and accepting strange domestic phenomena. These are the stories of this strange woman who stood at the end of the upstairs hallway, watching my mother put on her makeup. From the invisible figure walking around my room to the night I asked him to “Please be quiet.” It’s the story of our ghost in the playroom, which I haven’t figured out how to talk about yet.

The biggest lie ever told in horror films was that ghosts were creators of terror. Hill House uses the spirits to its advantage, planting loud, classic scares and scares. But above all, he knows that nothing is more tragic than a ghost, nor the people who experience them.

The Crain siblings react differently to the legendary Hill House, growing up in varying degrees of denial, repression, and doubt. But they are all extremely hurt, not because of their fear, but because of what their fear has done to them. They are their own worst enemies and are only truly haunted by their own past, not the ghosts who lived there.

“No one could see me.”

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“I was right there… no one could see me,” young Nell Crain tells her family when she seemingly disappears during a violent storm in Episode 6. Haunted by the Horrible “Lady with the Neck bent” all her life, Nell’s tragic story unfolds to conclude with the revelation that She is his childhood ghost, living out his own past after jumping from the library stairs.

It’s one of the most tragic twists in horror and one in which you’d be hard-pressed to find an emotional match. There are few ghosts in the genre that exist outside of their initial haunting, as they are usually banished in an action-packed ritual, or defeated by a religious deus ex machina.

But not at Hill House. There is no solution to life after Nell’s death. She is condemned to exist forever in this house with the others. Our only respite from her fate and the grueling weight of loss is the final episode in which she says goodbye to her siblings, telling them that she loved them and that nothing else mattered – a dignity rarely afforded to other minds on screen.

“If nothing else, be kind.”

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In Hill House, the living and the dead are equally tragic. Life and the afterlife are on equal footing when it comes to pain and misery, and no one goes off lightly. The remaining Crain siblings have a chance to start over at the end, yes, but it comes at a cost.

Hardly a moment goes by in the series without the viewer being confronted with the torment of the Crains in one timeline or another. Whether it’s Luke’s hollow despair in his drug-addicted adult years or his wide-eyed innocence as a child, we know he’s doomed to be afraid. There is also Theo’s confusing “gift” which causes his confusion in his youth and his emotional torture as an adult.

Nell’s trembling fear and sleep paralysis give her no chance to breathe; Shirley’s anger and responsibility weigh on her, as does Steven’s seething desperation to deny, deny, deny.

And then there are the ghosts. There are so many that it has since become obsessive to spot one of the many hidden figures of Mike Flanagan scattered throughout the series. They are so common that it is easy to forget how dire this reality is. How many spirits can linger in a house before it becomes a cemetery? Where else can they go? Is there a place for us has go?

“Whoever walked there walked alone. »

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The sadness of Hill House becomes even more evident as the Crain children grow up, when their fear is overtaken by other problems and the ghosts themselves no longer seem as problematic (at least for a while). That’s because Flanagan knows something most other horror stories forget: ghosts are only scary for a moment—it’s what they represent that’s far more unshakable.

When I think about my own ghost stories and those I’ve shared with others in my home, I realize that no one has ever mentioned being afraid. In fact, we weren’t really able to recognize this “haunting” until after we left, because it was only then that we realized it was real.

Even when I was home alone, I always felt like there was someone near me. And it was only after moving into a decidedly “entityless” house that I fully understood that the atmosphere I had experienced, while not particularly frightening, was not normal.

In the final episode of Hill House, Steven, shaken by years of rationalism and reluctance, finally realizes that he has actually witnessed a ghost. It was harmless: a man repairing a clock, seen only in passing. It was only when his father Hugh revealed that he had never hired anyone to repair the clock that Steven understood what he had experienced and, more importantly, that it was true.

That’s what Hill House is all about. It’s not about scares or one-take episodes, or even some of the most perfect casting ever screened. It’s about leaving people behind. It’s about letting go of the things that haunt you.

Hill House is the one horror show I watch every year because, ultimately, it’s the only horror show that understands – as Steven says – that most of the time, a ghost is a wish. If you’re looking for more spooky content, check out our filler Terror-Tober plan or consult our lists of best zombie movies never done and the best horror games.