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Image courtesy of Everett Collection
Published Jan 31, 2026, 1:30 PM EST
Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.
While The Haunting of Hill House’s opening line might be lifted directly from the Shirley Jackson novel that inspired the show, the rest of the Netflix series succeeds precisely because the adaptation changes its source material. 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House was the first of writer/director Mike Flanagan’s five horror Netflix shows.
Many still consider The Haunting of Hill House to be the best of Flanagan’s offerings for the streaming service, as the show managed to blend genuinely chilling scares with moving character drama without sacrificing one or the other. An iconic horror TV show, The Haunting of Hill House showed its potential from the pilot’s opening moments.
The show begins with one of its main characters, Stephen, reading the opening lines of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House verbatim. This is ironic, since The Haunting of Hill House’s earlier screen adaptation, 1963’s The Haunting, was much truer to the novel’s original story than Flanagan’s generation-spanning tale of a dysfunctional family.
The Haunting of Hill House’s Opening Line Comes Directly From Shirley Jackson’s Novel
In-universe, the line is used to establish that Michiel Huisman’s antihero, Steven Crain, is an author. In the show, he’s reading from his own book. The Crain family lived in an infamous, supposedly haunted mansion during Steven’s childhood, and fled the house after a series of supernatural experiences. Steven’s mother, Olivia, stayed behind, dying in the house that night.
As adults, Steven and his siblings struggle to get along after he writes a book about their experiences. Although Steven takes advantage of the creepy occurrences that the family faced, he doesn’t believe in the supernatural himself and mostly sees the book as a way to make money. The show’s pilot episode challenges his cynical outlook.
As the show continues, The Haunting of Hill House broadens its scope to focus on the rest of the Crain siblings, Shirley, Theo, Luke, and Nell, as well as their parents, Olivia and Hugh. This is a massive change from The Haunting of Hill House’s novel story and its earlier adaptations, as Jackson’s book focuses on entirely different characters.
The Haunting of Hill House Is Netflix’s Best Horror Novel Adaptation Ever
In Jackson’s original novel, Shirley, Theo, Luke, and Nell are all participants in a study of the supernatural, along with Dr. John Montague. Hugh Crain is the long-dead owner of the supposedly haunted mansion where the study takes place, and almost the entire novel is written from the insular perspective of Nell.
As Nell is a classic unreliable narrator, her unique outlook is central to the book’s success. Certain plot details are exaggerated or elided depending on her viewpoint, meaning readers can never tell exactly what is real and what is imagined. In contrast, Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House immediately clarifies that its ghosts are “Real.”
While this may sound more simplistic and less psychologically complex, this could not be further from the truth. In reality, quickly clarifying the existence of the ghosts allows Flanagan’s show to move into more interesting territory, namely, the question of how their formative encounters with the supernatural shaped the lives of the family.
Each of the Crain children has a different response to their childhood haunting, ranging from Stephen’s cynical rationalization to Shirley’s emotional repression, to Luke’s tragic struggle with addiction. There is no denying that the ghoulish apparitions that appear throughout the series are terrifying, but the ghosts of The Haunting of Hill House are never as scary as the family’s trauma.
In fact, it is these same ghosts who eventually drag the family back to the Crain home, where they must confront their demons once and for all. Thus, Flanagan’s show manages to completely rewrite Jackson’s darker, less hopeful story while staying true to its central themes of predestination, fate, and the thin distinction between life and death.
The Haunting of Hill House’s Success Proves Netflix Needed Mike Flanagan
Image courtesy of Everett CollectionsAfter making five horror shows in six years with Netflix, Flanagan moved on to Amazon for his next projects. 2023’s The Fall of the House of Usher was his last series with the streaming giant, and the loose Edgar Allan Poe adaptation was a gruesome, garrulous satire that updated the iconic Gothic horror writer’s best-known stories.
Now, Flanagan’s much-awaited take on Stephen King’s Carrie will arrive on Amazon Prime instead of his earlier streaming home since the writer/ director has moved on from Netflix. It remains to be seen whether Flanagan’s partnership with Amazon will prove as fruitful as his Netflix deal, but one thing is certain, and that’s that Netflix certainly needed him.
Since Flanagan’s deal with the streaming service ended in 2023, Netflix have struggled to produce any horror shows as memorable as The Haunting of Hill House, The Fall of the House of Usher, or Midnight Mass. Even Flanagan’s lesser hits, The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Midnight Club, prove The Haunting of Hill House creator is irreplaceable.
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