Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House S1:E1 (Steven Sees a Ghost) recap

Carla Davis

October – The Haunting of Hill House – Courtesy of Netflix

The Haunting of Hill House is now streaming on Netflix. Are you watching it? Here is a recap of episode one (Steven Sees a Ghost).

Shirley Jackson’s classic The Haunting of Hill House contains perhaps the best opening paragraph of any horror novel in the history of horror novels. I happen to love the book, so you can imagine my delight when the new Netflix series of the same name included part of that paragraph in its opening scene. Although Netflix’s series is not a retelling of the original book, it has much of the same feel, and I am very much looking forward to going on this dark ride.

The first episode of The Haunting of Hill House introduces us to the Crain family, parents Hugh and Olivia and their five children, Steven, Shirley, Theodora, and twins Nellie and Luke. Hugh (hello, Elliott from ET!) has purchased Hill House in the hopes of refurbishing it, then selling it for a huge profit. The scene opens late at night inside the house. We hear young Nell Crain crying, and her brother Steven gets up to check on her. When he asks what is wrong, Nell says that she saw the “Bent Neck Lady” again. By then, their father has shown up and gently calms her down, telling her that it was only a bad dream. A few moments later, we see Nellie sleeping and a creepy female figure moves in the background.

It seems this series will jump back and forth between the family’s time living at Hill House and the children as adults, still dealing with the emotional damage that was done during those days. We learn that as children, Luke had an “imaginary friend” named Abigail, that Nellie had apparently seen the “bent neck lady” more than once, and that Shirley and Nellie desperately wanted to find the key that opened the mysterious red door belonging to a locked room upstairs. As the two girls walk away from the door after failing to open it with a skeleton key provided by Mr. Dudley (the caretaker), we see what appear to be shadowy feet under the door.

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In the present, we learn that Steven writes best-selling books about “true” ghost stories, even though he professes to have never seen one himself; his most famous book is “The Haunting of Hill House,” about his family’s own experiences (and his siblings are NOT happy that he wrote it). He is interviewing a woman who tells her own story, involving her husband.

His car flipped over in a bad storm, and he hung upside down until he died, periodically honking the horn with his badly broken arm. She tells Steven that she almost immediately started seeing her husband’s ghost hanging over her bed, accompanied by dripping water and the sound of a car horn honking, and she no longer sleeps in the room. Steven asks if he can spend the night in the room.

During Steven’s conversation with the woman, his phone rings and he looks at it to see that Nell is calling. He doesn’t answer.

The adult Shirley owns a funeral home with her husband and is counselling a family whose young son refuses to view his grandmother’s body during an open casket funeral. Nell tries to call Shirley, but Shirley does not take the call. She calls Steven to tell him about Nell’s missed call and says she tried to call Luke but couldn’t find him. Steven says that Luke is probably in rehab again, and when he later tries to call Nell back, she doesn’t hear her phone ring.

When we check in on the adult Theo, she is in a bar (wearing long gloves), where she picks up a young woman and brings her home. She rather abruptly dismisses the woman after they have sex, and again dons gloves, stating that she is a germophobe.

We cut to an older Hugh, now in Jacksonville (and played by Timothy Hutton), waking up after a nightmare to his phone ringing. It’s Nell, who asks if her remembers the bent neck lady. When he says yes, she responds, “She’s back.” Although she is in her car, she tells her father that she is home and he tells her he will be there tomorrow. When she hangs up, we see that Nell is actually at Hill House, and she gets out of her car and walks towards the house.

Then, we flash back in time, to see a visibly shaken Hugh waking Steven up in the dead of night. He tells Steven that they need to leave NOW. Hugh opens the bedroom door quietly to check the hallway, and apparently sees something, as he closes and locks it. We can see that his hand is bandaged. The door knob turns several times, as Hugh and Steven stay as quiet as possible.

When it seems that the unseen person is gone, Hugh tells Steven that he is going to carry him, and he wants him to keeps his eyes closed and not look. As he runs down the hallway, we see a female figure running after him, but he makes it out to the car, where the other children are already waiting. They are all upset and crying, asking about their mother, but Hugh does not answer them, he just drives away.

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As Steven sets up equipment in the woman’s bedroom, he gets a call from his father, who tells him to get to Nell as soon as possible. Steven impatiently blows Hugh off, telling him that he is working and isn’t going to just leave. He hangs up, then lays down on the bed, and his eyes close.

Shortly after 3:00 a.m., each of the Crain siblings (except for Nell) wake up suddenly, gasping and holding their throats. Shirley, always prone to talking in her sleep, mumbles that Nellie is in the Red Room. Steven wakes up to water dripping on his face, and when he stands on the bed to check out the ceiling, he hears a car horn blaring outside. He looks out the window to see a near accident, and also notices that it is raining.

The next morning, he tells the woman that all of her experiences in the room can be explained. There is a ceiling leak, and a recently stolen stop sign explains the sound of a horn honking. As far as seeing her husband, Steven believes that only happened because she wanted to see him again. When she incredulously asks why she would want to see her husband like that, he gently responds that it’s better than never seeing him again.

Flash back again, to see young Steven in an attorney’s office with Hugh. Hugh angrily states that he will not allow his children to take the witness stand. His attorney tells him that without the children’s testimony to back up his own, he could be in serious trouble. Hugh says he doesn’t care, let the press rake him over the coals, but leave his children out of it. We discover that Olivia is said to have committed suicide in Hill House on that last night. Hugh further states that he will not sell the house, and wants no person to go anywhere near it – except for the Dudleys, who have been the caretakers for a very long time. Hill House, he says, can sit there and rot.

We see young Steven sitting in the kitchen talking to Mrs. Dudley, who is telling him that no one comes to Hill House “at night, in the dark”, not even the Dudleys, who live on the very edge of the property. After Olivia interrupts their conversation to ask if he has seen Luke, Steven goes up into the tree house, where Luke is drawing some creepy pictures, including one of a woman screaming. Luke asks how to spell “No Girls Allowed” as Steven checks out the drawings. They have a discussion about imaginary friends, and Luke insists that Abigail is not imaginary.

When adult Steven arrives home, he catches adult Luke attempting to leave with Steven’s iPad and a camera. He tells Luke he will give him $200, and he can sell the camera, but he needs the iPad back. Luke takes the cash and tells him “it’s not what you think.” He leaves, and when Steven walks into his apartment, he finds Nell standing inside. He berates her for allowing Luke to take his things while she just stood there and watched, but she only looks at him silently, fear on her face. Steven answers a phone call from Hugh, who tells him that Nell went back to Hill House and committed suicide. As Steven turns to Nell, horrified, her face turns grey, and she screams silently, then disappears.

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