Is The Haunting of Hill House Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Yes, 7 out of 10. The ghosts are real, but the dread comes from a family that keeps not talking about them.
Ruling: Watch it in daylight and keep tissues nearby, because the family and the house both refuse to let go.
The Haunting of Hill House is one season of ten episodes. It jumps between 1992 and the present, so you watch five children get haunted in a mansion and then watch the same five grow into adults who handle it badly.
The premise, briefly
The five Crain siblings grew up in a haunted mansion they fled as children, and a family tragedy twenty-six years later drags them back toward it.
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
Nell dies in episode 5, and her ghost saves her siblings in the finale. Hugh stays in the Red Room with Olivia and Nell for good. Luke, Steven, Shirley and Theo survive and reconcile.
Episode 9, a flashback to the family's last night in 1992. Olivia serves Nell, Luke and a sleepover guest named Abigail tea in the Red Room. It is laced with rat poison. Hugh saves Luke and Nell, but Abigail dies, and Olivia then jumps from the spiral staircase. The loudest jump scare is earlier, in episode 8, in a car.
No dog dies in this show. Five kittens die in episode 2, of natural causes. The first is on screen for minutes, the other four for a flash.
Knowing the plot takes most of the fear out of it, and what remains is a lot of crying about a mother, a sister and a very patient house.
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
A best-selling book about a house nobody enjoyed
The story starts in 1992, when Hugh and Olivia Crain bring their five children (Steven, Shirley, Theo, Luke and Nell) to live in Hill House. They plan to renovate it, sell it, and build a house Olivia has designed herself. The repairs keep running long, the haunting gets worse, and the family eventually flees the house without Olivia, who has died inside it. Twenty-six years later the show cuts between that summer and the present day. Steven has written a best-selling book about the family's time in Hill House, even though he missed most of the frightening parts and does not believe in ghosts. Luke is using drugs and tries to rob him, so Steven gives him money. Steven and Shirley miss calls from Nell. Then Steven sees Nell standing in the corner of his apartment, and Hugh calls to say that she went back to Hill House and is dead. Episode two follows Shirley, who took in a box of abandoned kittens as a child and could not keep any of them alive. She is now a mortician, and when she prepares Nell's body herself, she meets her mother's ghost.
Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.
A woman with a bent neck
The next three episodes take one sibling each. Theo can sense people's moods and objects' histories whenever she touches them bare-handed, so Olivia gave her gloves as a child. In the present she is a child therapist, and her job brings her to a girl who says a monster called Mr. Smiley torments her. Theo finds out that the monster stands for the girl's foster father abusing her, and she gets him arrested. Then Theo touches Nell's forehead in the morgue and collapses, screaming. Luke is ninety days clean. As a child he met a very tall ghost who wanted its bowler hat back, and it follows him around again. He and Nell have always felt each other's physical ailments, and Luke figures out that he has been feeling Nell since she died. He is told she took her own life and insists she did not. Episode five gives Nell her own story. As a child she saw the Bent-Neck Lady, a ghost whose neck is broken. As an adult she marries Arthur, a sleep technologist, who dies of an aneurysm in their first year. Nell returns to Hill House, which looks fully renovated to her and is actually derelict. Her mother's ghost pushes her off the spiral staircase with a noose around her neck. As she dies, she learns that she herself is the Bent-Neck Lady.
Two storms and one very awkward wake
Episode six runs two storms side by side. In the past, a storm hits Hill House, Nell vanishes and then reappears insisting she was shouting in front of everyone, and Olivia sees spirits and starts acting strangely. In the present, the Crains gather at the funeral parlor the night before Nell's funeral and argue. Their mother's ghost appears to Steven, the power goes out, someone puts buttons on Nell's eyes, and the coffin tips over by itself. Nell's ghost is in the room, and only Hugh sees her, briefly. In episode seven it comes out that Hugh still talks to Olivia as though she is there, and he makes peace with Theo. The flashbacks show him assessing storm damage with Mr. Dudley, who reveals some history of the earlier occupants, and doing basement renovations and accidentally uncovering the body of William Hill, the first owner, who had bricked himself into the walls. After the funeral, Olivia's ghost attacks Luke, Hugh and Theo, and Luke disappears with Shirley's wallet and Theo's car.
The tea party nobody wants to attend
Episode eight is a road trip. Steven and Hugh search for Luke, and Hugh tells Steven that the ghosts he keeps seeing were ghosts all along, and that none of them are mentally ill. Shirley and Theo drive toward Hill House in a separate car and finally clear up their fight about Kevin. This is where a big jump scare lands: Nell's ghost appears in the car with them, suddenly. Luke tries to burn Hill House down and the ghost of Poppy Hill, William Hill's wife, attacks him. Episode nine is the one people dread. On the family's last night in 1992, Olivia is unstable and under the house's influence. She sits Nell, Luke and a sleepover guest named Abigail down in the Red Room, which is open now, and serves them tea. Hugh realizes the tea is poisoned with rat poison, because Olivia believes this is the only way to keep the children safe from the world. Hugh gets Luke and Nell out in time. Abigail does not make it and dies. Olivia then jumps from the top of the spiral staircase, and Hugh hurries the surviving children out.
The ending, explained
In the finale, Steven and Hugh find Luke unconscious in the Red Room. Steven, Theo and Shirley get locked in with him, the house gives each of them a nightmare, and Nell's ghost rescues them all. She explains that the Red Room is the house's stomach, and that it pretends to be a different room for each person while it digests them. The siblings apologize for not saving her, and she answers that the family always loved one another. Olivia's ghost keeps the door shut until Hugh makes her a promise and she lets them out. Shirley and Theo drive Luke to the hospital. Hugh says goodbye to Steven and goes into the Red Room to stay with Olivia and Nell, which is the promise. Steven finally accepts that the ghosts are real. The show also reveals that the Dudleys were Abigail's parents. Two years later the siblings, back on good terms, celebrate Luke's sobriety. In the last scene an elderly Horace brings Clara to the house to die, and her spirit joins Abigail.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
Questions people ask at 1am
The whole plot of The Haunting of Hill House is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You don't have to watch ten episodes of The Haunting of Hill House to know how the Crains end up. Install Scaredy Cat and it will blur the next scary trailer for you.
Get Scaredy Cat, free 🐱