As a Moments subpage, all spoilers will remain unmarked. You have been warned.
In General:
- The unsettling moans some of the ghosts make. It sounds truly unearthly, as if they're still moaning in pain and trying to communicate but unable to make any words. That, combined with their rigid movements, shriveled pale skin, and glowing Prophet Eyes, and it quickly leaves the audience with conviction that these ghosts are different and dangerous.
- The amount of hidden ghosts throughout the show, as if implying there are far more spirits walking its grounds.
- The creepy atmosphere in general. An old Victorian or something similar is par for the course for haunted house stories; those statues add an extra creep factor to it, particularly with their freaky or disturbing expressions, not helped by the hidden ghosts in various scenes that could be mistaken for one of those statues. It's almost like this series goes out of its way to mindscrew its viewers...
- The Red Room. Putting aside the later revelations of how it works, the simple fact that it's an out of place room within the House that somehow shouldn't be able to exist note and can never be opened, even with a master key, can leave a bit of uncomfortable vibes as to what lays behind that red door...
- The simple fact that no reason is ever given as to why Hill House is the way it is. While the show itself shows how haunted the House is, it never shows why it is the way it is. Considering that the Hill family themselves had hauntings when they themselves lived within it's walls, it makes you wonder if it was always doomed to be an Eldritch Location or something far worse.
- It doesn’t matter where the Crain family members go or how far they travel. The events of what had transpired in Hill House has followed them all their lives. Whether it is the feelings of guilt and regret that often manifest as the actual and continued hauntings of the ghosts from Hill House, they are never truly alone or safe. Doubles as Tear Jerker moments in some cases.
Episode One:
- Steve's father Hugh - who we've already seen trying to convince young Nell that she's only having a little "spill" (bad dream) instead of seeing ghosts - bursts into Steve's room in the middle of the night, whispering to him that they "gotta get out of here right now". They wait in tense silence as the creepy lion door handle sloooowly turns, as someone outside in the hallway tries to get in. We're treated to tense shots of Hugh and Steve and— DEAR GOD, is that a ghost behind Steve, standing in the shadows of his room?! Or just a creepy trick of the light?!
- And then TWO MORE ghosts standing in the foyer as Steve and Hugh flee Hill House? At this point, either the viewer thinks they're seeing things, or else they realize that Hill House really is haunted as all hell!
- The scene where Nell dances alone through the darkened House, while the creepy statues watch on.
- ... And shortly thereafter, Theo, Shirley, Luke, and even Steve wake at the exact same moment, gasping and clutching their necks.
- And much before that...?
Shirley: *gasping, holding her neck* NELLIE'S IN THE RED ROOM! - Earlier on, Hugh gets a gentle caress from his wife while she holds him from behind in bed. However, as the scene holds for too long, he (and the viewer) realize something is wrong. He turns... and we see only the bottom half of Olivia's face as she gives him a hell of a Slasher Smile, and then screams at the top of her lungs. Cue Catapult Nightmare.
- Fridge Horror:Olivia: "Have either of you seen Luke?"Steven: "I assume you tried the treehouse?"Olivia: "Very funny, mister."
- The aforementioned treehouse has a lovely red trapdoor.
- The reveal to Steve that his sister Nell is dead. Naturally, he finds out when the latter rather eerily appears to him as a ghost, unbeknownst to him, all while remaining totally silent. Then he receives a call that there's been a death in the family, and when he turns around, she's right there. As he watches, her skin turns even paler, while her eyes change to dead white, and pained moans and then muted screams come from her cold-blackened lips...
Episode Two:
- Shirley's words she says just before waking up: "Nellie's in the Red Room."
- Though not haunted or supernatural, the scene of Shirley preparing and embalming the grandmother can be this for some, especially for those who have had traumatic experiences with loved ones dying and attending their visitations or funerals.
- Olivia and Shirley are talking together about Olivia's vision of their forever home. Not only is the conversation itself Fridge Horror, but there's a ghost all in black standing in the other room just beyond Olivia's head. In one shot, it appears to have moved closer, as if listening to Olivia (you can just barely see its folded white hands). In later shots, it appears to be gone.
- And there's another one standing outside, beyond Shirley's head. The only thing to indicate that it's a ghost and not stone decor, is that in later shots, it has also vanished.
- Shirley finds a box full of small kittens and her parents allow her to take them in and feed them. One night, one dies and she's pretty heart broken about it and Olivia and Hugh decide to bury it with her giving a eulogy for it. Then the kitten begins to breathe weakly... except Olivia and Hugh don't see it. Cue Shirley seeing a bug crawl out of its mouth and then on her arm.
- How about the part where she and Nell find the kittens all dead? Shirl freaks out and almost breaks down until she sees one breathing and picks it up. It then opens its eyes only to have no fucking pupils.
- The worst part? It's implied to not be a supernatural event as Hugh and Olivia argue about how the kittens were diseased and Hugh had to put the last one out of its misery. Even worse, it's entirely possible that they weren't diseased at all, just much too young to be away from their mother — who even Hugh acknowledged may have been somewhere nearby.
- How about the part where she and Nell find the kittens all dead? Shirl freaks out and almost breaks down until she sees one breathing and picks it up. It then opens its eyes only to have no fucking pupils.
- After Shirley finds the kittens, there’s mention of dogs and how the children have been hearing about them every night since they’ve moved into Hill House. Mister Dudley’s response to the query about them going after the kittens? “There’s no dogs on the property.” Even when Hugh insists that the kids have been hearing them, Mister Dudley continues to assert this notion.
- After Shirley finishes "fixing'' Nelly's corpse, she goes to the door to turn the light off. When she gives one last glance at her sister, she notices the other gurney, formerly empty, has her mother. Olivia then sits up, and proffers a box of jewelry at her daughter. The soft smile contrasted with her cataract eyes is terrifying, especially when the box snaps like a jaw and yowls like a cat.
Episode Three:
- Young Theo accidentally sends Luke down the the dumbwaiter in the kitchen. He finds himself in a basement room. Even though the viewer knows something is coming, what with the wide angle shots and the flickering flashlight, but it's still a horrifying surprise when a zombified something lurches out from behind some crates, and fast crawls right towards Luke, and by extension, the camera itself, eyes glowing like a feral animal in the dark. According to a post on Reddit
by the show's writers, this is Edward Hill, who was burned to death (and had his corpse half-eaten by rats) in the bootlegging basement as retribution for Hazel having Poppy's children murdered. Their deaths are also horrific, with her daughter being shoved headfirst into wet cement - which then solidified and left her looking like a "crude statue" after she was chiselled out - and her son slowly poisoned to death. - Adult Theo is asleep in her bed when her blankets slowly pull themselves off of her. She wakes up and sees Mr. Smiley at the foot of her bed, the apparition one of her child patients had been seeing at night. It is horrible.
- Then later in the episode we learn that Mr. Smiley isn't supernatural at all, but the patient's way of coping with her foster father's sexual abuse. Not only is that nightmare fuel on its own, it makes Theo's vision of Mr. Smiley pulling off her blankets at night all the more horrific.
- Theo touches a couch with her bare hand and immediately relives someone else's rape as if it's happening to her.
- Theo's ability in general is pretty uncomfortable: The sole fact that anything she touches, she feels something else. Sure, it does help in the long run considering she's able to use her ability to save a child from the abuse of her foster father and much earlier, able to figure out a shy boy she spoke to suffers from anxiety and PTSD, but considering her earlier encounters had her see her mother as a dead corpse as a child and the aforementioned horrible vision of the rape of the child by her own foster father, it's no wonder she uses gloves.
Episode Four:
- Luke's encounter with the apparition of William Hill when he was a child, and how the echo of that has followed him all his life and caused many of his adult behaviors. Especially creepy when you see, from Luke's perspective, the apparition following him no matter where he goes, just a few steps behind, and when he stops to try to gather the courage to face it it draws inexorably closer until it's right behind him, close enough to touch.
- It can also imply William Hill's ghost could represent his urge to relapse back into his drug addiction.
- Then there is the fact that when he finally faced the spirit haunting him in the present, it was his mother, suggesting instead that it represented the trauma of his mother's attempted murder of Luke and Nell (and the real murder of Abigail), which he used to escape.
Episode Five:
- The episode is teeming with Nightmare Fuel surrounding what happened to Nell.
- Nell's sleep paralysis episodes, particularly the tragic one where Arthur died.
- Nell's delusions within the house leading her to a rope around her neck and a fall? Terrifying. The Reveal that she was the Bent-Neck Lady haunting her younger self? Holy crap.
- To elaborate further on how the House tricked her into hanging herself... She saw vision after vision of her family giving her the love and support that she always wanted, as the House lured her further into its spell. It finally gets to a point where Nell is standing at the top of the library's spiral staircase, studying the ropes dangling there, then seeing a noose in her hands, which she regards with vague puzzlement. Then her mother calls her name, and she turns, and whatever is in her hands is invisible, because the House is hypnotizing her into forgetting her surroundings. Her mother's apparition approaches her with a beautiful necklace, that Nell puts around her neck and admires for a moment. The moment holds... Then, like a cold bucket of water, the House switches her back into her real space: she's standing on the outside of the railing, barely keeping her footing - and the noose is around her neck. That beautiful necklace was really a noose. She panics, calling for her mama, and her mother's apparition approaches with tears in her unblinking eyes... And then betrays her with a single gentle kiss that sends her over the edge.
- The foreshadowing in this episode becomes more chilling upon watching it a second time. Nell finds a tea set in her toy room which is really the Red Room - the Red Room knows her desires and is laying out the bait, so she will come closer without realizing that the House is feeding on her. After learning a bit more about that particular tea set, she begs her mother for a tea party, which her mother refuses. Later, just before her death, the apparitions - or it is memories? - of her mother, brother Luke, and little Abigail lead her up the library stairs, her mother saying, "Want to have a tea party?" As we find out in Episode 9, these were the exact circumstances that led up to that monstrous night when Olivia and one other person died...
Episode Six:
- Nell's ghost is there the whole time. No one can see her. The last shot of the episode is Ghost!Nell standing next to her coffin, looking absolutely anguished that she can't interact with her family.
- In one particular shot, around the 14 minute mark, the whole family stands in the visitation room staring at Nell's casket. The Bent-Neck Lady/Ghost!Nell is standing there too, behind her family.
- Hugh is walking through Shirley's darkened funeral parlor searching for a bathroom, while a storm rumbles outside. He comes to an area that looks suspiciously like Hill House... and then a chandelier crashes down! A very worthy Jump Scare.
- Of course, it is Hill House, and the beginning of a flashback. We almost immediately see the face of a ghost hidden behind older Hugh just before it begins (or perhaps not, since according to Word of God there are no Easter Egg ghosts hidden in this episode - but they could be lying).
- There may not be ghosts, but some of the statues move.
- When Nell briefly disappears during the storm, and the kids were left in the foyer to huddle together, their screams drew the parents back. Why? They claimed that some large animal with glowing red eyes ran right past the kids, within literal, physical reach of them. Are there ghost dogs now? Were they former residents, much like the people, that now haunt the property’s grounds? We’re never given anything concrete about this, nor are we given any visual evidence of what the kids have been seeing or hearing. Doubles as a Nothing Is Scarier kind of psychological horror, because we don’t know and neither does the Crain family.
- According to some stories written by one of the show's writers on Reddit, there were indeed dogs up there, but one day they just... stopped barking.
- According to some stories written by one of the show's writers on Reddit
Episode Seven:
- Hugh accidentally slicing his hand on a fan.
- The corpse Hugh finds bricked up in the wall. As if that weren't bad enough, the cop that comes to the house says that judging by the scratch marks, the man was still alive and trying desperately to claw his way out for god knows how long. The corpse is that of William Hill, who bricked himself up in an attempt to escape from the guilt of having an affair.
Episode Eight:
- Nell screaming between Shirley and Theo during their car ride to the House due to how out of nowhere it is.
- The real magic of the scene is that you're truly invested in Shirley and Theo's argument and wanting to hear Theo's explanation, so that even knowing how much the show loves a Jump Scare you're completely off guard for it.note
- Alternatively, it be considered as Nell yelling at the two to stop fighting.
- It's later on revealed that Luke took Theo's car and took Shirley's credit card not to buy drugs to relapse nor to commit suicide, but to buy canisters of gasoline to burn Hill House down for the trauma it's caused. Yet when he douses the floor in gasoline and throws a lighter to burn it down as if he's going to take the House with him, the flames turn blue and spread, but then just disappear. That's right, The House refused to let Luke burn it down.
- The reveal from Hugh about Hill House as Hugh takes over driving once he learned that Luke had taken five cans of gasoline. He quickly figures out what his youngest son plans on doing, and speaks to Steven about Hill House and the things he didn’t know about. He explains that he thought that keeping silent for the last twenty years was the only way to keep his kids safe, at holding the door closed because of the monsters that lay behind it.
- Hugh goes on to explain that he had read Steven’s book and points out a few certain details that proved Steven had, in fact, been seeing ghosts during the summer they had lived there. He specifically states that Steven should be “the last person that should ever step foot into that house” and why? Because of the clock Steven mentions in his book.
- The Wham Line Hugh delivers to Steven about witness marks further emphasizes things to a startling degree. He explains to Steven what witness marks are and how they come to be. The mustachioed man working on a very specific build of antique clock was what Hugh focused on entirely in Steven’s book. Hugh reveals he had had the antique clock evaluated long before they had even moved into Hill House. Steven tries to debunk his father’s statements, insisting Hugh had hired many workers towards the end of their summer stay. Hugh immediately states he hadn’t, not for that specific clock. He further emphasizes that it wouldn’t have been possible to have a specialist come and repair the antique clock, as there were so few in the world to begin with who could read the witness marks. To further emphasize his point, he point-blank tells Steven that these specialized experts would take the antique clock off-site to further analyze and study the object. There was no way Hugh had an on-site expert come in. Steven had indeed been seeing ghosts at Hill House, except he hadn’t even realized.
- Another absolute Wham Line from Hugh while he and Steven drove back to Hill House chasing after Luke? There had never been a tree house on the grounds of Hill House. Hugh had never built one and there hadn’t been one on the property at all. It just goes to show how extensively the Red Room manipulated the Crain family, and to that extent, anyone’s minds who had a prolonged stay within Hill House’s property lines. It’s understandable why the Dudley family refused to stay on the property after dark, because they personally know how much it can screw with your mind. If only the Crain family had followed their example.
Episode Nine:
- Olivia's Sanity Slippage of seeing Poppy and being convinced by her that her children will be safe by keeping them forever. Making her into the creepy example of My Beloved Smother.
- The absolute laser focus that Illusion!Nell/Luke put at Olivia’s feet about what may come for them—the absolute depression and drug addictions that would eventually come to being for the pair alone is disturbing. It’s almost as though Hill House promised these futures, and it played out exactly what was possibly expected. If Olivia hadn’t fallen prey to Hill House, would their futures had been different? Perhaps, but it isn’t guaranteed.
- Mrs. Dudley further emphasizes this matter to Olivia before her breakdown. At first, Olivia dismisses her feelings as anxiety, that everything she’s felt was only in her head, and nothing more to be concerned about. Mrs. Dudley, on the other hand, rebukes that, and what follows is what comes to fruition.
- The Red Room opening itself. Olivia serves tea for Luke, Nell, and Abigail, Luke's "imagery friend". It's then revealed the tea has rat poison and Abigail proceeds to die in front of them. GEEZ.
- Abigail's death is pretty disturbing too, seeing her vomit and slowly choke to death.
- The Red Room itself is pretty chilling. An empty room with one small window. Nothing too bad until you see the entire room is drenched in black mold.
- The creepiest part is the fact you think Abigail is just a ghost like everything else in Hill House, right? Next episode reveals that's not the case. She's actually the Dudleys's homeschooled daughter. Who Olivia just killed.
- Add to that, beforehand and throughout the show, Olivia and Hugh show confusion on how the hell the Red Room is even there when there's no support function for it to even be there.
- Olivia's suicide, since she falls head first.
Episode Ten:
- Each of the illusory worlds that the Red Room generates for Steve, Theo, and Luke.
- Steve has apparently reconciled with his now-pregnant wife Leigh, only to see her start to verbally tear apart his career and everything that he is. Then she reveals her pregnant belly beginning to bloat with black mold, as it slowly consumes, discolors and engulfs her entire body...
- Theo is in bed with her lover Trish, where she encourages Theo to lie back and let her take her pleasure. Of course, while Trish is doing so (and putting her hands on Theo, who normally Hates Being Touched) she's also telling an ever-more disturbing story (which is clearly about William Hill, who bricked himself up in the basement and starved to death). When Theo tells her to stop, more and more spectral hands begin to appear and grasp at Theo, holding her down and groping at her, until she's nearly buried beneath their greedy fingers.
- Luke finds his addict friend Joey just after he makes the phone call for help, and she takes him to a very nice hotel room. Then she offers him a needle, telling him that they'll never really be clean, not really. Then she points out that the needle is already in his arm, something which he was deliberately refusing to do. And then Joey tells him that another addict (who we briefly met some episodes ago) was right about how in the patterns on the wall you could see the girl who was burned in a warzone, the girl with the runny-egg eyes, and just as she says that, her eyes begin to liquefy away and run down her cheeks just like what she's describing...
- The reveal that the Red Room has been opened: The House just tricked each family member (sans Hugh, unless the parlor Steve mentioned to Mrs. Dudley in Episode 1 was another iteration of the Red Room) into entering it and being a different view for the family (A tea-reading room for Olivia, a toy room for Nell, a game room for Steve, a dance room for Theo, etc). That within itself makes it terrifying considering any room in the house could have been the Red Room.Nell: This room is like the heart of the house. No, not a heart, a stomach. It was your dance studio, Theo. It was my toy room. It was a reading room, for Mom. The game room, for Steve. A family room, for Shirley. A treehouse... But it was always the Red Room. It put on different faces, so that we'd be still and quiet, while it digested.
- Steven watches the door to the Red Room close on an embracing Liv, Hugh, and Nell. While it's ostensibly a happy ending, look at Liv. While Nell has her eyes closed as she embraces her father, Olivia is staring right at Steven with fixed eyes. This is the last we see of her, and it's a chilling reminder that she still wants all of her children dead with her.
- The long shot of Steve leaving Hill House one last time, with all the specters that haunt it staring at him and following him until he reaches the front door. There were so many victims of the house that they filled up the main hall, with there being potentially more so. Steve already knows they're there and can feel them, but calmly opens the door without looking back.
