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Main Characters
Isaiah
Isaiah
The quarterback and Big Man on Campus at the Port Lawrence High School, it was his idea of doing a party at Harold Biddle old house that awakened his spirit.
- Cassandra Truth: He is the first character to be exposed to one of Biddle's haunted items, the Polaroid camera, and no one believes him because its effects are invisible to everyone else. It's gradually averted in subsequent episodes as his friends are exposed to the supernatural and realize the house and its contents really are haunted.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Develops a crush on his childhood neighbor Margot, though his girlfriend seems to think he was always in love with her.
- Dumb Jock: Downplayed, but he almost failed history, and needed to cheat to pass an exam.
- Game-Breaking Injury: He breaks his arm thanks to the cursed camera in the first episode, putting him on the bench for the rest of the season. He's afraid that it will completely ruin his chances of getting a scholarship.
- Generation Xerox: He is a Big Man on Campus football jock just like his father, averted in that he is much nicer.
- Lovable Jock: He is at worst Innocently Insensitive towards the feelings of others, but he is genuinely kind and willing to jump into danger for others.
- Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Has spent years being oblivious to Margot’s obvious feelings for him. When he finally realizes his feelings for her, she’s already moved on to Lucas.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Part of the reason why he feels so much pressure to achieve success as a football player is to make his dad proud, the other reason being that he believes that an athletic scholarship is the only way he will make it to college.
Margot
Margot
The unpopular daughter of the guidance counselor and Isaiah's neighbor.
- Deadpan Snarker: Has a dry sense of humor and often answers with a sarcastic jab, she tones it down later on.
- Girl Next Door: She lives literally next door to Isaiah.
- Single Girl Seeks Most Popular Guy: Seems to have a crush on Isaiah at the beginning, although later on she also develops feelings for Lucas.
- The Smart Gal: The smartest of the main characters, and the one most obsessed with solving the mystery.
James
James
Isaiah's best friend who is obsessed with wanting to make everyone like him.
- Alcoholic Parent: It’s implied that his mom likes to have one too many glasses of wine.
- Beneath the Mask: He wants everyone to like him, partially because he is one of the very few out kids in the town. His tendency towards hiding his real personality is part of the reason why his best friend never made the connection that he had been replaced by an evil clone, despite the clone being uncharacteristically hostile.
- Camp Gay: James is gay and is more flamboyant than his male friends. Averted by his crush, however, a jock that is into men (whether gay or bisexual is not specified).
- Lonely Rich Kid: His mother is well-off, but the other parents imply that she does not care about him. Turns out she knows him better than he thinks, as she easily figures out that one of his temporal clones is impersonating him. Granted, that particular clone wasn't bothering to be subtle, but she is able to tell the real James is who he says he is because she is familiar with his snarking.
Isabella
Isabella
A girl constantly forgotten by everyone who lets out her frustrations by trolling her classmates online.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Develops feelings for Isaiah because he’s the first person in a long while to actually talk to her for a sustained period and shows genuine regret for calling her by the wrong name.
- Beneath Notice: She openly states she is "literally invisible" to her classmates, which is why she's able to get all the gossip for her site. Folks honestly don't even realize she's around when babbling secrets for her to spread around.
- Cool Big Sis: Is one to her little brother Alan, her Big Sister Instinct is what allowed her to tear off the troll mask from her face.
- Extreme Doormat: Her problem at the beginning, to the point that even the adults at the school ignore her, she gets better after befriending the main group.
- Internet Jerk: Spends most of her free time trolling her classmates, her main target being Allison. This trait fades away as she grows closer to the group and stops feeling invisible, since it was largely a coping mechanism in the first place.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She is a Troll who mocks her classmates on the internet in order to cope with feeling invisible and overlooked, but she isn't actually a mean person overall. When The Haunted Mask influences her to chew out Lucas and Colin while in Colin's office, she instantly regrets having done it, apologizes, and assures Lucas that she's willing to accept his meager repayment for her broken drone. She also loves her little brother, which is what ultimately enables her to throw off the Mask's influence, as harming him is farther than she's willing to go.
- Karmic Transformation: An internet troll who turns into an actual troll.
Lucas
Lucas
A daredevil obsessed with living up to his father's legacy.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He can be a callous jackass, not caring about the collateral damage of his stunts, but he is also a kid still struggling with the death of his father, trying to gather the courage to succeed in the stunt that killed his father, not knowing that his father was actually suicidal and chose an impossible stunt for that reason.
- Situational Sociability: When around Margot he is noticeably less confident and more prone to mumbling.
- Put on a Bus: Not technically, but he's the only member of the group who's out of commission in the final episode due to him being the only one to fall for Kanduu's trick of appearing as their loved ones about to fulfill their heart's desires, and thus is turned into another of his living puppets meant for sacrifice.
- Thrill Seeker: He is constantly doing dangerous stunts, trying to connect to his dead father. He stops after discovering the true reason he died.
- Too Dumb to Live: Kanduu's lotus-flower mind game to trick him was taking the form of his deceased father, insisting he had never really died and had to fake his suicide and go into hiding for a year as part of the "government witness protection problem" under the threat of imprisonment...even though he and his mom literally saw him die and had him buried. Despite this, he almost immediately forget his suspicions and embraces his dad...only to get turned into another living puppet for Kanduu's ploy.
Adults
Nathan Bratt
Nathan Bratt
The new English teacher at Port Lawrence High, and the current owner of the Biddle House.
- Cool Teacher: Subverted. A flashback to his life before Port Lawrence shows Bratt trying to play this role to his students, but given an inspirational speech about writing to a biology class isn't the way to go about it.
- Fighting from the Inside: He is capable of reclaiming control of his body from Biddle when he feels pain. With the kids' "help" (namely, punching him repeatedly), he regains control of his body long enough to free them from Harold's scrapbook.
- Grand Theft Me: He is possessed by Harold's spirit soon after moving into the house and forced to do his bidding for most of the series. The final episode implies that Kanduu is about to possess him next.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Justin Long says that he modeled Bratt's appearance on Stephen King, a connection reinforced by his efforts to become a horror novelist.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His rather stupid decision to retrieve Slappy and bring him back from the dead kicks off the season's final arc. He is filled with remorse as soon as he recognizes Slappy's true intentions, though the kids do not let him off the hook for it.
Nora
Nora
Lucas's mother and owner of the local convenience store.
- Former Teen Rebel: Was described as "scary" by both Sarah and Harold when she was a teenager, while now she seems content being a Doting Parent to Lucas.
- Mistaken for Insane: What happens to her after she tries to inform the police what is really happening, to the point that she is institutionalized.
- Supernatural Sensitivity: She was the only person besides Isaiah able to see the fire at the football game, and quickly detected that Slappy was both sentient and evil after hearing him talk to Biddle. Slappy himself comments that there's something "different" about Nora.
Villains
Harold Biddle
Harold Biddle
A teenager who mysteriously died thirty years before the series started.
- The Heavy: His spirit is the primary antagonist of the series, driving much of the plot, but he is ultimately a corrupted slave of his master Slappy.
- Heel–Face Turn: After learning that his parents still love and forgive him even after all he had done and said to them, Harold turns against Slappy and peacefully passes on.
- Self-Serving Memory: While his story about what happened to him was mostly correct, the kids quickly point that their parents were trying to save him from Slappy, not trying to kill him as he believes.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Even before being corrupted by Slappy he was a socially awkward, paranoid and genuinely weird kid, but he still was a nice guy who wanted to make friends, was close to his parents and had a crush on Margot's mother Sarah who seemed to be his only friend, the few people close to him quickly noticed that his behavior completely changed after getting Slappy.
- Vengeful Ghost: What he is in the present day.
Slappy
Slappy
A Demonic Dummy that manipulates his owners into committing evil deeds for him. He's actually a prison for the evil sorcerer Kanduu.
- Back from the Dead: Once the spell in the pocket of his corpse is read, his spirit is returned to his body and he is restored to life, flesh and all.
- The Corrupter: This version of Slappy is a textbook manipulator: he promises his owner fame or success to earn their loyalty, then compels them to do his bidding, turning them into his henchmen while altering their personality.
- Demonic Dummy: Kanduu's spirit is trapped in Slappy and can only be awoken by reading a spell.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Kanduu is told to his face by the kids he's terrorized that whatever suffering he endured during the war he fought in does not grant him a free pass to commit cruelties towards others and kill an entire town's population as a sacrificial offering.
- Forced Transformation: He knows a spell that can transform people into life-sized dummies. He can't cast it himself as Slappy, but can once resurrected.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Kanduu's driving belief: "People need monsters or else they become monsters."
- Hypocrite: For all he proclaims about wanting to put an end to war, strife, and conflict between humans that creates so much death and suffering in the world, Kanduu specializes in bringing death and suffering to others and his plan to release the horrors would simply introduce another "other" for humans to act against, leading to more years of even more carnage and devastation upon the world.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Kanduu rationalizes his desire to fulfill the sacrifical ritual that would bring the horrors into the world by saying that without such horrors in the world, humans create even worse horrors of their own and become more monstrous than any otherworldly creatures. Margot and her friends believe that this is merely an excuse to inflict suffering onto countless others as a way to punish the world and humanity for how much they'd made him suffer, as using mass murder to bring in dangerous beings who could take even more lives only serves to descend the world into more carnage rather than simply put a stop to all the still ongoing conflicts.
- No-Sell: Once returned to human form, the dummy transformation spell does not work on him.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: We never learn Slappy/Kanduu's real name, only that he was a lieutenant in the (presumably British) Army. He took his name Kanduu from the spell which prevented him from dying.
- Sadist: As is typical for Slappy, he is very cruel and visibly relishes in the suffering of his victims.
- Villainous Friendship: Seems to have genuinely considered Franz Mahar a friend prior to his betrayal, considering that his fantasy is Franz returning from the dead to rescind that betrayal and help him carry out his ritual as a partner.
- Visionary Villain: Slappy/Kanduu was nearly killed in a 19th-century war, and afterwards pledges to use his newfound powers to put an end to war and human suffering by unleashing monsters into the world. Of course, he can only achieve this by sacrificing 1,000 people in an elaborate "ritual," and either hasn't given much thought, or doesn't care about what happens once those monsters are released.
- Margot and the other kids call him out for it, telling him he’s clearly not doing it to help the world but to punish it for what he’s been through.
