Like everybody else, I’ve been watching the Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, which is excellent as long as you stop looking for very much actual Shirley Jackson in there. I may have to watch again, if only to see if they really managed to leave out the best quote:

Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

The idea of a house being sentient but not sane seems the most terrifying thing ever, and in some primordial way I still use it at a measuring stick. There’s a house on my block now that I would classify as not sane, and yet it’s absolutely the one I would renovate if I had the cash. Go figure.

Anyway, it was good- go watch it. Once it’s over, Netflix will then suggest you watch another of their series, called Haunted, which sounds like a fantastic concept. The preview made it sound like one of those shows where people share their scary stories of supernatural encounters- but with a budget! Most of those shows are filler done on a shoestring, so this had real entertainment potential.

That genre is kind of my dirty little secret, I love them, even through my sniggers. But I can suspend disbelief and really enjoy them…up to a point.*

“Haunted” takes that point and just obliterates it. The first episode had some serious plot holes, but it was when the second one started I found myself talking back to the tv in the first 90 seconds.

They start with this:

Already a red flag- all of those other shows start with “the following is based on,” or some such disclaimer. No disclaimers here, so…wow! Should be interesting! Click to embiggen!

Okay, so far we’ve been told they lived in the middle of nowhere with a psychopath daddy, a deluded mother and a lot of dead people, which they were told never to talk to anyone about. In the cutscenes, the kids are little- maybe 7 or 8, so okay, I guess we can forgive them at this point?

But now we continue, fast forwarding a generation. The sisters are older, and they’ve escaped. Somehow, despite knowing what their father is, the older one decides that it for sure is an awesome idea for her son to hang out with her father, who naturally starts to groom the kid to follow in his footsteps. As you do. We see scenes of grandpa encouraging the kid to knife an animal carcass, stick your head into its guts, dance around a fire, worshiping the devil. As you do.

Then, apparently grandma’s over it- they are retirement age, for goodness sakes, and he just won’t let up- so she smothers grandpa.

DING DONG, the witch is dead! The wicked witch, the…wait…what?

So everybody’s cool with their mass murdering grandma, who moves in with her daughter, there are no inquiries into grandpa’s death, and despite that everybody’s older, no one attempts to deal with any of this? And you further think it’s an excellent idea to just move on in?

At this point, it’s impossible not to have noticed that none of these people acted as if they gave a single damn about any of these victims. No mention of cops sniffing around, what the victim’s families might be going through, but this is the real WTF moment, when he moves in and finds “hundreds” of grandpa’s trophies:

So what does he do? Does he call the cops? Nope, let’s destroy lots of evidence instead, and continue to play ostrich:

He gets a dumpster, gets rid of everything and hopes to settle in to his happy home. Surprise! It doesn’t go as planned, things get spooky, mysterious bloody handprints start showing up everywhere, and he’s sure “they” are coming for him.

Still lives there, of course! Never notified anybody! No cops have apparently ever come around this vortex of the the damned, asking about all these missing people!

And then, the punchline:

Really? Really? You came on an internationally broadcast show to talk about the potentially hundreds of people you yourself say your family killed, while not one of you showed sympathy for people losing their lives, but you’d like some sympathy for yourself because you might lose your job? Frankly, I’d be more concerned about your credibility, which has definitely flatlined.

So, in the end I only have two problems with this: the living and the dead. And the producers, actually, who probably get classified as zombies, since they’re clearly braindead if they thought viewers would actually believe this tripe, or be able to forge any connection to the self-serving yahoos telling the story.

Again, I love a scary tale. And I love history. Plus I lived in a house for years where at least 17 people died in the last 50 years. We had some seriously weird stuff happen, which may be why I’m curious about these shows.

To paraphrase my daughter, “Mom wants to believe in stuff, she just needs some proof first, and that’s not how belief works.” She’s got a point. And I’ll actively try to give you the benefit of the doubt… if you can explain why you think bad things are happening, and even better, offer some proof those things actually occurred, I’ll happily go along for the ride.

If you don’t treat me like an idiot, in other words.This show forgot that one caveat.

*One I particularly loved when it first came out was where this chick psychically felt out a house while her partner does research into its history. Supposedly they don’t talk to each other until it’s all over to compare notes, but after a couple of seasons, plain old dead people haunting places must’ve gotten dull, because suddenly it was interdimensional visitors, portals, and everything had to get ramped up more and more, at which point I was out.

In the beginning, there were some pretty atmospheric episodes, though. I have a doll/clown thing, so this one stays in my mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8ejd3sXo0A