TV

All The Secret Ghosts You Probably Missed In ‘The Haunting Of Bly Manor’

There are ghosts that turn up time and time again over the show's nine hours.

by Joseph Earp  15 October 2020
The Haunting Of Bly Manor ghosts

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The Haunting of Hill House, a surprise smash-hit helmed by noted auteur Mike Flanagan, was the first TV series to really utilise the pause, play and scrub backwards features of Netflix. And it did so by filling the screen with goddamn ghosts.

Light spoilers for The Haunting of Bly Manor follow

The show was infamous for the spectral figures hidden in the corners of the screen. Eagle-eyed viewers with a thumb on the brightness button began unfurling an entire B-plot being told in the background of the action, with repeated ghostly characters popping up time and time again.

Well, it turns out that’s going to be something of a tradition in the Haunting franchise, because the new miniseries, The Haunting of Bly Manor, follows in the same vein.

Viewers who came to the show expecting ghosties were richly rewarded within the space of the very first episode. Because, as it turns out, the entire series is lousy with spectres, smooshed in and around the show’s A-story.

Moreover, these are not just mere easter eggs, dropped around the place as set-dressing. They’re also an important part of the show’s mythology. I mean, just take a look at some of these bedevilled creatures.

You might notice the repetition of one figure — the pale and tall plague doctor. The doctor, despite being never named and his background never explicated, is one of the lead characters of the show. He’s deeply tied to the story of Bly Manor; to the show’s themes of sickness, health, childhood, and trauma. He’s not just looming in the background because he looks cool. The Haunting of Bly Manor doesn’t work as well without him.

Elsewhere, there’s the little boy, visible in the corner of the kitchen next to the radio in the screenshot above, who pops up in episode three and seven. And then there are the characters who are explicitly mentioned in the narrative itself.

There’s the soldier, who we are told has been haunting the house for literal decades in episode six. There’s the woman in the attic, who we eventually learn is Viola’s deceased sister. And there’s the vicar, who appears in the show from the very first episode, and eventually reveals himself to be a harbinger of the themes of marriage and family.

That, after all, is the true magic of Bly Manor. The ghosts aren’t merely a kind of narrative game, designed to get viewers scrubbing and re-scrubbing over the same few minutes of footage. They are an important facet of the show’s thematic world-building.

Bly Manor is, after all, a miniseries about repression — about the ways we pretend that we don’t see what’s right in front of our face. The ghosts are all part of the futility of that effort. Try as you might, there are some things you can never bury.

It’s a little like that old William Faulkner quote. The past is not dead. Actually, it’s not even past. That could be Bly Manor‘s motto.