Flanagan’s two previous haunted house series really pissed me off in the end. Hill House started off strong, but by the end you know exactly how the haunting works and it’s basically just one ghostly “insane” woman who’s the cause of everything despite having no relation with anyone. That’s not how character-based horror is supposed to work. Bly Manor was even worse and I turned it off after some interminable monologue by a ghost misogynist about his ghost powers. In both cases, I think the source material played with the idea that you cannot be certain there’s anything supernatural going on, so to instead have a clear list of rules about how ghosts work, like we’re in some bad anime, really seems like a wrong decision.