The Haunting of Hill House has more than its fair share of terrifying ghosts who torment the Crain family. There are a number of unsettling spirits, including an immensely tall man in a bowler hat, a woman from the 1920s who is a master manipulator, and a clock repairman who was never hired in the first place. But for a lot of the viewers, the Bent-Neck Lady is at the top of the list.
Not only is the Bent-Neck Lady one of the scariest ghosts of the show but her presence is one of the biggest plot twists in the series. Exactly midway through the season, the Bent-Neck Lady is revealed to be none other than Eleanor Crain herself, the youngest of the five Crain siblings who is fondly known as Nell. But how did she end up like this?
Who is the Bent-Neck Lady?
The Bent-Neck Lady is one of the first major ghosts to show up on The Haunting of Hill House. Seven minutes into the first episode, we see her looming behind a young Nell’s bed. Nell tells her family about the ghost but they dismiss it as nightmares. For Nell, the nightmare doesn’t end.
She tries sleeping on a couch in the living room but the Bent-Neck Lady appears once again, hovering right above her. Unlike many haunted house stories, the ghost follows Nell even after she leaves. In fact, Nell grows up to be diagnosed with sleep paralysis. She does find a brief spell of happiness when she falls in love and marries a sleep technician, Arthur. But it doesn’t last very long. One night, she wakes up with another bout of sleep paralysis. Arthur gets up to switch the light on but suddenly collapses on the floor. And who does Nell see standing by him as he dies? The Bent-Neck Lady.
Later, the specter turns up once again when Nell is taking her twin brother, Luke, to rehab. They stop on the way and Nell reluctantly helps Luke shoot up one last time before he gets clean. She then sees the Bent-Neck Lady standing on the street outside. When Nell makes the fateful trip back to Hill House, the Bent-Neck Lady shows up at the motel she’s staying at as well.
The other Crain family members don’t really face the ghost of the Bent-Neck Lady the way Nell does. But Luke does see her floating above Nell’s grave, during her funeral but Steve convinces him it’s all in his head. She makes a fantastic appearance in a jump scare during an argument between Theo and Shirley, Nell’s sisters. And episode 6, “Two Storms”, has a heart-rending moment when Nell’s father, Hugh, sees the ghost and realizes the tragedy that befell Nell.
For those who watched through their fingers, the Bent-Neck Lady is a spine-chilling apparition and the primary reason The Haunting of Hill House should be on your Halloween watch-list. She appears as a woman with long, disheveled hair whose neck is broken, giving her head a permanent tilt. Her skin is usually in various stages of decomposition but she’s often depicted as a silhouette. It’s not until halfway through the series that her face is revealed.
How does Nell die?
Because of the various misfortunes in her life, it’s hard to pinpoint when Nell’s death becomes a certainty. Even after leaving Hill House, Nell suffers from the trauma of everything that happened with her mother, Olivia, and her tragic death. An aunt raises Nell and her siblings and Nell grows up into a kind but withdrawn adult.
After her husband’s death by aneurysm, Nell’s mental state deteriorates. She struggles to connect with her siblings and stops taking her pills. She’s convinced the Bent-Neck Lady killed Arthur but her therapist encourages her to face her fear. He tells her to go to Hill House and see that it’s just a house, harmless. She takes his advice and heads to the place where everything began. Strange occurrences continue as she reaches the house. Most fans of horror movies and TV shows will see where this is going.
Inside, Nell meets a vision of the house as it was when she was a child. Her family including her mother and even Arthur are there. She dances with her husband and then finds herself on top of a spiral staircase. Olivia gives Nell her necklace, the one she promised to give her when Nell was a child. But the necklace tightens around Nell’s neck. The vision fades and Nell finds herself on top of the staircase with a noose instead of a locket. Olivia pushes her and the rope goes taut, breaking Nell’s neck.
How did Nell become the Bent-Neck Lady?
The moment Nell falls off the staircase, her neck breaks. But then she falls again. She finds herself in the motel where she had last seen the Bent-Neck Lady — but this time Nell is the ghost, looking down at her human self. She keeps falling through time, appearing as the ghost in various moments of her own life. It ends with her falling right at the foot of little Nell’s bed. She sees her past self looking at her and then screams.
Nell becomes the Bent-Neck Lady. It works because, as Nell mentions later on in the show, time in Hill House doesn’t work in a linear fashion. Instead, moments are scattered in no particular order. This means that Nell’s ghost can coexist with her living self. Towards the end of The Haunting of Hill House though, Nell’s spirit does seem to find some peace. When her siblings are trapped in the Red Room by Olivia’s ghost, Nell is the one who frees them. As they leave, Nell stays behind and embraces Olivia and Hugh, who also gave up his life in the process.
Sometimes, certain fictional characters are simply doomed by the narrative. They never had the chance to escape their fate, it was predetermined for them. Nell’s story is the same and in true Mike Flanagan fashion, it is both horrifying and heartbreaking. The Bent-Neck Lady haunts Nell her whole life. This leads Nell to eventually go back to confront the house, in turn becoming the ghost herself and starting the entire cycle. The moment Nell set foot in Hill House her fate was sealed, she was destined to become the Bent-Neck Lady.