The Haunting of Hill House — Easter Eggs & Hidden Details

The series' signature egg hunt. Flanagan confirmed it outright: 'We actually hid dozens of ghosts throughout the series, in plain sight, in the deep background of shots. We don't call any attention to them... If you look in a door frame, or under the piano, or behind a curtain in a lot of otherwise ordinary scenes, you'll see someone there.' Makeup effects head Robert Kurtzman says around 30 easter-egg ghosts were built — his team produced up to four extra spirits a day beyond the scripted ones — and Netflix's official Twitter account eventually posted episode-by-episode timestamps to help fans find the sneakiest ones. NME's frame hunt catalogued 33 in total, from a face between the staircase railings in the premiere to figures reflected in window glass.

Young Hugh Crain is played by Henry Thomas — Elliott from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — and the props team winked at his most famous role by planting an E.T. lunchbox among the kids' clutter, visible in the treehouse scene and called out in the Blu-ray extras. The gag doubles as a studio in-joke: Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television produced the series, making this both an actor tribute and a nod to the company logo on the call sheet.

In episode 2, young Theo curls up with a copy of The Lottery — Shirley Jackson's most infamous short story, the one that generated hate mail when The New Yorker published it in 1948. It's a quiet tip of the hat to the author whose novel the whole series adapts, and it sits alongside the show's bigger Jackson tributes: eldest siblings Shirley and Steven carry the first names of horror royalty, and Nell's married name, Vance, turns her into Eleanor Vance — the novel's protagonist — by the time the house claims her.

Episode 3 restages the single most celebrated scare in Shirley Jackson's novel — the moment Eleanor realizes the hand she's been gripping in the dark belongs to no one. In the show, Theo reaches for what she believes is Nell's hand and finds nothing there. Readers get the chill of recognition; everyone else just gets the chill. It's the strongest of the show's dialogue-and-scene lifts, sitting alongside the banging on the bedroom doors and the 'in the night, in the dark' warning from Mrs. Dudley, both also pulled straight off the page.

Mrs. Dudley hands young Nell a teacup with stars printed inside and tells her: 'Insist on your cup of stars. Once they've trapped you into being like everyone else, you'll never see your cup of stars again.' Jackson readers know those words — in the novel they're Eleanor Vance's silent thoughts about a stubborn little girl in a roadside diner, a symbol of refusing to be ordinary. The show pulls the monologue out of Eleanor's head and gives it to the housekeeper, handing the book's most beloved image directly to the Crain sibling who inherits Eleanor's fate.

Flanagan's calling card. The ornate Lasser Glass — the soul-eating antique mirror at the center of his 2013 film Oculus — appears in the background as Nell dances through Hill House's halls in 'The Bent-Neck Lady.' Flanagan has tucked the mirror into most of his projects, from Gerald's Game to Doctor Sleep to The Fall of the House of Usher; CinemaBlend counts it in ten of his thirteen works. Here it's arguably at home: one cursed object photobombing another haunted antique-filled mansion while a doomed woman waltzes past.

One of the pale faces lurking in episode 5 belongs to an actual movie star. Per the Blu-ray commentary, Bruce Greenwood — Carla Gugino's co-star in Flanagan's Gerald's Game — played a hidden ghost in 'The Bent-Neck Lady': when young Nellie rushes to her parents' room after a Bent-Neck Lady visit, his face peeks out of the darkness behind Olivia on the left of frame. Greenwood would go on to lead Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher, making this blink-and-miss cameo an early membership card in the Flanagan repertory company.

Episode 6 looks like one continuous shot; it's actually 51 minutes built from just five takes (the longest runs 17 minutes 19 seconds), rehearsed for a month and inspired by Hitchcock's Rope and Buffy's 'The Body.' The long takes are stuffed with sleight of hand: ghosts appear and vanish while the camera looks away, a dummy is swapped out of the casket as an actor climbs in, child actors sprint in and out of the 360-degree shot, and Carla Gugino 'teleports' through the house via a photo double and secret crew portals. Watch the statues too — their heads turn to track Olivia down the hallway. The specialized camera dolly's transmission snapped right after the final take.

During the blackout in episode 6, Steven, Theo, and Shirley chase a large dog through Hill House — a dog that has no business being there and promptly vanishes. It's a direct lift from Jackson's novel, where Dr. Montague and Luke pursue a mysterious dog through the halls in what is the book's only paranormal event to occur without Eleanor present. The show preserves that quirk: it's one of the few hauntings the Crain siblings experience as a group, with Nell nowhere near the house.

A Tumblr fan first spotted it and Flanagan confirmed it with a 'Good catch' on Twitter: each Crain sibling embodies one of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, in the exact order they were born. Steven is denial (the skeptic who writes ghost books he doesn't believe), Shirley is anger, Theo is bargaining (gloves on, gloves off), Luke is depression, and Nell — who understands and forgives the house — is acceptance. The kicker from TV Guide's set interviews: the actors themselves had no idea until fans pointed it out.

Nell's psychiatrist is called Dr. Montague, the name of the paranormal investigator who assembles the team in Jackson's novel. He's played by Russ Tamblyn, who starred as skeptical heir Luke Sanderson in Robert Wise's 1963 adaptation The Haunting — the gold-standard version of this story. Casting a survivor of the definitive Hill House film as the man telling Nell her ghosts aren't real is the show's slyest bit of stunt casting; Tamblyn even played another famous screen psychiatrist, Twin Peaks' Dr. Jacoby.

Fans reasonably assumed the two eldest Crains honored horror's power couple: Shirley for Shirley Jackson, Steven for Stephen King. The Blu-ray commentary corrects the record — Shirley is indeed named for Jackson, but Steven is named for Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin Television produced the series and whose enthusiasm for the material helped bring Flanagan aboard. The King connection isn't imaginary, though: King publicly raved about the show on Twitter, and Flanagan went on to adapt his Doctor Sleep the following year.