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I’m just going to say it out loud: The Haunting of Hill House (2018) is one of the best pieces of television ever made, and if you’re a lesbian who loves crying over traumatized women who touch each other’s hands too long and stare like they’re solving the meaning of life… this show will ruin you in the best way possible.
Yeah, yeah, it’s a horror mini-series directed by Mike Flanagan, based very loosely on Shirley Jackson’s novel, about the Crain family getting psychologically destroyed by the house they flipped back in the 90s. But let’s be real—under all the bent-neck ladies and jump scares, this is a 10-hour lesbian fever dream wrapped in grief, repressed feelings, and the softest gloves you’ve ever seen.
Let me explain why every lesbian I know ends up texting “THEO IN THOSE GLOVES” at 3 a.m. after binge-watching.
First of all, Theo Crain. Sweet baby Jesus, Theo Crain. Played by Kate Siegel (who is married to Mike Flanagan in real life, which somehow makes it even gayer), Theo is the middle sister, the “sensitive” one who feels everything when she touches people or objects—so she wears gloves all the time to protect herself. Sound familiar, lesbians? The touch-starved, hyper-empathetic, emotionally armored queer woman who flinches at intimacy but desperately wants it anyway? That’s literally us.
Theo is canonically queer (she has a girlfriend in episode 2, and later we see her in a bar picking up women like it’s her second job), and the show never makes it a big deal—which in 2018 felt revolutionary. She’s just… a lesbian. A hot, tragic, alcoholic, touch-me-and-I’ll-know-your-deepest-secrets lesbian who drinks whiskey neat and dances alone in her cottage to Låpsley. I mean, come on.
But it’s not just Theo. The entire show is dripping with lesbian energy if you squint (or if you’re gay, you don’t even need to squint). The way the women in this family love and hate and protect and destroy each other is so intense it feels like every scene is one suppressed confession away from a coming-out speech or a desperate kiss in the rain.
Nell, the baby of the family, has that soft, doomed lesbian vibe—sweet, haunted, always trying to fix everyone while falling apart herself. Shirley, the eldest sister, is the repressed control-freak lesbian who married a man but spends her life embalming dead bodies and yelling at her siblings because feelings are scary. And Luke? Poor Luke is the only boy, basically the token straight in a sea of messy queer women energy.
Even the ghosts feel gay. Poppy Hill? Toxic manipulative ex energy. The Bent-Neck Lady? The ghost of every situationship that never texted back.
But the real lesbian heart of the show is the theme of “feeling too much.” Every Crain sibling is cursed with hyper-sensitivity in some way, but Theo takes the cake. She literally cannot touch anyone without absorbing their trauma. Tell me that’s not the most lesbian metaphor you’ve ever heard. We all know what it’s like to brush hands with a girl in a coffee shop and suddenly spiral into a three-week situationship that ends with you crying in your car listening to Hayley Kiyoko.
And don’t even get me started on the Red Room. That mysterious room that looks different to everyone? The room that traps you by giving you exactly what you think you want? That’s comphet, babes. The Red Room is compulsory heterosexuality. It feeds on your deepest desires and keeps you locked inside a fake life forever. Nell’s dance studio, Shirley’s perfect family room, Luke’s treehouse… and Theo’s? We never fully see it, but it’s implied it’s a place where she can finally touch and be touched without pain. I’m not okay.
The show also understands something deep about queer trauma: sometimes the scariest thing isn’t the ghost—it’s the family that refuses to talk about what happened. The Crains spend decades gaslighting each other (and themselves) about Hill House, just like so many queer people spend years pretending “it wasn’t that bad” or “I’m over it.” The horror isn’t just the house—it’s the silence.
When the siblings finally start telling the truth in the later episodes? That’s the real exorcism. That’s the coming out. That’s the moment you text your sister at 2 a.m. saying “Remember when Mom used to…” and suddenly everything clicks into place.
Also, can we talk about how every woman in this show is stupidly attractive? Victoria Pedretti as Nell? Carla Gugino as Olivia? Kate Siegel as Theo? Annabeth Gish as Mrs. Dudley with her severe bun and religious repression? Even the ghosts are hot. This show looked at the lesbian gaze and said “yes, and?”
Look, if you’re a lesbian who loves horror, family trauma, slow-burn emotional devastation, and women in blazers who look like they haven’t slept since 2009, you need to watch The Haunting of Hill House right now. It’s not just a ghost story—it’s a love letter to every queer woman who ever felt too much, loved too hard, and built walls out of sarcasm and whiskey and black leather gloves.
And if you’ve already seen it… go rewatch episode 6 (“Two Storms”). You know why. That funeral scene. Theo touching Nell’s body in the morgue. The way Shirley finally breaks. I’ll wait here while you go cry again.
Hill House isn’t just haunted. It’s gay haunted. And I, a humble lesbian, have never recovered.
(Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put my own gloves on and stare moodily out the window while “I Found” by Amber Run plays dramatically in the background.)
— A very not-okay lesbian who still hasn’t emotionally recovered since 2018
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