HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE Creator Mike Flanagan Talks About What It Would Take To Make a Third Season

The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor are two wonderfully made horror shows created for Netflix by Mike Flanagan. I would love nothing more than to see a third season of this Haunting franchise, but Flanagan has said on social media that there are no current plans for that.

So, what would it take for Flanagan to jump in and make a third season? And why isn’t his next series, Midnight Mass, a part of the Haunting franchise? During a recent interview with EW, he explains, saying:

"One of the things that defines the Haunting anthology for me is that both of them so far are about updating and riffing on existing classic literature. Midnight Mass was always so original and important and personal, it just never felt like it was ever going to be a part of that universe."

As you know, Hill House was inspired by author Shirley Jackson's gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House. Bly Manor was inspired by Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Flanagan and his creative team did a great job of bringing these stories to life. In both of the shows, Flanagan and his writers explored the idea of memories as ghosts. When it comes to the possibility of a third season, he shared:

"If the stars align in such a way that we decide to go back into the Haunting world, it would have to be so much on that track that we've set up. It would have to be with the right piece of IP, it would have to be with the right ghost-centric story, and it would have to really fit with Bly and Hill House."

While there are no plans for another Haunting series, at least we can look forward to seeing the upcoming series Midnight Mass, which looks fantastic! When talking about that series, Flanagan said:

"[Midnight Mass] always clearly existed in its own world. I think it's fun for us to bring back people we like to collaborate with, but those collaborations predate and will continue to exist long after Haunting.”

If I were to suggest a book to adapt as a third season of Haunting, it would be the 1979 novel Ghost Story, written by Peter Straub. It tells the twisting tale of four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder.

Are there any books you’d like to see adapted as a third season of Haunting?