If you’re reading this, there is a very good chance that you’ve reached the end of The Haunting of Bly House , and are now desperate for answers.
After all, the show was a wild ride from start to finish, with familiar faces, new ghosts to send chills up your spine, and more questions than there are answers.
To help solve them, take a look at these 10+ behind the scene secrets.
Beware: lots of spoilers ahead.
1. Creator Mike Flanagan got inspiration from gothic horror novels by Henry James.
For instance, James’ novel, The Turn of The Screw largely inspired the show.
It was about two young orphans who live in an old mansion and get taken care of by a young governess.
But that’s not the only James novel that made it into the show.
Flanagan revealed to ComingSoon.net that several of James’ novels were adapted during the season.
Flanagan has a knack of reimagining old novels, as he turned one of Shirley Jackson’s novels into The Haunting of Hill House .
2. The show is actually a love story.
Yes, horror aside, there are lots of touching moments.
“Whereas season 1 was about the bonds between family, season 2 explores love in various forms: from romantic to platonic, from toxic to empowering,” Flanagan revealed to journalists on a set visit.
This love aspect is actually what attracted Victoria Pedretti, who played Dani, to the script.
“We display a lot of different kinds of love—toxic love, convenient love, practical love,” she said.
“When Dani comes to the U.K., she’s definitely not looking for love, but she finds these beautiful connections. She does end up finding somebody that she begins to feel really safe and loved by and attracted to.”
3. Kate Siegel wasn’t in the lake scene when the Lady of the Lake dragged Dani, Peter, Rebecca, Flora, and Henry toward the lake.
“Because I had a baby, I couldn’t, even when I wanted to come, like haunt Victoria and Ollie and Henry [Thomas],” she told TV Insider .
Instead, she had a body double (pictured above, left) shoot the scenes for her.
4. Pedretti told Buzzfeed that the lake scene was a “very complicated thing to accomplish.”
“I personally felt a bit like a puppet. We were rigged up on so many strings going in different directions,” she said .
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5. Making the mask for the faceless woman took a lot of work.
It took special effects and a silicone mask to make the character look so terrifying.
Siegel told ET that the silicone mask was the base, as it had eyes cut out and a slit for the mouth.
It also had two little holes for the nose.
From there, effects were added.
“And so it starts that way and then the effects to it,” Siegel said. “It’s very creepy and very heavy.”
6. The child that was moving the dolls around was doing so to let Flora know where the ghosts were.
At first, some thought that he was dictating the Lady in the Lake’s route.
But Siegel told ET that he was repaying Flora for giving him “a face and a story.”
“And that’s how her and Miles could save Dani every time they did,” she said.
“‘I need a nighttime story,’ ‘I need some more milk,’ ‘You’re gonna get locked in the closet now!’ Oh, that was good, Victoria just nails that! It was so scary.”
7. *American Horror Story* influenced the show.
Flanagan loves the approach the show has taken to creating an anthology series.
“Something I love about any anthology series, and one of the things I think is the most fun about American Horror Story, is watching how they decontextualize everyone,” he said on set.
8. T’Nia Miller didn’t know that her character, Hannah, was dead the entire time.
She didn’t learn about this until after they had already started filming episode five.
When she found out, she loved it. “That’s super cool. I’ve never played a ghost before,” she told Buzzfeed .
Speaking of Hannah being dead, the actress believed that her character would have dated Owen if she wasn’t dead.
“I think that Hannah hasn’t been touched by a man for so long, once she started getting some, you know, she would’ve been holding onto her man for dear life.”
9. Amelia Eve, who plays young Jamie, loved the “I love you” scene between Jamie and Dani the most.
“It was like a promising moment for them finally,” she told Buzzfeed .
“Everything had been a bit of a trial up until then, and someone was always a bit down and someone was pulling somebody else up.”
“So, it was finally a moment where we both just got to be happy in this relationship. It was really beautiful,” she continued.
Aww! She also revealed that that scene was originally much longer.
10. The exterior of Bly Manor was located next to a cannabis farm.
The cast all found this fact to be completely hilarious.
In addition to this, each set was separated into the floors of Bly Manor. Eve told Buzzfeed that this made everything feel connected.
11. Eve didn’t know that Carla Gugino was going to play the older version of her character.
She was super pleased by this since she had hoped to work with the actress.
“It was the most incredible, beautiful thing to finish that season and watch her being Jamie and loving Dani,” added Victoria. “Oh my god, it was, like, really touching.”
12. Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who plays Peter, and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, who plays Miles, would film their scenes in a unique way.
That’s because Peter was controlling Miles and Ainsworth wanted to see how Peter would behave.
“We would sit down, and I would do the scene, I would read the Miles lines as Peter, and then he would kind of copy it,” Oliver told Buzzfeed.
When it was Ainsworth’s turn to film, Oliver would be off-screen to help .
“It’s quite a hard thing for a 10- or 11-year-old to suddenly be a 35-year-old.”
