The Bent-Neck Lady

Background

Child Nell is tormented by an apparition she calls the Bent-Neck Lady, a ghost with a broken neck. Adult Nell sees a sleep technologist, Arthur, for sleep paralysis. The two fall in love and marry. But during their first year of marriage, Arthur suffers a brain aneurysm and dies, as the Bent-Neck Lady returns.

Nell stops using her medication, believing that it makes her see the Lady. Convinced by her therapist that Hill House is "just a carcass" of a house and not the haunted nightmare of her past, Nell travels to the house. She sees it as it was in her childhood, fully renovated, with her family and Arthur present. However, the house is actually desolate and abandoned.

Nell is led to the spiral staircase, where she puts a noose around her neck while imagining it to be her mother's locket. She is then pushed by her mother's ghost, breaking her neck. As Nell dies, she travels through the past, revealing that she herself was the Bent-Neck Lady and has been haunting her younger self all along.