How to celebrate season’s terrifying tradition

‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’

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(Netflix)

This contemporary retelling of Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” is a masterpiece of modern gothic. As in the original story, a young woman, here an American named Dani (Victoria Pedretti), takes a job as governess to two young children, Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and Flora (Amelie Bea Smith), who live in a grand and isolated manor with housekeeper Hannah Grose (a terrific T' Nia Miller). The children, as ever, are both charming and odd, and tragedy moves through the echoing corridors of Bly Manor. Tragedy, and many other things, as Flanagan blurs the psychological and the supernatural even more vigorously than James did.

‘The Haunting of Hill House’

(Netflix)

This series, which predates “Bly Manor” and shares many cast members, is a modern-day adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s classic of the same name. Steven Crain (Michiel Huisman) has become a bestselling author with a book based on a family tragedy that took place while his parents, Olivia (Carla Gugino) and Hugh (Henry Thomas), were renovating an (you guessed it) isolated mansion where things are not as they seem. As adults, Steven's siblings are still angry at their brother's betrayal and, more important, haunted by what happened to them in Hill House, which we see in a series of increasingly terrifying flashbacks as the house continues to call to them.

‘Midnight Mass’

(Netflix)

After serving four years in prison for a drunk-driving accident in which a woman was killed, Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) returns to his isolated (naturally) hometown on Crockett Island where a new priest, Father Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater), is attempting to revitalize the local church. Flynn attempts to rebuild his life even as mysterious events begin plaguing the island. With one of the best midseason reveals in TV history, “Midnight Mass” has plenty of jump scares while exploring, with surprising delicacy, the need for, and perils of, religious faith.