‘Haunted’ Season 2 on Netflix: Is the Horror Show Real, or Fake?

It’s October and that means it’s time for Netflix to unleash its most frightening content. Like blood gushing forth from the Overlook elevators, here comes a whole new season of the I-can’t-believe-it’s-real horror series Haunted. The series premiered last year and is back with another round of terrifying true stories.

Each episode of Haunted uses footage of a real person telling their loved ones an IRL ghost story (sometimes involving demons, aliens, or a serial killer) and intersperses it with cinematic reenactments of the harrowing events. But just because Haunted says everything is a true story, viewers can’t help but wonder if it they are true stories.

The chasm between fact and fiction is as smoky as Clarence the ghost in these tales, some (or all) of which may be tall tales. Or perhaps the storytellers in question are telling their truth. So, what’s the deal? Is Haunted for real? Have the producers or Netflix said anything about the series since it came out last year? Here’s what we know…

Is Haunted on Netflix real?

Every episode of Haunted begins with “the following is a true story,” so that settles it. Haunted is all real! Okay okay okay, we’re all savvy enough TV viewers that we know that even “true stories” aren’t always true stories. I mean, that’s why you’re reading this article! You have doubts!

RELATED: ‘Haunted’ EP Brett-Patrick Jenkins Has a Message for Skeptics: “The Show Is Completely Real”

There sure were a lot of doubts surrounding the Season 1 episode “The Slaughterhouse,” with a whole lot of people on Twitter citing that episode as the one that caused them to go “waitaminute–you’re telling me that this Netflix show uncovered the identity of an actual serial killer and didn’t get the cops involved?” Whereas all the other episodes in Season 1 deal with ghosts, demons, and aliens (creatures that aren’t real as far as mainstream science is concerned) tormenting individuals, “The Slaughterhouse” could potentially solve a whole lot of real-life cold cases. There are real world ramifications, here!

Even though “The Slaughterhouse” caused people to question the whole series’ authenticity, Haunted EP Brett-Patrick Jenkins has maintained for the past year that the show is based on real stories.

He even addressed the skepticism surrounding “The Slaughterhouse,” linking to a Wikipedia list of unidentified serial killers and saying that he wasn’t willing to comment further on it for fear of getting people in trouble. He even called out all the skeptics, wondering if “people will change their reviews” when all the stories are eventually “confirmed to be true.”

In response to all this, Mashable did their own investigation into “The Slaughterhouse.” According to Mashable, Netflix and Jenkins declined to comment at the time and the New York State Police said they “have not received any information from the producers or Netflix in regards to the alleged crimes that were portrayed on this program.” Mashable did contact Eryn McGarry, the subject of Episode 3, who told the reporter that her story was true although it wasn’t put through a thorough factcheck.

Two weeks later, Jenkins posted a thread about “The Slaughterhouse,” saying that the show contacted the police but leads are hard to follow because so much time has passed. He then linked to a 2016 article about a cold case murder investigation in Plattsburgh, New York without adding context (is it related to “The Slaughterhouse”?), thus confusing Twitter sleuths further.

So, are the stories on Haunted true or not?

In all of these cases save “The Slaughterhouse,” it’s impossible to know. You can’t factcheck whether or not a woman from Shreveport has been repeatedly abducted by aliens, nor can you factcheck if a goth girl has a demon named Clarence watching over her at all times. It’s entirely possible that these subjects believe their stories to be true. This is what they believe happened, and the show dramatizes their account of spooky events from their lives. As long as the paranormal witnesses on Haunted are not paid actors reading from a script, then the show is as based on a true story as any “true story” about a bunch of ghost kids in a basement well can be.

I have to point out that at least three of the subjects in Haunted season one are involved in either horror or supernatural projects/careers. Jason Hawkins (S1E1) is a horror movie writer/director/producer. Eryn McGarry (S1E3) hosts a paranormal podcast, runs a blog about the paranormal, moonlights with a paranormal investigation team, and documents her love of spooky things on Instagram. And Harvey Althaus (S1E4) now works as a medium, which is in line with his episode of Haunted. To editorialize, none of this is proof that they’re not telling the truth. It makes sense that people that believe they’ve had wild encounters with the paranormal would be into talking about the paranormal and making paranormal art. And it makes sense that Haunted’s casting department would begin their search by looking at people that work as psychics and ghost hunters. No one faults RuPaul’s Drag Race for looking for drag queens in gay bars when it was starting out, so you can’t fault Haunted for finding spooky stories in the horror realm.

If you do want to fact check things, though, there are a couple of truly wild criminal acts from Season 1 that could be verifiable. In S1E1, Jason Hawkins describes seeing a naked maniac murder someone in a motel restaurant with an ax. Later, it’s revealed that the apartment he moved into as a teen was once inhabited by a woman who murdered her children in the bathtub and then hanged herself in the closet. There should be records of both of those crimes, if you can track down police records that are probably between, I dunno, 40-50 years old from undisclosed locations. And even those stories count on Hawkins’ memory of events being accurate (memory’s a tricky thing) and the murderous mother story being a true story and not an urban legend that was told to him. If you want to verify the events of Haunted, that’s where you could start (and good luck).

Decider has reached out to Netflix for comment. Haunted Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.

Stream Haunted on Netflix