How does Luke’s credibility problem tie back to his particular haunting, a tall man in a top-hat? The ghost, who floats a few inches above the ground and uses a cane to push his body forward, first appears in an exquisite, near silent sequence at Hill House. The ghost retrieves a top hat in from Luke’s room and puts it on his head (who knows — perhaps the hat had once been the ghost’s). Obviously, there’s symbolism in this image. Earlier in the episode, Luke’s father put the top hat on Luke’s head and said, patronizingly, “Big boys know the difference between what’s real and what’s imaginary.” But Luke never did learn the difference between real and imaginary, because the imaginary (aka ghosts) are real to him. He turned to heroin and created a world of his own. In order to continue his habit, Luke eventually burnt out his relationships: He cheated his siblings out of money and missed his twin sister’s wedding. The top-hat man is the spectre of Luke’s “grown up” self — the stand-up, responsible individual he never became.