I have exactly two memories of going to the movies as a kid. The first was Titanic when I was ten years old. James Cameron’s blockbuster might have won a bunch of Oscars, but the movie that made a bigger impression on me came two years later, when my dad took my best friend and me to see The Haunting.

Twelve was an important age for me. That was when everything started changing. My body was changing. I was growing out of boy bands and bubblegum pop and into punk rock. I started thinking about everything differently.

And I got a crush — on a girl. Her name was DeeDee and she may have spoken to me twice. (She did once ask me if I liked Fiona Apple, so I think it’s fair to assume that, wherever she is now, she’s gay too.) She was beautiful and she seemed so much more mature than the rest of us in seventh grade. She was unlike anyone I had ever met.

DeeDee disappeared from my life as quickly as she came, but she haunted the back of my mind through all the years of denial and fear and, finally, acceptance. She was there when I was seventeen and fell in love for the first time — and ran away because I still couldn’t face the truth. She was there in my early adult years when I struggled with even more confusion, compounded with regret and crappy mental health. I couldn’t always see her, but she was always there. And she wasn’t alone.

If I think about it, my childhood was riddled with women from movies and TV shows who I was crushing on before I ever knew that could be a thing. Kimberly from The Power Rangers, Deanna Troi, Dana Scully. They were major presences in my young life, but the character that stands out to me more than any of them — despite the fact that it would be twenty years before I ever actually watched her on screen again — was Catherine Zeta-Jones as Theo in The Haunting.

I remember sitting in the dark theater and being absolutely mesmerized the moment Theo sauntered on screen. And though I wouldn’t remember the context, I always remembered one of her lines: “My boyfriend thinks so; my girlfriend doesn’t.” My girlfriend. Those two words rattled me more than any of the ghosts that came later.

That being said, I also remember being terrified by the movie itself. The CGI looks horribly dated now, but it was pretty scary at the time. On the drive home, my dad laughed and told me if I wanted to see something really scary, I should watch the original version of The Haunting. One Halloween — maybe the same year, maybe later, time isn’t real — Robert Wise’s 1963 classic came on television and my dad and I watched it together. And he was right: it was fucking scary.

The Haunting prompted me to start actively seeking out old horror films and revisiting the handful of Hammer and Vincent Price movies I’d grown up watching with my mom. Thus my love of classic horror and my gay awakening are forever linked. And Theo is right in the middle of it all.

In the twenty years since that fortuitous theater outing, I’ve seen the original film a dozen times and gone back to the source material, Shirley Jackson’s incredible 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. But what stirred up a renewed interest in Theo — and prompted me to finally rewatch the 1999 film — was Mike Flanagan’s series on Netflix, a modern reimagining of Jackson’s tale.

It got me thinking: Hill House and Theo have been around for sixty years. If we compare each incarnation side-by-side, what will it tell us about the evolution of the way queer characters like Theo are presented in media? How far have we really come?

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Shirley Jackson may have objected to critics pointing out lesbian themes in her work, but I have trouble believing that they were accidental. In the character introductions of The Haunting of Hill House, we’re told that Theodora (she wouldn’t become “Theo” until the first film) shares an apartment with a “friend” who is deliberately neither named nor gendered — a conscious choice, especially given that it follows the very detailed descriptions of Eleanor’s sister and brother-in-law.

The most important relationship in the book — other than the relationship between Eleanor and Hill House — is between Eleanor and Theodora. It starts off affectionate but eventually becomes strained and resentful as Eleanor falls deeper under the house’s spell. She also becomes an increasingly unreliable narrator, so it’s hard to find the truth underneath her clouded judgement, especially when it comes to Theodora.

Whenever men show any attention to one of the two women, the other becomes jealous. Who they’re really jealous of isn’t made clear in the text itself, but to me it’s plain as day. Eleanor is having her own sexual identity crisis and she projects her uncertainty onto Theodora (and Luke, who neither of the women is truly interested in; in Eleanor’s mind, the idea of them both being attracted to Luke is easier to deal with than the thought that she’s really attracted to Theodora).

Robert Wise’s Theo is only slightly less ambiguous than her literary counterpart. The film retains much of the novel’s subtext, such as the scene where Eleanor asks Theo if she’s married, to which she wryly, simply replies, “no.” Both narratives present her sexuality in a way that can either be instantly recognized or easily missed, depending on the viewer’s perspective (that is, depending on if you’re wearing gay goggles or straight blinders).

But The Haunting does take things a step further. Though Wise gives Eleanor a romantic interest in Dr. Markway, her relationship with Theo still reads as Eleanor having feelings for the other woman and freaking out about it. She lacks the emotional maturity to process these terrifying new feelings, so she buries them until they start coming out in all the wrong ways.

When Theo accuses her of being “innocent and stupid,” Eleanor responds, “I’d rather be innocent than like you.” She goes on to say that the world is full of “unnatural things, nature’s mistakes — you, for instance.” The words cut through Theo’s carefully crafted confidence; her face is defiant but her body language tells a different story. She curls in on herself, protective, forming a shield against the kind of insults that a queer woman of her time (or any time) would certainly have been familiar with.

Eleanor’s surprising aggression and Theo’s wounded response is a reversal of their established roles, where Theo’s confidence counters Eleanor’s insecurity. Theo seems to know exactly who she is — or at least she wants everyone to think she does. But there’s a crack in her armor, and in a rare display of vulnerability, she allows Eleanor to see it by admitting that she is most afraid of “knowing what I really want.”

Our introduction to Theo in Jan de Bont’s 1999 remake of The Haunting seems to pick up this thread where Robert Wise left off. This Theo is even more brazen than her predecessor, rich and stylish and flirtatious. Upon meeting her, Eleanor draws the conclusion that Theo has “trouble with commitment;” Theo responds, “my boyfriend thinks so; my girlfriend doesn’t.”

This is the first time that Theo’s queerness is openly stated — and we’ve established the impact it had on my young self — but it’s not without issues. Theo’s bisexuality acts as an indicator that she truly doesn’t know what she “really wants,” and she falls into almost every bi stereotype in the book. Her sexual nature is her defining trait, informing everything from the way she dresses to the way the other characters respond to her. Being overtly sexual is not inherently bad, but there are problems present in both the hypersexualization and desexualization of queer characters. Straight storytellers especially walk a very fine tightrope to avoid the pitfalls of either trope.

Mike Flanagan walks that line in his series The Haunting of Hill House. Full disclosure: when I heard of this modern adaptation, my first thought was, “yes, Theo and Eleanor can finally be a thing!” Imagine my disappointment when I found out that they’re sisters.

While Flanagan’s Hill House is far removed from all of its predecessors, the heart is very much the same. This is also true of the characters. Kate Siegel’s Theo is cut from the same cloth as Claire Bloom’s Theo and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Theo, even though almost everything about her is different. She feels like the natural progression of the character’s legacy, bringing her firmly into the 21st Century and letting her shine in all her gay glory.

We’re introduced to this new modern Theo in a sex scene. In fact, she is the only main character who is given explicitly sexual scenes. She’s not the only one having sex, but since everyone else is presumed straight, we don’t need explicit scenes to establish their sexuality. It gives the impression that Theo’s lesbianism somehow makes her inherently more sexual than her straight siblings.

I’m certainly not saying that Theo should not be presented as a sexual being. I’m almost tempted to leave this caveat out entirely, because I can’t help hearing an accusatory voice telling me that I’m just looking for something to complain about. But I’m not complaining per se; I’m just saying that I feel like this sets Theo apart, like it puts her in a different playing field because of her sexuality. It’s completely possible to raise questions about how sexuality is portrayed and point out when something doesn’t sit quite right, while also appreciating when a storyteller is genuinely trying to get it right — and for the most part succeeding.

All things considered, it’s a testament to how far we’ve come that Theo gets to hook up on screen at all, and Flanagan allows her to be sexual without letting it define her. She’s given the room to grow that all the Theos who came before her never had. They were confined to smaller narratives, supporting characters in someone else’s stories, while Flanagan gives all of his characters equal footing.

Theo is just as messy and fucked up as the rest of her siblings. We see her make terrible decisions, but we also see her help those in need. We get to see her be accepted and embraced by her family. We get to see her put up walls and slowly tear them down. We get to see her build a genuine emotional connection and maybe even fall in love. We get to see her laugh and grieve and take control of her life — all while being unapologetically gay as fuck.

And you know what that is? Growth.

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The twelve-year-old who walked out of the movie theater with more questions than answers and a life-long crush on Catherine Zeta-Jones could never have imagined a time when she would describe herself as “unapologetically gay as fuck.” She would ultimately try to forget Theo — and DeeDee — and pretend that the feelings they had both inspired in her didn’t exist.

Needless to say, that didn’t work out. I never forgot them; they hung around to remind me that I had always been and was always going to be this way. And eventually I learned to not only be okay with that but to celebrate it.

Watching Theo’s growth makes me think about my own and wonder how different my life might have been without her. I would still have been gay, of course, and I almost certainly would still have found my way into the world of classic horror, but I wouldn’t have the same appreciation for this character that I almost think of as an old friend. I wouldn’t have been there for her journey from the shadows of subtext to the forefront of a story that belongs fully to her and doesn’t try to mask who she really is.

It’s been a long road for both of us. I may not have always known it, but because of Theo, wherever I walked, I never walked alone.