Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1978, Mike Flanagan's family moved around throughout his childhood, following his father's postings as a U.S. Coast Guard. Flanagan shot video from a young age and graduated from Towson with a degree from their Electronic Media and Film department, then moved to Los Angeles and paid the bills as an editor of reality television shows like "Untold Stories of the ER" (TLC, 2004-). With an idea for a feature horror film, but only the resources to make part of it, Flanagan shot the short film "Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man With the Plan" (2006). Although the short didn't immediately allow him to make the feature version, it did earn him enough fans to fund a Kickstarter campaign that launched his next film, "Absentia" (2011). Although the film didn't get a theatrical release, it was popular on Netflix and finally allowed Flanagan to film the feature version of "Oculus" (2013). The release of his next film, "Before I Wake" (2016) was interrupted by the bankruptcy of Relativity Media and eventually premiered on Netflix as well. "Ouija: Origin of Evil" (2016) and "Hush" (2016) quickly followed, then "Gerald's Game" (2017), adapted from a Stephen King novel. Flanagan directed every episode of the highly regarded first season of "The Haunting of Hill House" (Netflix, 2018-) and wrote three of the episodes on his own, in addition to co-writing one. In 2018, it was announced that Flanagan would write and direct an adaptation of Doctor Sleep, Stephen King's sequel to The Shining.