The Haunted House: Spooky Art At Its Best

Cristen Strank-Garrett
The Paw Print

Who loves spooky, haunted art? The darkness creeping around every corner with the moonlight shining behind an old creaking house with bats flying inside or blood red eyes staring at you through a broken window. Wolves howling and lightning striking, making fear paralyze you from head to toe.
Art with haunted houses in it can strike fear into one the same way as being at the actual house. The mind, tricky that way, makes us as human beings think about the thrill of fear of ghosts, witches, and other creepy crawlies.
One who has little imagination of the supernatural can’t really distinguish the unknown as being real. Haunted house art is like being at the location, preparing to stay the night in the house where noise and floating objects have no explanation.
When thinking about haunted houses as an art form, I think of book illustrations or computer screen-savers. I’m a huge Halloween fan so I love the beyond scared out of your wits type of things. My favorite haunted related story, as a kid, was The Green Ribbon. I loved this story because of its dark atmosphere and the black cat always showing up on every page.
As an art major student here at Adams State University, I look at art that have haunted houses in them as an actual location that I am physically at and picture the sounds and images outside of the painting, drawing or print.
Going off of what information is given to me, I imagine the area the haunted house could be at and what could be going on. Not being afraid of the dark and such, I barely have an impact on the ghosts and goblins that lurk in the shadows.
“When my kids where little, they loved Halloween books, especially those with illustrations of haunted houses,” says Catherine Heaton, explaining her children’s love of the Halloween stories with haunted houses in them.
Expressing the love of haunted house art gives the jitters to people who want to get scared.
“I like things that are “happily haunted” Heaton explains, not really a fan of the hardcore scary things of Halloween.
Haunted house art can come in many forms. Earlier in the semester, the Adams State Art Department did a haunted house.
Like they do every Halloween holiday or during the week of Halloween, the Nurses Department have a haunted tour of Richardson hall giving some background of a haunted story that resides close to the building.
On all Hallows Eve, let’s all stay safe, keep our kids safe and prepare to be afraid, VERY afraid.