Remember when we did the episode about the haunted portrait? This is kind of like that, except with famous haunted portraits.

Listen now, and scroll down very slowly.

The Anguished Man

The current owner of this painting inherited it from a grandmother. Nobody knows the artist’s name. We do know that it contains the artist’s own blood. Also that the artist killed himself after painting it. The current owner hears the painting crying and moaning. There’s also a mysterious figure wandering the owner’s house since he’s owned it. You can find more details from the owner here.

Are you ready for this? Why am I asking? Nobody could be ready for this. Here you go.

The Little Boy With Cankles

Kidding, kidding! It’s actually called The Hands Resist Him. It’s on display at Perception Gallery in Grand Rapids, MI. The artist says the painting is about his adoption, and the lives that could’ve been his had he not been adopted. He also admits he may have been channeling something through his subconscious while painting it.

Oh, and don’t be offended by our cankle jokes. We have cankles ourselves, that we used to be self-conscious about, that we’ve since learned to embrace, or at least not include in our self portraits. This boy is likely just wearing thick cozy socks. Either way, Diana liked this one.

The Crying Boy

The mass produced painting hung in many households in midcentury England. Legend has it that if you purchase even a print of this painting, your house may burn down, but don’t worry, because the painting would be just fine.

John Wayne Gacy’s Painting of Pogo the Clown

Seeing Gacy’s artwork in person turned Becky’s stomach (which is her common reaction to hauntings) and her husband’s (which is not common). We recently watched a pretty good interview with Gacy’s sister and niece, about the other face he showed to his family. It’s wild how little you ever actually know someone else.

Zak Bagans owns the painting now, so if you’d like to see it it’s probably in his museum of haunted objects. For copyright purposes, let’s just say it looks very much like this Pogo doll which Chloe Manon holds in the photo below. Y’all remember Chloe? She’s the wife of the owner of much of Gacy’s artwork, housed within the Graveface Museum of sideshow oddities and serial killer memorabilia.

Death and the Child

Edvard Munch painted this version of this disturbing image 1889. There are 3 versions. The one that Becky got to see in Oslo, Norway, made her children run away screaming. As a boy, Munch’s father would apparently tell him that, even in heaven, his dead mother was disappointed in his bad behavior. No wonder the kid in the painting is covering her ears. The haunting: the girl leaves the canvas sometimes. Occasionally, you’ll hear the bedsheets over the corpse rustling.

Portrait of Bernardo de Gálvez

Portrait of the count of Galvez, on display in Galvaston, TX. (Get it? Galvez-town?). This one isn’t that creepy at first glance. But if you don’t ask permission before taking the photo, it will come out ruined. If photographed with a flash, a skull appears over the subject’s face. The subject’s eyes also follow you.

Can a painting be haunted?

After subjecting Diana to these horrifying paintings, Becky espouses her very logical grand unified theory of why haunted paintings feel haunted, why they really are haunted, and which specific features of haunted portraits actually have mundane explanations.

But what do you think, Hainted Loves? Have you seen any of these portraits in person, and if so, are you now feeling more haunted than you were before? Have you ever painted a cursed painting? Tell us about it on the show, by submitting it here. And just in case you’re in Tokyo, Becky recommended this haunted art exhibition for children. The whole family can have a spooky day!

The post The Most Terrifying Haunted Paintings in the World appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Draw a haunted mansion with me

The most reliable way to draw a haunted house is to draw a real one that everyone already associates with ghosts. The Winchester Mystery House is a great example of one of these famous haunted places. This quirky real haunted mansion is iconic in the eyes of haunted house aficionados.

The Winchester house itself also embodies many of the basic tenants of how to draw a scary drawing. Here is a video of Becky’s step-by-step realistic line drawing of the Winchester Mystery House, which Diana got to take a ghost tour of a few years ago.

Becky uses a straight edge to make clean lines and angles, because this is a realistic drawing. Almost all real houses feature standard architecture techniques, like right angles, straight lines, and peaked roofs. There are many parts of the Winchester House that are quite standard, which we think makes the more unusually constructed parts of the house even more intriguing.

I mentioned above that the Winchester house itself exemplifies the basic components of a scary drawing, making it an excellent example for this tutorial. But what are the basic components of how to draw a scary haunted house?

What is the difference between drawing a haunted house and a regular house?

Unnatural distortion

Unnatural distortion makes your drawing feel wrong and uncomfortable. This works best when it’s subtle. When something is mostly normal, but just a little bit off, we may not consciously notice the oddity. But our subconscious lizard brain is terribly uncomfortable with the dissonance. As we feel the subconscious discomfort, we could associate that with an intuitive sensation, much like the intuitive way we first recognize a haunting.

Translocation

Translocation makes your drawing feel strange and dangerous. The Winchester House’s famous Door to Nowhere is a very plain and normal doorway. It has a frame, a standard wooden door, a doorknob. Everything seems very banal and predictable about it. But when the door opens, it reveals not a room, or a hallway, or even a few steps down to a back garden. The Door to Nowhere actually leads to a tiny bit of the roof that was never meant to be stood on. Another step out would lead to a sheer drop off onto the pavement a full story below.

The same is true for the stairs that lead directly up to a solid ceiling in the Winchester. These seemingly normal architectural details put in entirely the wrong place or context tell us a house is beyond our comprehension. They imply either some mystical arcane knowledge we can only guess at, or a degree of unhinged behavior, which both feel dangerous and frightening.

Disparate meshing

Disparate meshing makes your drawing feel monstrous and paranormal. What are some things that just don’t belong on a house? This might be easy to add to a cartoon drawing of a haunted house. One could extend the front walkway to end in a giant dripping tongue, or turn the broken slats of a basement storm shelter door into the teeth of a jarring rictus.

Disparate meshing is a little more challenging on a realistic drawing, but a successful result is even spookier. Maybe the front windows and doors align in a way that subconsciously mimics an angry face. Even a vague face shape will trigger a natural human response called pareidolia. This phenomenon causes us to see human faces in random patterns.

This simple house displays a few different moods, does it not?

The front of the Winchester house is it’s most conventional part visually. Yet still, there are those two small, round windows, set symmetrically on either side of an arched doorway, with a small set of balusters only in front of the doorway, and a triangle shape above it. It’s not a very accurate face, so it wouldn’t immediately strike the viewer as an intentional face. But the subtle suggestion of a face can be enough to subconsciously imbue the house with a creepy sense of anthropomorphic agency.

Another example of disparate meshing is adding a disturbing situation to your house drawing. What could you add to the drawing to imply that some tragic event has taken place there? Remember, all haunted houses were normal houses before they became haunted. What event or circumstance created the haunting, and is there a way to display that in your picture? There are many ways to make a normal house look haunted because of the situation it’s in.

How to draw a unique, realistic haunted house

Realistically drawing the outside of a haunted house requires significant creativity. After all, most houses look pretty generic from the outside. It takes technical skill and imagination for an artist to imbue a sense of hauntedness onto a technically “normal” image of a house.

You don’t have to draw a real haunted house to create a realistic haunted house drawing. Indeed, the best haunted house drawings come from the imagination. The simplest way to start is to draw a mundane structure that people associate with creepy ghost stories. Perhaps you could sketch a cabin in the woods, or a classic Victorian cottage. Then, incorporate the above techniques as subtly as you can to create a subconscious sense of wrongness. The key to a creepy realistic scary house drawing is when you and I both know that the house is haunted, but we can’t quite put our finger on why we know.

Want to hear a story from a real-life medium who cleanses houses of ghosts before they go to market? Listen to this interview:

How to draw an easy, cute haunted house for beginners and kids

Even beginner artists can draw a cute cartoon Halloween haunted house using the above advice. For very little kids, a quirky house drawing embodies all the important elements that a haunted house drawing does for adults (disparate meshing, translocation, and unnatural distortion), but much more obviously, and minus the spooky elements.

How to draw a simple haunted house

The average cartoon haunted house drawing is more cute than scary. The overtly so cute additions and bright colors are why these types of kindergarten haunted house drawings aren’t scary per-se. Yet the elements that make them uncomfortable and unsettling subconsciously are all there. The following how-to video should make spooky house drawing easy for beginners.

A big benefit to learning to draw haunted house pictures with your kids is that children have such unbridled imaginations. Kids come up with wild concepts that are too illogical or fantastical for our censored and jaded adult brains to easily conceptualize. Quickly scribbling wildly distorted and unpredictable houses with your kids can be a great way to brainstorm for haunted house drawing ideas that could become more polished artwork later.

What are some ways to incorporate ghost folklore into a house drawing?

There may be circumstances where you want to illustrate a house within a universe where ghosts exist, but you don’t want to imply that house is haunted. In that case, adding some details associated with ghosts and folklore can be useful. One example from the American South is the addition of haint blue paint to the porch ceilings, doors, and window frames. (You do know what haint blue is, right? And what a haint is?) These videos of Becky painting houses with symbolic haint blue window frames are good examples of how to draw a non-haunted house in a scary horror scene that implies the threat of real ghosts getting in.

The house above isn’t necessarily haunted. In fact, one could argue it’s less likely to harbor spirits than an average house, given that there’s an obvious ghost repellant apparent in the image. The imagery invokes the thought of ghosts and the paranormal, without necessarily implying that the house in the image is haunted.

What should you draw on the inside of a haunted house?

If drawing the outside of a realistic haunted house is challenging due to its technical subtlety, that implies that the inside of a haunted house is much easier to portray. But why would this be?

How do you draw a haunted house on the inside?

What is the one thing every haunted house has in common with every other house? It’s that at some point in the past, it wasn’t haunted; it was just a regular house. The house became haunted at some point, either because of something that happened there, or because of something that came into the house. That means objects, people, and scenes within the house can clearly convey a sense of hauntedness by depicting the act of becoming haunted, or the consequences of a haunting.

Drawing a house full of haunted objects

There are only a certain number of items that are realistically visible from the outside of a house. Maybe a porch swing, with a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade set upon a white wicker side table. But not many of these items imply a haunting; at least not without delving into the absurd, like a potted venus flytrap, or the fantastical, like a spectral silhouette gazing out a window.

But there are thousands of items that could realistically be inside a house. What types of items might you find inside a haunted house? Maybe tools for occult rituals, that might be used to summon a specter. Or maybe objects that people feel are more likely to be haunted themselves, like antique furniture, or creepy dolls. The inside of a house also evokes a sense of vulnerability, which can contribute to that subconscious feeling of unease we associate with haunted house drawings.

Drawing people and ghosts

Another way to imply a haunting in a drawing is to include characters. Again, subtlety is key to a realistic drawing. Are the characters set apart in time from the rest of the drawing? Are they wearing period dress? Do they lurk in strange places wearing woeful expressions? Or do they show fatal injuries? Are they floating above the floor?

This step is risky if you’re going for realism. It’s hard to draw a realistic image of a ghost. That’s because, at their most realistic, ghosts just look like normal people. Drawing a normal person who is slightly transparent works, but that just doesn’t come across as easily in a black-and-white sketch the way it does in a photograph. The more obviously you try to draw a ghost, the more cartoonish the drawing is going to look.

How to draw a funny haunted house

Sometimes, adding images of ghosts to your drawing can make it instantly less realistic. But that’s not always a bad thing, depending on the desired effect. Becky’s drawing of a haunted bathroom is intentionally unrealistic to emphasize the hauntedness in a comedic fashion. The checkered floor, clawfoot tub, and shower curtain rod subtly imply that this bathroom exists in an old house with renovations. This is, to those in the know, a circumstance very associated with hauntings.

But to clue in the casual observer, Becky has decided to add some unrealistic macabre details. She includes a skeletal hand, a ghostly reflection, blood oozing from the toilet bowl, and emphasized sharp claws on the tub’s claw feet. The artist didn’t necessarily feel that the image wasn’t scary enough. Nor did she necessarily need those cheesy details to get the point across. She wanted to intentionally draw a silly, comedic picture of a haunted house.

Finally, if you prefer to have things drawn for you, rather than drawing them yourself, we get it. This massive detailed haunted mansion wasn’t an easy drawing to make. Diana doesn’t draw much at all either; she leaves that to Becky. Becky sells prints of some of her haunted house drawings, including the one of the Winchester mansion below, in our merch store.

Which video of how to draw a haunted house was your favorite?

We hope this tutorial has illuminated how to draw haunted houses, from easy cartoon haunted house sketches for beginners, to realistic and psychologically unsettling printable horror drawings for advanced artists. Rather than just an easy, step-by-step guide to the physical pieces, we wanted to provide you with deeper concepts. We hope that understanding these elements sparks your own unique artistic creativity.

If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube haunted house direct draw videos, embedded above. Hopefully, they fill you with haunted house ideas to draw. Let us know if you can spot the three basic elements in the YouTube comments! Your feedback helps make our day a spooky day!

The post How to Draw a Haunted House With Process Drawing Videos appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

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About the Guest, Laura Tempest Zakroff

Tempest is an award-winning author, an artist, and a witch, among other things. She teaches workshops and classes on the art of sigil craft and more.

You can access her live workshops, social media, and store through her website. Keep up with her books and workshops on her social: IG: @owlkeyme.arts, Twitter: @LTempestZ, FB: facebook.com/lauratempestzakroff or YouTube. Becky avidly devours the exclusive content Tempest posts on Patreon.

Show Notes: The Art of Crafting Sigils

What is a sigil, vs crest, logo, or pictograph?

Tempest’s definition of a sigil is a mark created by humans believed to have magical powers. This conveniently also implies that the purpose of a sigil is to manifest some sort of magick. Similar to a logo, a sigil is an abstract design that represents a complex concept. A sigil is different from a crest or logo in that it mystically contains inherent magical power, rather than just serving as a representation of an entity or concept.

Are sigils universal?

The physical form of a sigil is just a complex symbol made up of other less complex symbols. There’s no universal language or alphabet of symbols in general. As Becky teaches, every symbol we believe to be universal is actually subject to alternate interpretation between different cultures.

There may however be some mystical universal form that human-derived sigils are attempting to replicate. In other words, the human who creates the symbol is both the agent of its creation, and downloading the form of the symbol from a different level of consciousness.

And yet, beyond meaning and abstract representation of concepts, there does exist some interesting universality to the basic physical shapes and signs used in sigil crafting. Tempest’s books correlate the basic symbols of ancient cave art—universal sign shapes that humans have imbued with meaning—with the concept of entoptic phenomena.

What are Entoptic Phenomena?

The calls are coming from inside the house

The original concept comes from medicine. In medical context, an entoptic phenomenon is seeing images that are coming from inside one’s own eyeball. The easiest way to understand this objective occurrence is to experience it. The most easily replicated entoptic phenomenon is “blue-sky sprites.” According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, in a completely normal eye, the white blood cells moving through the blood vessels overlaying the retina are visible. These tiny cells would be invisible to the naked eye in the context of a drop of blood outside the body. We can see our own white blood cells inside the eye vasculature only because they’re so close to our retina that they appear magnified, but they are way too close to focus on.

The vast majority of the time, we don’t notice these cells. They are only noticeable against a consistent uniform background. Throughout history, the most accessible uniform background has been the sky. Happenstantially, the blueness of the daytime sky enhances this. Since blood is mostly red blood cells, which absorb blue light, the occasional white blood cell will appear lighter against the blue backdrop. This creates the effect of witnessing continually moving light spots, which synch with the viewer’s heartbeat and occur even when the eye is at rest (unlike floaters which tend to settle down without eye movement, but also qualify as entoptic phenomena).

What are Entoptic Phenomena in the Context of Cognitive Archaeology?

In the social sciences however, the theory of entoptic phenomena expands to include visual experiences derived from within the brain, as opposed to seen externally in the physical world. These phenomena are subjective. They may occur during altered states, such as while using hallucinogens or while dreaming. It is possible that they are the foundation of symbols that have become so iconic that we assume them to be universal.

For example, when you encounter an elevator in a foreign country, there’s a good chance you instantly know which button to press to go up a floor upon seeing the symbols on the buttons. Yet all you’ve actually seen are 3 straight lines which meet at acute angles at the top, looking like this: ⬆. It’s an abstract shape which physically looks nothing like a building’s second floor. Still, if you pressed that button and the elevator ended up going down, you’d be shocked. You might even believe that you’d misread the sign, rather than accept that what you believe to be the universal “up arrow” could actually mean down in this instance. Why does that shape universally mean “up,” so thoroughly that we can’t conceptualize the difference between the shape and the concept?

What are the 32 universal first signs?

Most cave art research focuses around images of identifiable objects, like animal and human forms. But what about the abstract shapes? Abstract geometric signs are much more common than images of humans or animals in cave petroglyphs. Paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger was the first to document and catalogue these geometric shapes. What she found was that, barring a handful of outliers, there were really only 32 basic geometric signs, repeated throughout Europe over a 30,000 year period! This is a shocking similarity in the basic signs and symbols used by ancient humans, even outside of Ice Age Europe. These same 32 signs and similar patterns are found repeating in ancient cave art across the world, from Europe, to Africa, to Asia, to Australia.

Are these universal symbols inherent to human neurology?

The archaeological theory of entoptic phenomena suggests that the origins of a sign like this could be shapes that are universal to human neurology, visualized and assigned meaning during an altered state. The signs referred to in this speculative theory are usually non-pictorial ancient cave paintings. During the altered state, hallucinations might cause visions of a specific set of geometric shapes, similar to the shapes one would see during a migraine aura. The altered state would allow the hallucinator to assign cultural or personal meaning to these hallucinated shapes, who would then go on to teach this meaning to others.

Over time, the abstract allegorical meaning of the symbol becomes indistinguishable from the shape of the symbol itself. Whether the hallucinations in question were due to intentional psychotropic substance consumption or some other situation, like dreaming, psychosis, or seizures, is still debatable. This whole theory might be debatable, to be honest, but it’s certainly interesting to ponder!

How to craft a sigil

The unique insight that Tempest brings to this conversation is that a sigil’s primary magick does not exist in the physical mark itself, or even the use thereof, but in its creation process. What is involved in crafting a sigil? Tempest walked us through the overarching steps of sigil witchery.

1. Define the why, or the problem. When making a key, it really helps to know what the lock looks like.
2. Brainstorm the precise desired outcome. Tempest says that magick takes the path of least resistance. If a crafter is unclear about the specifics, the outcome may be technically correct, but incredibly different from the intended result.
3. Design the sigil. Start with some recognizable symbols that correlate with the intention. Tempest suggests an arrow for transition, etc.
4. (Optional step.) Acknowledge or apply the sigil. Carve it into a bar of soap to clean with; print it on paper to burn; tattoo it on your lower back for whatever reason people get lower back tattoos.

Would you craft your own sigil?

While Tempest helped us understand the art, craft, and metaphysics of sigil witchery, she also cautioned that there are many different forms of sigils, sigil creation, and sigil usage. The wisdom and insight contained within this episode doesn’t invalidate or disprove any other divergent type of sigil-related practice. As you absorb and apply the concepts Tempest teaches, you may find that the magick was always primarily within you. The sigil is just an outward amplifier of that power. Or is it? What are your beliefs around sigils, universal symbols, and entoptic phenomena? Have any experiences you’d like to share with us? Submit your story, and you could be the next guest on our show! Guaranteed way to have a spooky day.

Cover photo by John Fowler on Unsplash

The post Be Careful Outsourcing Your Sigils: Interview with an Expert Sigil Witch appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Listen to the story here:

Episode Summary

When we stumbled upon a YouTube video of Bridgette Mongeon happily riding her bicycle through a cemetery, we thought “this is a woman we have to get to know.” It turns out she has a special talent for channeling the deceased, especially children, while giving them new life with her haunted statues—er, we mean unique bronze memorial sculptures.

Related: Listen to another episode about haunted artwork: The Haunted Portrait.

About Bridgette Mongeon

Multi-talented sculptor, author, and speaker Bridgette of Houston, TX, is a sweet soul with a passionate drive to create, educate, and empower through her works. She is the creator of the fascinating, multi-layered Move One Place On, an Alice in Wonderland-inspired sculpture in Evelyn’s park in Houston, as well as beloved local school mascots such as the Prairie View Panther and the Grambling Tiger. To see her creative process in action, go check out her YouTube channel. There’s more to Bridgette than we could ever fit here, so please visit her website for more info and photos of her work. Bridgette also put together a post on her blog which elaborates on many of the things she shared in this interview.

How do mirror neurons partially explain Bridgette’s connection with the deceased?

Mirror neurons allow us to:

• understand the behavior of others
• interpret their intentions (and thereby facilitate empathy)
• allow us to imitate others in order to learn

They prove that empathy isn’t just a psychological phenomenon. It’s neurologically hardwired into the frontal cortex and every sensory input region of the brain from the age of three. These neurons facilitate the process of learning a new language through immersion. Mirror neurons have even been used to rehabilitate stroke patients. The patients watch others perform the movements that were lost due to the stroke. When Bridgette sculpts a monument for a lost loved one, the photos, belongings, and family memories of that person fire up her mirror neurons. This process allows her to craft an image of not just their physical form, but also their essence and personality.

What is the Facial Action Coding System?

There’s actually a field of study devoted to the interpretation of every discernible facial movement, which animators use to portray emotions. Investigators also use the facial action coding system to perceive deception by scanning for micro expressions during interviews. Fascinating!

The lost wax method of sculpting

Bridgette creates her work by melding art, technology, math, science, and engineering. And yet, despite having literally written the book on computer-assisted 3D sculpting, she also practices the ancient art of lost wax casting, which dates back to the third millennium B.C.

The bronze statue in Paris that is losing its mojo

Bridgette mentions the memorial of Victor Noir, interred in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Noir’s haunted statue is polished by the hands of multiple visitors in two particular places: his lips and his “protuberance” in his pants. Apparently, if you rub (or kiss) these particular areas of Noir’s statue, you will gain fertility.

Above: Process video of acrylic painting created to illustrate this episode.

Podcasts about Ghosts and Art

We have a lot of episodes that have dealt with ghosts and art. The Haunted Portrait deals with a particularly accurate portrait whose subject liked to rearrange furniture at night. And Everyone’s a Critic, Even the Dead, discusses Becky’s experiences running a haunted art gallery with haunted statues and a gallery ghost!

We hope you enjoy streaming all our paranormal podcasts about ghosts and art. Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post Haunted Statues: The Woman Who Sculpts the Deceased appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Episode Summary: Portals in Bathrooms

Being a kid is tough. Being a nerdy art kid staying the night in a haunted museum is even tougher. Diana didn’t know some of the haunted history of the Gilcrease Museum grounds when she started volunteering there as a child, but nothing could have prepared her for the strange thing she saw when she was all alone, at night.

Episode Show Notes

The Gilcrease Museum

The Gilcrease Museum is an art museum focusing on Native American art, founded by Thomas Gilcrease who has his house, and his tomb, on the same grounds as the building that now houses the museum.

Gilcrease himself, a man who became a wealthy oil baron at quite a young age, garnered quite a reputation for his philanthropy and art collection. We discuss him at length in the episode, but if you’d like an overview, take a look at the museum’s history page.

And, if you’d like to see the map of the grounds that Diana references in the episode, you can find it here.

Bathroom Portals

So, we admit we get a little wacky in this episode. Inter-dimensional portals that somehow appear in bathrooms? Running into trees in our living room? We swear we were sober when we recorded this.

We do have some vindication, however. In the past few decades, more and more physicists have entertained the idea that there are invisible portals that connect different dimensions, magnetic fields, and worlds. We just have a hard time seeing them.

In 2011, Harvard professor Lisa Randall published a book, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, where she describes unseen extra dimensions that exist alongside our own. Smithsonian has a great article about it.

If these dimensions exist, then can they be accessed? Perhaps through black holes, explains Now. Or, more interestingly, perhaps we already know where some of them are. At least, in the case of magnetic portals, as described by this study from NASA.

And, let’s not forget about the blog in London that attempts to document inter-dimensional portals that its residents keep bumping into.

But why do this podcast’s hosts seem to fall into these portals while in the bathroom? What do you think?

One thing’s for sure; falling off the potty into a bathroom portal in a haunted house is a surefire way to have a spooky day.

The post Teleporting with Toilets appeared first on Homespun Haints.

And, if you grew up in a home with such a painting, or paintings, would you be able to turn a blind eye to it? Would you just accept that strange things happen after the lights go out, and the oil paint ghosts crawl out of their frames?

For Megan, her haunted childhood home also contained haunted portraits, and it caused her to grow into someone who is really not afraid of anything.

Listen now:

About Megan O’Russell

Our guest this episode is Megan O’Russell, who produces the podcast A Book and a Dream, a podcast exploring the writing process and the ins and outs of loving and creating books.

Learn all about Megan on her website at meganorussell.com, and check out her latest book, Ember and Stone, available for purchase or download.

Want to read some more of Megan’s books? She has published fifteen books across five series, and you can purchase or sample them from her Amazon author page.

Haunted places mentioned in this episode

Megan grew up in a haunted colonial house in upstate New York, in a hamlet so small it doesn’t appear on the map. Therefore, we can’t show you where it is. But, we can point you to the haunted cast house she stayed at as an adult. The Atlanta Paranormal Society of Ghost Hunters fame did an investigation there, and you can read all about it here.

Cursed Images

We’ve featured other episodes that mix fine art with hauntings. Our Season 1 Finale, “Everyone’s a Critic. Even the Dead.” tells of what it’s like to run a haunted art gallery.

Can art be haunted?

A look into art history reveals many instances of haunted art. The Netflix movie, Velvet Buzzsaw, drew inspiration from real legends. And to make you really reconsider your art collecting passion, check out this list of the top 10 most haunted paintings. We also go on to talk about (and inexpertly critique) some famous terrifying haunted paintings in Season 6.

You can listen to that episode here:

Have you seen a cursed image?

What do you think? Have you ever seen artwork that was obviously haunted? How did the haunting manifest? Have you ever created a work of art that turned out to be haunted or cursed? Why not submit your story for a chance to tell it on a future episode of Homespun Haints? Until then, have a spooky day!

The post The Haunted Portrait appeared first on Homespun Haints.

This week’s promo: 3 Spooked Girls, another podcast of real ghost stories you can find online.

Episode Summary

Homespun Haints’ very own Becky once owned and operated an art gallery located in a building haunted by the ghost of someone who just wanted to play. Unfortunately, art galleries aren’t playgrounds, and this little character wrecked so much havoc on the space that our co-host had to strategically arrange the art on the walls in such a way that it would not be bothered by the rambunctious entity.

Before the gallery owners knew what was going on, however, things got creepy. Doors opened and shut on their own. Phantom construction sounds wafted through rooms that no longer existed. Only with the testimony of a paranormal investigator, and a search through the crawlspace under the gallery, did the owners finally understand what—or really, who—was making that awful noise.

Real Stories About Haunted Art Galleries

Oh did you think art was immune to hauntings? You thought wrong. You did see Velvet Buzzsaw, didn’t you? Well, this movie’s inspiration came from real events, and real artists.

Check out a list of the world’s most haunted paintings here. Some of these are so insidious that their owners gave them up after forking out gobs of money to own them.

It’s not just paintings that might possess a spirit or two. Check out a list of the world’s most haunted art museums. And, while you’re at it, take a look at this gallery for children that is made to look haunted. Creepy!

That’s all for now! Check back in December for our special holiday episode. Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post Everyone’s a Critic. Even the Dead. appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Listen here:

Haunted Hollywood Cemetery

Amy moved into an apartment in the gatekeeper’s house of Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, VA while she was in college. She lived on the top floor, and her kitchen was in the turret.

Nothing happened until the night she broke into the cemetery with some friends, and then lied to the groundskeeper about losing a mythical cat as a way to get out of getting in trouble. But then, almost in response to her lie, a strange, feral cat appeared out of nowhere, and she had no choice but to keep the devilish thing until she moved.

Other things began to happen in her strange abode. I won’t give too many details away, but the stories involve chocolate pudding, kitchen cabinets, and a strange force who referred to himself as “The Admiral.” And, of course, there were the strange spirits inhabiting the lower floors who terrorized her guests as they bolted up the house’s staircase.

Today, Amy has her own podcast, Starling Creative Living, and it’s incredible.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. You’ve got to listen to hear the rest.

What is this Hollywood Cemetery?

Hollywood Cemetery is a beautiful, park-like graveyard outside of Richmond, VA, that does, yes, hold the graves of several dead presidents. You can take your family on a nice picnic there, you can arrange to have your mortal remains interred there, and, if you’re still alive, you can rent an apartment in this beautiful Victorian gatekeeper’s house on the grounds. Just don’t get upset if the neighbors get a little too close for comfort.

And, our guest this week actually lived in said house. On the top floor.

Want to see the cemetery for yourself? You can check out a virtual tour, or read about its haunted past.

What the hell is Dear David?

Oh, you haven’t heard of Dear David? Oh my, let us widen your horizons here. Dear David is a series of Twitter threads by Adam Ellis describing the ghost of a child haunting his apartment. Not too scary, right? Except this child, David, has a viciously malformed head (because it was bashed in during the horrendous accident that probably made him into a ghost). And, David wants to kill Adam.

Read the threads here.

Until next week, have a spooky day!

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