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.

Episode Summary

Who is the most famous ghost you’ve ever seen? Do you think people who are loved and revered by the masses long after death have more energy to manifest? 

Our guest today has seen her fair share of ghosts, but some of those ghosts are of people you’ve probably heard of. Perhaps it’s because she gives ghost tours of one of the most haunted districts in the U.S. Or maybe these particular ghosts like her commitment to ethics in business. Let’s hear from Rachel, founder of Vampyre Cosmetics, today, on Homespun Haints.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

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About the Guest, Rachel Clinesmith

Rachel is the founder and CEO of Vampyre Cosmetics. She is also the Editor in Chief of Vampyre Magazine and Co-Owner & Founder of Vampyre Cosmetics LLC. Actually Autistic & ADHD, makeup has been a special interest since she was 13. She has been designing custom cosmetics products for a number of other independent brands and celebrities since 2011. She created Vampyre Cosmetics LLC for the niches mainstream brands leave behind. Her experience working with the music, pinup, burlesque, and horror communities/industries has given her first-hand knowledge of the needs of these subcultures.

Bloody Mary’s Voodoo Museum

Rachel gives ghost tours through Bloody Mary’s Tours and Haunted Museum. Voodoo Queen Bloody Mary’s home apparently had enough strange entities to sincerely disturb the crew of Ghost Adventures. Some entities came with the house, some came with Mary, some came with the artifacts. And some may have come slithering in with the filthy flood waters of Hurricane Katrina. You can speak to the ghosts yourself at one of their séance experiences.

Feeling the fear of ghosts

Rachel posits that empaths living in a haunted place are likely to sometimes feel afraid of the ghosts. But she proposes that a lot of this fear is fear of the unknown, not necessarily a sign of a malevolent force. And if we are afraid of the unknown (ghosts), surely the ghosts are also afraid of the unknown (us).

The Ursuline Convent Casket Girls; truth vs. fact

As Rachel said, if there are vampires, and they are real, they’re probably in New Orleans. But were they shipped over in coffins to hide in the upper floor of the French Quarter convent in 1706? Or were vampires just a convenient scapegoat for mosquito borne illness, tuberculosis, and cholera?

The filles à la cassette were basically mail-order brides, shipped in to populate the new port city of New Orleans. The lore has gained some embellishment over the years. Ok, a lot of embellishment. Filles à la cassette became Filles à la casquette. The girls and their cases/caskets never lived in the convent’s attic.

Also, the attic windows are not really bolted on the outside. But when entire families were dying out from poorly understood diseases, vampirism seemed as good an explanation as any. These girls were the newest kids in town. Coming straight from convents and orphanages in Europe, they were probably ill-equipped to stand up for themselves in the new world port towns full of trappers, soldiers, and hookers.

New Orleans’ Unconventional Heroes and their Famous Ghosts

Despite its history as a plantation city, New Orleans has always represented some ideals of democracy ahead of its time. NOLA was one of the only locations in the early American settlements where even enslaved people had the opportunity to pursue a better life by buying their own freedom. And, as Rachel said, the famous figures which NOLA considers heroes would be villains elsewhere. Here are some she talks about in this episode.

• Pere Antoine, a priest who disobeyed orders to minister to everyone, including slaves and prisoners. The city rallied to keep after the local vicar booted him in 1805. His ghost now haunts the French Quarter alley named for him.
• Jean Lafitte, a straight up pirate. While he did all the nasty things most associate with pirates, locals viewed him as a sort of Robin Hood figure. There’s still a bar in the French Quarter inside the blacksmith shop he and his brother Pierre dealt out of. In fact, it might be the oldest structure used as a bar in the United States.
• Marie Laveau, voodoo queen and local hero. Rachel tells the story of spotting the famous voodoo priestess’ ghost in this episode. Throughout the mid 19th century, Marie Laveau used her magic and influence to help New Orleans locals of all social strata. She’s buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 of NOLA…or is she?

Sarah Winchester as a Philanthropist

Rachel’s business partner actually lives on the property of the Winchester Mystery House, so they frequently get the chance to see the ghosts there. Rachel provides the theory that Sarah wasn’t just a nutty old lady who kept building exclusively out of fear. Her goal was to atone for the lives lost due to her husband’s family’s rifle. But just playing lip service to atonement wasn’t her jam. By keeping up continuous construction, Sarah actually used her husband’s money to employ many residents of San Jose, CA.

We can’t wait for Vampyre Cosmetics’ 3D Winchester House-inspired makeup palette to come out June of 2023!

Haunted Atchison, KS

Rachel says that there are plenty of ghosts to see in Atchison, KS. But she also warns that the entities there are malevolent. Perhaps avoid ghost tourism in the area. Because if you visit once, you’ll possibly get stuck there.

Have you seen a famous ghost in New Orleans, California, Kansas, or elsewhere?

Or do you run your own spooky business? Why not submit to tell your story on the next episode of Homespun Haints? And if you’ll be in NOLA soon, remember to request Rachel as your French Quarter tour guide at bloodymarystours.com to have a historically accurate spooky day.

The post Interview with the Vampyre CEO appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Construction at the Winchester Mansion

The Winchester mansion started its existence as a much more reasonably-sized farmhouse. Sarah Winchester purchased it in 1885. Sarah’s late husband, William Winchester, was the son of the Winchester Rifle Company founder. Inheriting nearly half of the Winchester company upon his death, Sarah put her large fortune toward constant additions and construction on the farmhouse.

She designed each addition room herself. The remarkable home continued to expand. Eventually, it became a vast maze of strange rooms, hallways, stairways, and unusually-placed doors and windows that—in its heyday—rose seven stories above the ground.

Purchase this drawing as a print here.

After the 1906 San Francisco quake toppled much of the top floors of the home, Sarah chose to rebuild the mansion. She topped its new height at 4 stories. Construction on the mansion continued until Sarah’s death in 1922. Today, the sprawling, unusual estate has over 160 rooms and 13 bathrooms, and a labyrinthine series of hallways throughout.

Lore of the mansion

Popular legend holds that Sarah Winchester overlooked constant construction of her mansion as a way to hide from angry spirits. The spirits were the ghosts of those who had been slain by the Winchester rifle. Indeed, if a human can easily get lost in this home, it’s easy to imagine a ghost could have trouble finding their way around as well.

Other opinions maintain that Sarah had a philanthropic spirit and wanted to support her community. She did so by employing contractors and tradesmen. Perhaps she used construction as a way to occupy her mind. She grieved over the loss of her husband and infant daughter. Or maybe she just really enjoyed designing, experimenting, and building.

The home is full of many inventive marvels. It contains an over-heated room to create a sauna effect, and a staircase of many incredibly shallow stairs (accessible for an arthritis sufferer such as Sarah herself).

But is the Winchester Mystery House really haunted?

Even if Sarah never intended for the house to be home to spirits, it is easy to see why the Winchester Mystery House is haunted. After all, Victorian architecture has a reputation for being a breeding ground for spirits. Ornate details, nooks and crannies, and twists and turns are notorious for catching ghosts and holding on to them, so even if a ghost were merely passing through, he might find himself stuck, and right at home, within the Winchester walls.

Furthermore, in our podcast we’ve heard many creepy stories of places that seem to have become haunted because enough people believed they were haunted. These would be hauntings occurring from mass collective unconscious manifestation, if you will. Maybe that is possible; maybe it’s not. Regardless, certain places throughout the world attract ghosts for whatever reason. And the Winchester Mystery House could very well be such a place.

Certainly, plenty of tour guides and visitors alike report hauntings within the Winchester walls. So no matter how the ghosts got there, enough people experience things to give its haunted reputation some validity.

Whether or not you believe in ghosts, or believe the folklore surrounding the construction of the Winchester Mystery House, one thing is certain: Sarah Winchester herself was a creative mastermind, and the bizarre genius of the Winchester mansion is something everyone can enjoy experiencing. If you’ve visited the Winchester House, get on our Facebook group and tell us a story about your spooky day!

The post Is the Winchester Mystery House Haunted? appeared first on Homespun Haints.