Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Edgar Alen Poe
There is a chill in the air. Somehow the night seems darker. There are far-off moans and creeks from inside the mansion. It is time for Hallow’s eve… and the full reveal of my home’s haunted Halloween transformation.
The spirits are ready for their night of reckoning. I am ready too. The haunted mansion is complete. My ghosts are flying about and posted at windows beckoning people in and scaring people off. My dark alters are set with flirting firelight calling the spirits home.
Halloween is a sacred time for witches like me. I spend a whole lotta time crafting my Halloween stage. I love to weave together our everyday decor with intentional Halloween decor to provide the realistic illusion that this is in fact a haunted mansion that time has forgotten and spirits are free to wonder.
My final details are old family photographs, so “old’ in fact you can call them Olde as in Olden Days.
Sepia prints of great great aunts, uncles, grandparents that I pulled out of boxes. These pictures are so genuinely eerie and unintentionally haunting. For my family sepia pics I found oval frames. Oval frames evoke a feeling of dark bedchamber.
I also have used about 6 cans of lacquer black spray paint on everything from wooden oval frames to last year’s Christmas wreaths. This too, screams dark souled mansion.
My piece de resistance is my prized collection of bones, bugs, and birds. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I have ordered apothecary jars and glass upside down jars to house my bones, bugs, and birds.
I also have artwork that just so happens to straddle that line between obvious seasonal decor and just the decor of the house aka haunted mansion. Of course, my black cat looks fabulous too.
That is all on top of the decor I used in stage one of the transformation, including perfectly scary and slightly insane asylum vibe lighting, candles galore, and mirrors that might make you wonder if there is someone watching you as you pass. You can read more about it here.
It’s enough to make you think that
- a. this house is really haunted,
- b. Halloween brings out the spooky best in me or ..
- c. I found yet a new way to apply my mad staging skills!
Either way, I’d be careful if you get too close… after all, it is Halloween…. (insert crazy spooky laugh that comes from no one here)
“and the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
