4 Ways to Haunt Your House with Sound
Imagine a haunted house: Cobwebs in every corner. Creaking doors and sudden screams. Oh, and creepy music — be it from an organ played by invisible hands or a spooky playlist. If you plan to haunt your home, you’ll need songs and sounds to transform it into something scary. Read on for inspiration.
Exploit the unexpected
A Halloween gathering calls for a different kind of party prep. Your chill playlist won’t do for this shindig. Instead, you’ll want something spookier: think creaking doors, rattling hardware, and gusting wind, as if every window in the house has been shattered. You can stream these sounds from a speaker. But to take it up a notch, get creative with your audio placement. Your guests might anticipate these traditional Halloween sounds to come from the usual places, like the speakers near the TV or in the den. To create suspense, find a few hiding spots for your speakers to live. Conceal Era 100 behind a curtain. Put Sonos Roam in the attic. Tuck Move 2 inside a hollow tree. The sound of a blood curdling scream in the living room is already scary. Now imagine that scream coming from a closet.
Here’s a Spotify playlist of sounds we created to help you unnerve and petrify your guests.
Find Cinematic Inspiration
Infuse terror into your home by filling different rooms with a horror film soundtrack. For the bathroom, try Bernard Hermann’s “The Murder” from the infamous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. In the kitchen, play “Goldberg Variations” from Silence of the Lambs while offering a spread of fava bean hummus. And accompany each walk down your hallway with sounds from The Shining. To add a little drama to the listening experience, stream the story through Arc — its immersive spatial audio experience will bring each narrative’s creepiest moments to life for your guests. To get you started, we crafted a playlist of soundtrack highlights from the best in horror cinema.
Tell a scary story
Don’t underestimate the written word’s power to frighten people. Classics like Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are made scarier by people’s own imaginations. Take advantage of that, and allow your guests’ minds to do the heavy lifting for you. Dedicate one room in your home for playing audio versions of the stories that have been keeping people up at night for centuries. If your guests leave with nightmares, you have done your job.
This Spotify playlist covers everything from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” to a reading of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Push past the “Monster Mash”
Your playlists are building tension among your guests — people are unnerved by the noises coming from the attic, and their minds are spinning with the content of the ghoulish stories they’ve heard. You’ll want to give them the chance to let their hair down, preferably under the light of the moon. Grab Move 2 and head outside to end the night on a dramatic note with a playlist of our favorite goth jams from the 80s and 90s, including Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, the Cure, and more. Dance and howl at the moon with your guests — there’s no other way to end this night that’s more fitting.
