Haunted dollhouse, part 3

in Haunted dollhouse, why yes I do know how to operate an EMF detector

Building up to Halloween I’ve been revealing room in my horror/fantasy inspired dollhouse.  If you missed the first ones then start here to see the kitchen and casting room and then go here for the tarot card room.  Today I’m showing you the study and the secret room and then we’ll be halfway through.

It’s still unfinished so ignore the rough edges.
Click to embiggen
Behind the potions cabinet is a secret door. (Don’t blink.)

I added five new things to this room this week from your suggestions, including the yellow wallpaper in the secret room.  I’m not sure I got the smear quite right.  Please keep the suggestions coming because they are brilliant.  10 points to whoever can identify all the allusions in this room.

PS. A video of with the door open and another with the door closed:

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Haunted dollhouse, part 3.

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89 thoughts on “Haunted dollhouse, part 3”

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  2. I am SO impressed! It looks so real until you stick your giant hand in the picture lol. Your attention to detail is amazing.

  5. I have always loved dollhouses but they are pale in comparison to yours….if you didn’t have your hand in the one picture I would think you were lying and this was a real house…I just love this!

  7. I think we’re going to need about 100 more dollhouse posts. I look at these pictures the way I used to study Dr Seuss’s Sleep book when I was a kid

  8. I love it. I have been building and collecting for a doll house for over 20 years and finally decided on mine a few months ago and am turning a Victorian House into a Witch’s House.

  9. The music is incredible! Did you build the dollhouse from scratch, or did you buy a basic model and then proceed to haunt it? Also, thank you for showing your hand in there so I can see it to scale. My daughter said she will make me one.

    One final question. How in the world do you keep your cats OUT of it?

    (I bought a kit that I put together myself but I changed it up so much it’s unrecognizable from what it should have looked like. The cats used to sleep in it and even destroyed the porch rails by chewing on them. Luckily it just added to the run-down look. You can actually see cat fur on the ceiling of the room today as I’m looking closer. A few years ago for Xmas Victor had a friend of mine make me a case for it. It’s glass and spins on a lazy susan so you can see all the sides. ~ Jenny)

  11. Hoping to see the tiny fez and 3D glasses I made you and gave to you at a reading in naperville IL on your first book tour. 😀

  15. Ok, I know I’m weird, but like I said the other day…my favorite part is the tiny little books. And now, the tiny little black cat! And a secret room is just damned cool. I had a friend in high school whose parents bought an old house that had a secret passage from the master bedroom closet to a back hallway. Coolest thing ever! It didn’t matter that we were nearly adults…we played like little kids in that passage until her parents converted it to add onto the closet. LOL

  16. So I have a question, which room contains the small compartment in the floor with the beating heart in it? I’m just going to assume there is one.

  18. These are soooo awesome. My favorite spooky thing in this room is the red and white striped ball innocently waiting to trip you as you go down the stairs….

  21. I keep hoping to see a Heathers reference…Drain-o, Orange Juice, corn nuts or a copy of Moby Dick. Although its not really a horror/fantasy movie. Someone needs to make an 80’s teen drama movie dollhouse. HA.

  22. I really need a virtual tour. I’m mean, your videos are great and all, but I would like to linger, study, meditate, absorb all weird creative creative creepiness going on here. Like the real estate agents do to show off fancy houses. Please PLEASE, can you make that happen?? :: grovel grovel ::

    (I have no idea how to do that. But I’ll see if I can maybe to a Facebook livestream or something for the final day. I’m tech-challenged. ~ Jenny)

  24. How can you have been hiding this doll house for so long (from your blog that is)?

    (I wrote about it on the blog years ago but then I got distracted. Thought I’d share again since Halloween is coming up. I tend to forget about it for a few months and then really focus on building new things for a week and then forget it again. This is one of those weeks where I have time and inspiration to keep working on it, and it’s awesome to be able to share it with people who get it. ~ Jenny)

  28. This is beyond amazing. You have talent and patience with tiny things that I will never have. I could look at these all day!

  29. Maybe you should make an “I Spy” type of book with pages for each room. You’ve done all the hard work, now take photos, make lists and bingo! Awesome job. So jealous.

  31. A tiny tiny gargoyle!! ♥♥♥♥
    Where on earth did you find that? Did you make it?
    (and don’t forget that you need an old typewriter to represent Stephen King’s “Misery”.

    (That gargoyle was a toy Hailey played with. I repainted it though to make it look less plasticky. ~ Jenny)

  37. I think I do see an armillary sphere on the first floor!

    (Yup. I bought that one. I can’t do anything with metal. ~ Jenny)

  38. i love that you added the yellow wallpaper, my ‘charlotte house’ is yellow wallpaper themed too! i am always happy to discover what a kindred spirit you seem to be.. creepy dollies, emus, mini houses.. my hubby & i have created a bunch of houses together, vampires, ravens, halloween, etc but we have a ways to go to collect & arrange all the fun details as you have put together here.. i’m amazed! 😀
    please come & visit gumbyland sometime & say hi ~
    http://friendlyghost.typepad.com/lost_found_vintage_toys/2016/10/ghost-gallery-goodies.html
    bren/ghost

    (That’s fantastic! ~ Jenny)

  40. I’ve never seen the whole house yet. Can you put a picture of the front side? Also, do you have a creepy clown in there somewhere? I love that you do this. I can’t do those sort of things because I have Man-Hands so I’m kind of envious. In a nice way, not in a stabby kind of way. :o)

    (The blog post from a couple of days ago has a pic of the front. And I totally have man hands. I’ve broken everything breakable in there. Luckily I’m good with glue. ~ Jenny)

  42. I KNEW I saw a sonic screwdriver in the bookcase / map holder thing in front of the stairs! I love this dollhouse. You are truly talented!

    (Yes! It’s so tiny I’m shocked anyone saw it. ~ Jenny)

  43. Ahhh the students I have tortured with The Yellow Wallpaper! Love it. Maybe you needs Telltale Heart under some floorboards or the black cat needs a tiny hangman’s noose as its white chest spot.

  47. That “ignore the rough edges” reminded me of Doc Brown. “It’s not to scale and I didn’t have time to paint it…”
    I weep for myself because I can’t pick out any allusions apart from the Black Cat and the Weeping Angel, although I DID look for a bust of Pallas above the chamber door.

  48. Do you happen to have anything referencing Arsenic & Old Lace in your house, Jenny? That’s one of my favourite horror comedy movies. (If you wanted to reference it, you could add an elderly gent’s dead body in a window seat, a glass of blackberry cordial (poisoned obv) or some “panama canal” digging in the basement…) 😉
    Also, your dollhouse is very cool!

  50. Imagine the effect of Glo-in-the-Dark paint … evil eyes peering out from all sorts of hiding places.

  51. It’s thrillingly good. The cat’s position on the chair makes me think he just woke from a sleep to hack up a hairball, so maybe you need a soft pile of that near the chair’s legs for the homeowner to step in.
    Better yet, that can be the contents of one of those potion jars.

  52. I once had a doll house that I finally got at 12 years old. It was empty though with only four pieces of plain balsam wood furniture. So I decided I would paint flowers. My flower was very sloppy and messy but it gave my bed frame some color. My father complained and said I ruined it. I didn’t want to play dollhouse anymore after he sharply criticized my artistic skills.

    I love Halloween and I love this Haunted Halloween Themed Dollhouse! It’s so beautiful. What I did once I created a virtual home on the computer that you could explore by going into other rooms by clicking the links. Maybe you could do something like that with your dollhouse and have a website set up where you could “enter” rooms and explore with creepy music playing! lol Just a thought.

    Anybody interested in a Tarot reading from a Native American Witch? I have a beautiful Native American Tarot deck called the Vision Quest. Just leave me an open ended question in the comment. It’s free.

    Thanks in advance,
    Wenona

  53. When you feel like you are done with the dollhouse, you should do a coffee table book with detailed close-up photos of every room and explanations of all the references. I would buy that!

  55. I am in absolute awe! Everything in it is so amazing I really can’t think of the right words. I’m almost speechless! I love every bit of it, especially the Weeping Angel! I showed this to my husband and he loves it too. He said it would make a great project for the two of us.

  56. Rough edges? What rough edges? I can’t even begin to fathom the amount of talent that goes into making something as wonderful as that. Man… I thought your books were fantastic. This takes it all to a whole new level.

  57. My apologies if this has already been asked but what’s the black kitty’s name standing in the chair in front of the potions shelf?

  60. What a beautiful house. Thank you so much for sharing photos with us. Now, who can shrink me down so I can live in it??

  61. Don’t know what the yellow wallpaper references but would dearly like to. And the first ever movie to scare my 5 year old panties off was The Birds (watched through hall wall-heater screens when suppose to be in bed!), not very mystical movie though. Still, someone or some bust with it’s eyes poked out, or a lot of seagulls somewhere…….?

  62. Please please tell me that you put in Michonne’s sword from The Walking Dead! It LOOKS like Michonne’s sword. If you are a Walking Dead fan, we are soul sisters.

    I went out a few years ago and bought a dollhouse kit after I saw yours. I needed up selling it because I couldn’t figure out how to put it together. I’m sad that I did that because I have reallized that if you want to do anything, it doesn’t hurt anyone but yourself if you are to afraid to even try.

  63. I use embiggen all the time! It’s just so…. perfect! I cannot believe how detailed this house is. Actually, that’s not true at all. I have your doodle book and it’s the same beautiful, collective, exciting journey! How do you get things in there tho? I’m too clumsy to get such small things in such small rooms! And where do you get the things that go in it? I hope it’s lovely found objects, like your buttons! Thank you for sharing more of your amazing talent. <3 <3 <3

  65. I am in awe. I’ve loved miniatures for years, but never liked regular dollhouses that much. Worked on fairy gardens instead. This is so much more fun than the usual Stepford dollhouses.

  67. This has nothing to do with the doll house (which I adore and might use inspiration from for my own doll house since I didn’t hhave any girls and my boys don’t want it) but I just thought id put it out there that I keep forgetting and search for instructions for how to “embiggen” things in programs and try and use it in word,search and jumble games. Why is that not a recognized word yet?

  70. I see a unicorn in a glass holder! Yay! The potions cabinet, is there actually tiny little things in the bottles? So tiny!! You are just so amazing, so much detail you put into this!

  71. Nice, you have Cogsworth too. You better have Mrs Potts and Chip too or I’m going to be awfully disappointed.

    (Sadly, I don’t. Cogsworth and Lumiere were the right scale but the Mrs Potts and Chip were way too large so I didn’t use them. And Plumette looked like a toilet scrubber. Still looking to see if I can find ones to scale. ~ Jenny)

  73. Also, is the snake supposed to be Nagini from Harry Potter?

    (No, but there is a Nagini outside the house on the porch. That little green snake actually came out of a Tori Amos album a million years ago and it seemed to fit. ~ Jenny)

  74. I’d buy the book with up close pics and tales of how you assembled it/ references. This is phenomenal!

  75. Psycho all that taxidermy. Ultimate creepy shower. Beetlejuice – haunted house, sand worms,
    Delia’s sculptures and of course the ” Handbook for the Recently Deceased”.

    (HANDBOOK FOR THE RECENTLY DECEASED. How did I forget that one?! ~ Jenny)

  76. Actually can there be a person climbing sideways on a wall or arms reaching through a wall with claws?

  78. Pingback: Miniature Haunted Houses | the Attic Birds

  79. My usual attitude towards spiral staircases is that they are not practical, and now I see a haunted dollhouse version and am trying to mentally fit one into my dream house.

  81. I’m an occasional reader of your blog. I think this dollhouse is truly remarkable! I’m so impressed. Thanks for letting us see it.

  82. I absolutely LOVE this! I’ve been following your blog for years and remember you mentioning the dollhouse but I didn’t realize how much you worked on it and really made it to scale. I’m a dollhouse miniaturist and I actually have a blog about miniatures that is really small (pun intended) 🙂 – not a ton of content yet, I am doing it more just to get the hobby out there and people to hear about it. There is a great miniaturist group in Texas called the Society of American Miniaturists. http://minisam.org/

    Here is a miniature artist who does a ton of cool haunted/Halloween miniatures: http://www.patriciapaulstudio.com/

    There are two magazines in the US: Miniature Collector and Dollhouse Miniatures that have fantastic articles and are great sources to find all kinds of miniature items to scale. Just some links to help publicize the hobby!

  86. How about a Nac Mac Feegle somewhere? Not in the study, obviously, with all those words…

  88. So, I am catching up on a LOT of posts because frankly I’m lazy and then end up reading posts in huge batches. It’s like binge-watching netflix. Which I did this morning. AND!!!!! The best part: I just saw Dr. Who’s Don’t Blink creepy weeping angel episode. I call that a win!

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