How to make an ordinary room unsettling

Draw a room before you draw a haunting. Give it a sensible place to sit, a source of light, and an obvious way out. Familiarity is useful material. Without it, there is nothing for the strange detail to disturb.

Now change one relationship. Put the chair too close to the wall for anyone to sit in it. Let the mirror show a corner that should be behind the viewer. Place the light where it ought to illuminate a doorway, then leave that doorway dark. One wrong detail gives the eye a problem to solve.

Keep some of the room ordinary. A crooked picture, a skull, blood on the floor, and a figure at the window all competing at once can make the image easier to dismiss. The viewer recognizes a collection of horror signals and moves on. A neatly folded blanket on the wrong side of a locked door asks a more specific question.

Check the image small. At thumbnail size, can you still tell where attention should land? Large areas of quiet help a small disturbance survive the shrinking. If everything is equally busy, simplify the least important corner before adding another mark.

Finally, decide what the viewer can know. They may see a figure the occupant cannot. Or the occupant may stare at something we cannot see. These create different kinds of tension. Pick one before designing the face of the thing in the corner.

Try this: draw the same kitchen three times. In the first, someone has just left. In the second, someone is hiding. In the third, nobody has ever lived there, despite all the evidence. Keep the furniture identical. Make the difference with light, placement, and one changed object.