Abstract
1977 is often viewed as a watershed moment in the history of special effects due to the release of Star Wars. By 1982, the horror film had also explored the potential offered by special and visual effects in Poltergeist. This article examines how both special and visual effects are used to enact the haunting within notable examples of the mainstream haunted house film, including Poltergeist (1982), The Haunting (1999), The Sixth Sense (1999), A Haunting in Connecticut (2009), Thir13en Ghosts (2001), Insidious (2010), The Conjuring (2013), Crimson Peak (2015), and Poltergeist (2015).
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The Ghost Goes West, dir., Clair, René (1935).
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The Haunting, dir., De Bont, Jan (1999).
The Haunting in Connecticut, dir., Cornwell, Patrick (2009).
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Sedgwick, L. (2020). Ghostly Gimmicks: Spectral Special Effects in Haunted House Films. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33136-8_39
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