Make any TV haunted for Halloween!
- Matt
- 11 hours ago
- 5 min read
Want a Halloween decoration that people absolutely won’t expect?
Take an ordinary TV, add some static, strange noises and something unpleasant trying to crawl out of the screen — and suddenly the television sitting in the corner of your room becomes part of the haunt.
The best part is that you can do this with almost any TV, from a brand-new flatscreen to an old analog CRT.
I experimented with both approaches, and they create two completely different kinds of Halloween effect.
The Easiest Haunted TV for Halloween Setup
Let’s start with the modern TV because this one is ridiculously simple.
If your television has a USB port, you really only need:
A TV
A USB memory stick
A haunted video
Approximately five minutes
Copy your video onto the USB stick, plug it into the television and open the TV’s built-in media player.
Find the video, press play and select Loop or Repeat.
That’s it.
You now have a Halloween video running continuously on your TV.
The trick is choosing footage that actually makes the television feel haunted rather than simply looking like you’re playing a Halloween video.
For me, that means three things:
Static. Creepy sound. And something you really don’t want appearing on the screen.
You could absolutely make this yourself. Film a ghost, find or create some static, add sound effects and edit everything together.
But I also wanted something that could simply be downloaded, copied to a USB stick and played.
That’s why I created the Haunted TV packs for ProjectionCraft.
Haunted TV: Digital Horrors
For a modern television I created Haunted TV: Digital Horrors.
Instead of old-fashioned VHS-style interference, this version treats the television like a corrupted digital signal.
The picture glitches.
The signal breaks up.
Something begins appearing inside the interference.
And eventually the thing on the other side of the screen starts trying to get out.
There’s a complete haunting you can simply put onto a USB stick and loop, but the pack also contains individual static beds, ghost appearances and transitions so you can create your own sequence.
There’s also a fake streaming screen designed to make the TV appear completely normal.
Leave it sitting in an ordinary living room and there’s nothing obviously “Halloween” about it.
Until the picture begins to glitch.
That false sense of security makes the scare significantly more effective.
What If My TV Doesn't Have USB?
There’s another problem you might encounter.
Some televisions either don't have USB playback at all, or their built-in media players insist on displaying menus and transport bars whenever one video finishes and another begins.
Nothing destroys a supernatural apparition quite like:
▶ 00:00 / 00:30
appearing underneath it.
The solution is a small external media player.
Load your files onto a USB stick, plug the stick into the media player and connect the player to the television using HDMI.
Select that HDMI input on the TV and let the external player handle the videos.
A dedicated player also makes it much easier to run several clips sequentially without constantly displaying the TV’s interface.
Now Let's Haunt an Old CRT
This is where things get much more interesting.
An old analog television already looks creepy.
Even before you put anything supernatural on the screen, there’s something about the glow, the curved glass and the static that immediately feels like it belongs in a horror movie.
The problem is getting a modern digital video signal into something that may have been built decades before HDMI — or even composite video — existed.
For my old television I used:
A USB memory stick
A digital media player
An RF converter
An antenna cable
A small antenna transformer
The media player outputs the video, the RF converter turns that into a signal the old television understands, and the antenna connection feeds it into the TV.
Once everything is connected, you tune the television to the signal and suddenly your modern digital Halloween video is playing through an old analog CRT.
For this setup I created a second version of the effect:
Haunted TV: Retro Static.
This one leans into the character of the old television with analog interference, static and ghostly appearances designed to feel much more at home on an aging CRT.
Don't Just Haunt the TV — Build a Scene
Getting the video working is only half the effect.
The thing that really sells it is everything around the television.
For my CRT setup, I made it look like someone had been trying to repair the television when something went very wrong.
I added old electronic parts, tools, wires and a notebook covered with increasingly concerned observations about the strange behaviour of the television.
Suddenly it wasn’t just a TV playing a spooky video.
There was a story.
Something had happened here.
And whatever was inside that television might still be there.
Sound Makes a Massive Difference
Old televisions generally don't have the most terrifying speakers.
If you want a proper jump scare, adding an external speaker makes an enormous difference.
You don't need anything ridiculous. A small powered or Bluetooth speaker can be enough.
Hide it somewhere close to the television and let the soundtrack do some of the work.
Static should feel uncomfortable.
Low rumbles should fill the room.
And when the apparition finally appears, the sound should arrive with it.
Then Add Lighting
Finally, light the environment rather than simply lighting the television.
A small amount of colored or directional light around the room can make the screen feel much brighter and more dramatic.
For the old TV setup I added atmospheric lighting and a little haze around the scene.
For the modern television I deliberately did almost the opposite.
I made the room look completely normal.
Because sometimes the most effective Halloween scare isn't the room that obviously looks haunted.
It’s the television quietly sitting in the corner that suddenly stops behaving like a television.
Build Your Own Haunted TV
You can absolutely create your own haunted footage and build this entire effect yourself.
But if you want to skip the editing and start haunting the screen, I created both versions as downloadable packs through ProjectionCraft:
Haunted TV: Digital Horrors — designed for modern flatscreen TVs and digital displays.
Haunted TV: Retro Static — designed around the look of classic analog televisions.
Download the files, put them on a USB stick and you can have a haunted TV running in minutes.
And once you’ve got the television looping by itself, there’s one more upgrade that takes the whole thing much further:
Make the scare trigger only when somebody walks into the room.
That’s the next project.
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