Holly Humberstone Haunted HouseWatch at the source

There have been a lot of changes in my life recently and although change is necessary, it has often felt like my childhood is slipping away from me. My family home is this weird old house in the countryside and it’s kind of falling down around us. It’s where I wrote the whole of my first EP and the sounds of the house inspired the wonky sonics. My family are a very tight knit group, I have three sisters and we’re all pretty much the same person. It’s been really sad in the past few years that we’ve all been living different lives in different parts of the country and haven’t had a lot of chance to see each other. During lockdown my sisters and I all moved back home and it was just like how it was when we were kids. Coming home feels very comforting and one of the only things keeping us all connected.

Now as lockdown slowly comes to a close, my family home is writing its last chapter of its own story. We’d been told last summer that we might be forced to leave because the house is crumbling down around us. Mushrooms have now started growing out of the walls, panes of glass fall out of the windows and the big tree that used to be our treehouse has snapped and fallen. It’s a very old house anyway, with a crazy cellar featuring meat hooks too !! I’d always feared that we might have to leave, it has shaped me and my music. All of my precious family childhood memories are in this house and it almost feels like a 7th family member to us, so letting go was always going to be really painful and weird.

I wrote Haunted House just after we’d been told that we needed to leave. At the time I had also lost someone close to me & the song felt like my way of saying goodbye and a tribute to all the memories I’d made at there over the years. We have a family friend who has supernatural powers and whenever she’s round, she says that she can feel the ghosts in the house and it got me thinking that if there really are ghosts here, then they must be nice, nurturing ones that have watched over my sisters and I as we’ve grown up.

We shot the video at my house and my mum and dad even make an appearance in it. There’s a few hints to other songs off the EP in the video too!

Credits: DOP & Producer: Raja Virdi Colourist: Connor Coolbear at Electric Theatre Collective A PHASE, Fifth Sister & Deep End Production Deep End Mgmt.