Ghost House Pictures

Background
Ghost House Pictures was established in 2002 by Sam Raimi (who is the founder of Raimi Productions) and Robert Tapert to produce high-concept horror films. Most of its theatrical films are produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures.

1st Logo (October 22, 2004-)
Visuals: In dim light, an old door slams shut by itself. The view then moves to the door's keyhole, through which an evil-looking smiling skull suddenly moves into view from the left. The view pulls back to show the skull vignetted in the keyhole. As the view pulls back, the company name surrounds the keyhole in a "ghostly" manner in white.

Variant: On Ghost House Underground DVD releases, the word "PICTURES" is replaced by "UNDERGROUND".

Technique: Stop motion by Prologue.

Audio: First, a sound that sounds like someone screaming in the distance (possibly a victim in the haunted house) and then a loud bang when the door slams, causing the screaming to stop, then typical spooky horror movie music with ghostly singing in a high pitched tone. A whoosh is heard when the skull slides from the left.

Audio Variants:
 * On The Possession, when the skull appears, it makes a louder and scarier whoosh sound than the normal version, sounding like a short roar.
 * Sometimes, it's the opening theme of the movie, and/or we only hear the door slam and the ghostly singing, or only the door slamming, or no sounds at all.

Availability: It debuted on The Grudge and can be seen on films from the company since. This logo, however, does not appear on the films released by Ghost House Underground, due to distributing horror movies from other companies.

2nd Logo (March 15, 2009-May 22, 2015)
Visuals: On a black background, the skull from the previous logo emerges from the darkness and zooms in, this time shown in full view. The company name appears below like in the previous logo, but now they have some stains dripping down on the words "GHOST HOUSE". The skull seems to vibrate while the logo goes.

Technique: Computer animation.

Audio: Same as the previous logo, but the whoosh sound is omitted. Sometimes, it's the opening theme of the movie.

Availability: Only seen on Drag Me to Hell and the 2015 remake of Poltergeist.

Logo (2013)


Visuals: Over an dark brown background with smoke, we see door knobs zoom out, with an line on the middle of the knobs. The line glows, showing an yellow shine moving down the line. After the shine is gone, the door suddenly swings over, revealing an skull with golden teeth. The skull swings to the camera, showing it's golden teeth, which shines. The skull zooms out, as 3D text "GHOST" and "HOUSE" comes out of both sides of the skull, which rotates 180 degrees, along with the golden 3D text on the bottom "PICTURES" expanding on both sides. The skeleton looks on both sides, before the skull looks at the camera. The skull then zooms out, and suddenly zooms into the camera as the skull opens its mouth, and the skull quickly zooms in to the camera, with its mouth filling the screen.

Technique: CGI.

Audio: It starts off with an reversed orchestral note which sounds like the first logo for Amazon Studios, an fuse hissing sound when the shine appears on the line, followed by an boom and an screech and a whoosh, which is followed by more whooshing when the text appears, and then bone crackling-like sounds when the skull zooms out, and then an loud whoosh noise as the mouth fills the screen.

Availability: Unused. This can be found on Alexandre's Vimeo page.