Not Sleeping Tonight (12 Photos)

By Vidar
Split image: on the left, Blesea's Ghostface mural in Cherbourg, France, where a concrete pillar is painted as the knife and a man lies on the grass below; on the right, DavidL's skull painted on an abandoned brick building outside Barcelona, with the arched doorway as a mouth full of teeth

Halloween, Built Into Walls and Ruins

A dragon once lay across a garage roof in Massachusetts. Outside Barcelona, an abandoned brick building got a doorway full of teeth, and on a beach in Normandy an old blockhaus wears the tentacled face of Davy Jones. Two of these works were made for Halloween. All twelve would look at home on October 31.

More: Skeleton Art (24 Photos)


Skull 2022 by DavidL: dark eye sockets and a nose painted on an overgrown abandoned brick building outside Barcelona, with the arched doorway turned into a mouth full of teeth beneath a tall chimney

💀 “Skull 2022” — By DavidL outside Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸

Two hollow eye sockets and a nose sit above an arched doorway, and the painted teeth turn the opening into a mouth. DavidL works in abandoned buildings, and many of the ones he has painted have since been torn down, which he accepts as part of the job.

More: Surreal Art by DavidL (15 Photos)

🔗 Follow DavidL on Instagram


Giant black-and-gold dragon with a red eye built by architect Tom Saltsman, its head resting above the blue front door of a house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with one wing hanging over the corner

🐉 Halloween Dragon — By Tom Saltsman in Marblehead, Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸

The dragon’s head rests above the front door, and one huge wing hangs down past the corner of the house. WBUR reported that architect Tom Saltsman built the garage-sized creature for Halloween 2018, and that it exhaled smoke.

💡 Halloween Fact: The dragon did not come back. Neighbors asked for it the next year, but Saltsman told WBUR that he loves that his displays go away. The Marblehead Current adds that its red eyes lit up.

More: This Dragon Someone Put on Their House for Halloween


Halloween Party! by Blesea in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin: a gray Ghostface mural whose knife blade is painted on a real concrete pillar, with a man in a red hoodie and respirator lying in the grass below

🔪 “Halloween Party!” — By Blesea in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, France 🇫🇷

Ghostface leans over a concrete pillar that has been painted as the knife, while a man in a respirator plays the victim in the grass. Blesea shared the wall as “Halloween party! Cherbourg 2022”.

💡 Movie Fact: The mask is older than the movie. Snopes reports that the novelty company Fun World created it as a Halloween costume mask in 1991, and that it was licensed for Scream in 1996.

More: 14 Murals by Blesea

🔗 Follow Blesea on Instagram


Airhead by SHOK-1 in Hackney, London: an X-ray skull painted as a floating balloon on a white wall, its painted string held by a man in a respirator

🎈 “Airhead” — By SHOK-1 in London, UK 🇬🇧

An X-ray skull floats up the wall like a balloon, and its painted string ends in the hand of a man standing below. StreetArtNews placed it in Hackney in October 2020.

💡 Nerd Fact: There is no tape or masking behind those soft X-ray layers. SHOK-1’s studio says he painted “Airhead” freehand for London Mural Festival, using a technique developed over nearly 40 years.

More: Street Art by SHOK-1

🔗 Follow SHOK-1 on Instagram


SMUG mural in Frankston, Australia, showing a huge anatomical skeleton looking at a small blue bird perched on its finger

🐦 Skeleton and Bird — By SMUG in Frankston, Victoria, Australia 🇦🇺

A towering skeleton bends down to look at a small blue bird perched on one bony finger. SMUG painted it as the headline wall of the first Big Picture Fest in March 2018, and 3AW reported that some residents found it grotesque and frightening for children.

💡 Nerd Fact: The skeleton is gone now. Street Art Cities lists the Park Lane mural as removed because the building was demolished.

More: Street Art by SMUG

🔗 Follow SMUG on Instagram


Abandoned red-brick church in Nizhny Novgorod painted by Nikita Nomerz, with staring eyes in its two arched windows and teeth in the doorway

👀 Church With Eyes — By Nikita Nomerz in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia 🇷🇺

Eyes stare out of the two arched windows, and the doorway gets a row of teeth. WebUrbanist called it “Monster House” and noted that it was painted on an abandoned church.

💡 Nerd Fact: In Loco Gallery notes that Nomerz founded the MESTO street art festival in his native Nizhny Novgorod in 2017 and published an encyclopedia of the city’s urban art in 2022.

More: Street Art by Nikita Nomerz

🔗 Follow Nikita Nomerz on Instagram


La rouille's pale child portrait fading into a damp corner wall inside an abandoned building, with real ivy growing across the painting

🌿 Child in the Ivy — By La rouille

A pale child seems to dissolve into a damp corner, and real ivy has grown straight across the painting. La rouille is self-taught and, according to his official bio, discovered painting late, during urban explorations.

More: Street Art by La rouille in an Abandoned Building

🔗 Follow La rouille on Instagram


hello there : ) by näutil in Valognes, France: a grinning gray skull painted on a concrete pillar of a roofless ruin, with two empty windows in the wall behind

👋 “hello there : )” — By näutil near Valognes, France 🇫🇷

A grinning skull fills a concrete pillar in a roofless ruin, while two empty windows behind it frame the sky. näutil’s project page gives the friendly title and dates it to 2021, in a former industrial ruin near Valognes in the Cotentin.

💡 History Fact: The town of Valognes says its wealth of old buildings once earned it the nickname “Versailles of Normandy” during the Age of Enlightenment.

More: Life and Poetry by näutil

🔗 Follow näutil on Instagram


Davy Jones by Blesea and BABY.K: the tentacled pirate's face painted across a blockhaus on the beach at Biville in Normandy, with two people standing on top

🐙 “Davy Jones” — By Blesea & BABY.K in Biville, France 🇫🇷

Davy Jones’s tentacle beard spills down the front of an old blockhaus on the sand, and the two side wings become his hat. Tendance Ouest reported that BABY.K and Blesea spent four days painting it and shared the result in April 2021. The bunker stands on the beach at Biville in La Hague, about a kilometer from the car park.

💡 Nerd Fact: The pirate shares the bunker. According to the same report, other sides of the blockhaus already carried a Cyclops from the X-Men and a sphinx.

More: Davy Jones in Normandy by Blesea and BABY.K

🔗 Follow Blesea and BABY.K on Instagram


Skull by Tempero Diabetico in Portugal: a large cracked skull painted on the back wall of a dark ruined room, with a man in a hoodie standing in the doorway

💀 Skull in a Ruined Room — By Tempero Diabetico in Portugal 🇵🇹

A cracked skull glows out of the dark back wall, and the man stepping through the doorway shows how big it is. Hip Hop Portugal lists Tempero Diabetico as a graffiti writer from Vila Franca de Xira, near Lisbon. 📷 Photo by Marina Aguiar.

More: Art Hidden Inside Empty Places (8 Photos)

🔗 Follow Tempero Diabetico on Instagram


Edward Scissorhands by DavidL: the pale, wild-haired character with long scissor blades painted across a peeling blue wall inside an abandoned room

✂️ “Edward Scissorhands” — By DavidL outside Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸

Edward’s wild hair and long blades stretch across a peeling blue room, a few steps from a window full of daylight. Brooklyn Street Art showed the mural in 2018, at an abandoned site nicknamed “Fraggle Rock”.

💡 Movie Fact: The AFI Catalog notes that Stan Winston created Edward’s scissor hands from a drawing by Tim Burton. Winston and Ve Neill were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Makeup.

More: Edward Scissorhands by DavidL

🔗 Follow DavidL on Instagram


Before and after by SCAF: an empty, damaged room, then the same corner with a giant painted dinosaur skull and a person sitting on top of it

🦖 Dinosaur Skull — By SCAF

The first photo shows an empty, damaged room. In the second, a dinosaur skull with a jaw full of teeth bursts out of the same corner, and someone has climbed up to sit on it. My Modern Met notes that SCAF often paints in abandoned factories and needs from two days to a week for a mural.

More: 26 3D Paintings by SCAF

🔗 Follow SCAF on Instagram

Keep going

More art readers love right now

See the Top 100

Comment on this story

Top 5 right now

See the Top 100

What readers reacted to most this week.

Keep exploring

Join the conversation

Keep it kind, keep it real, keep it short.

Keep exploring

More visual stories

More to explore

From our sister blog

Discover World Art Utopia

A few more artworks to take you somewhere else.

Explore World Art Utopia