Halloween is full of spooky imagery: haunted houses, mysterious figures, and terrifying shadows. This spooky lesson will develop your students use of figurative language and introduce them to creating AI images.

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Some spooky examples

To kick things off, dim the lights, play some spooky music and read your students some short excerpts from classic Gothic stories. Here are three readily available examples:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe

“The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.”  Dracula by Bram Stoker

It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with high-ridged, but lowly-sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in bad weather.”  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Write your own spooky story

Challenge your students to write their own short story where the main character is a haunted house, castle, mansion, factory, or church.

These short stories don’t need to belong, just a paragraph or two. Here are some key elements you might ask them to include:

• The location of the house
• The history of the house
• Who/what lives in the house?
• The appearance of the house (inside and out)
• Detailed descriptive language (adjectives, strong verbs, etc)
• Any strange or spooky occurrences that happen in the house

Students should use descriptive, figurative language in their story. Use of vivid adjectives and verbs will bring this fictional dwelling to life. This is where you should really push them to expand their vocabulary.

The more descriptive the language, the easier it will be to create high quality AI images in the second part of this classroom activity.

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Need some help? Try this AI prompt to generate a list of spooky vocabulary words you can share with your students:

“I am teaching a lesson on figurative language by asking students to write a short story about a haunted house. Can you provide a list of descriptive words they might use? Please divide the list into adjectives, nouns, and verbs.” 

Bring your spooky story to life with AI

After students have written their narrative, challenge them to use their descriptive language to create AI images of their haunted structure.

Here are several free tools that can be used for AI image generation:

• Canva – this is probably the safest and easiest solution, especially if your school is already using Canva. Look for “magic media” to try it out.
• Adobe Express – Firefly, Adobe’s AI image generator is now embedded inside of Adobe Express. This is a great option if you have Adobe accounts set up for your students.
• Gemini – Google’s AI chat bot can generate images when asked. Gemini is now available for students 13+, if your district has enabled it, and includes data privacy protections.
• Ideaogram – this is one of my favorite image generators, but it can get a little PG-13, so be cautious when using it with students.

The examples below were created by using the classic passages from Dracula, The Fall of the House of Usher, and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. You can have student use provided passages to practice before they try generating an image for their own story.