DIRECTOR_TRADEMARK(William Castle): [gimmick]: Used a gimmick called "Emergo" in theaters. When the skeleton rises from the acid vat in the film, a lighted plastic skeleton on a wire appeared from a black box next to the screen to swoop over the heads of the audience. The skeleton would then be pulled back into the box as the skeleton in the film is "reeled in." Many theaters soon stopped using this "effect" because when the local boys heard about it, they would bring slingshots to the theater; when the skeleton started its journey, they would pull out their slingshots and fire at it with stones, BBs, ball bearings, and whatever else they could find.
Although this was one of Allied Artists' most profitable films of that period, it fell into the public domain. Despite the widespread availability on home video, the current (2018) holder of the Allied Artists library, Warner Bros., still receives bookings for 35mm release prints.
Exterior shots of the haunted house, primarily during the opening sequence, were filmed at The Ennis Brown House, located in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1924, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The large grosses for this film were noticed by Alfred Hitchcock. This led him to create his own low-budget horror film--Psicose (1960).
The opening "Scare Trick" was so effective that it actually started the idea of novelty "haunting records." Records of spooky sounds, sound effects, and music that were most commonly used for Halloween, Halloween parties, and make-shift haunted house attractions.