Thrifted Ghost Painting

About

Thrifted Ghost Painting refers to a trend popularized on TikTok where people buy a painting from a thrift store, often of a landscape or location and paint ghosts into the scene. The ghost designs often resemble someone with a white sheet over their head. The trend was popularized in July 2023 on TikTok, gaining some spread to Twitter and YouTube.

Origin

On June 19th, 2023, TikToker^[1] @whichwitchvillage posted a video documenting her "ghost painting party." In the video, a few people sit around a table and paint ghosts over damaged thrift store paintings. The video garnered over 1.1 million views in a month (shown below).

Spread

The trend became notably popular throughout July 2023. On July 9th, 2023, TikToker^[2] @its_canyonsage posted a video doing the trend that gained over 850,000 views in two weeks (shown below, left). On July 11th, TikToker^[3] @caskl posted a video that gained over 530,000 views in 10 days (shown below, right).

On July 12th, TikToker^[4] @simplycathymae posted a video doing the trend, garnering over 3.7 million views in nine days (shown below). On July 13th, Twitter^[5] user @lilfoxfiend posted a photo of a piece of thrifted ghost art. On July 21st, Dexerto^[6] reported on the trend.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References