Question: Picture Book - Haunted House and Monsters - Genuinely Frightening

Asked by mmortonn on Wed 20, Jun 2012 05:08pm :

I've been looking for this picture book for years now.  It was in my
school's library when I was a kid, and I'm assuming the book is from the
'90s, though it could be earlier.  Unfortunately, I'm not totally certain
what it was about.

As best I can remember, it involved a haunted house and monsters of some
sort.  There may not have been any words to it at all.  The thing that
sticks out to me is that the pictures were genuinely frightening to me as a
kid, and I wasn't freaked out by many books.  Even my mom thought the
pictures were a bit much, and she was open about a lot of things.  The
illustrations reminded me a lot of Stephen Gammell, but I'm almost certain
he was not the artist.  

The only frame I'm almost certain of was a double paged spread of a
lightning strike.  This thing was filled with beautiful illustrations, and
they all were made with heavy and intense brushstrokes and flecks of paint.
 Intense would probably best describe the whole thing!