Realistic ghost floating from a barred castle window with a raven, bats, moon, stars, and stone walls

Ghost at the Castle Window

A wailing ghost drifts through a barred castle window while a raven watches from the ledge under bats and a crescent moon.

Free to print for personal and classroom use. This coloring page is part of the Ghost collection, made for ages 8–12 and drawn in a Realistic style. A good pick for Halloween.

🎨 How to color it

Give the ghost a pale blue-gray glow, the castle stones warm slate and sandstone, the raven glossy black, and the bats deep violet. Use sharp colored pencils for the many brick outlines and iron bars, then switch to light side-strokes for the moonlit sky. Try shading the inside of the arched window darker than the outer wall so the ghost’s curling sheet edges look as if they are spilling out of shadow.

🔢 How this color by number works

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Find each number in the key and fill its zone: 354 zones and 12 colors, sized for adults. Tiny unnumbered slivers borrow the color of their neighbors, and the little model above shows the finished page whenever you want to check your work. More grids like this live in our color by number gallery.

Prefer classic line art? Open this drawing as a regular coloring page.

The story behind this coloring page

The Raven’s Moonlit Password — Past the last stair of Moon Tower, Vesper pressed both hands to the cold iron bars and counted the bell ropes that never moved. Read the full story →

Past the last stair of Moon Tower, Vesper pressed both hands to the cold iron bars and counted the bell ropes that never moved. She wanted one clean ring before sunrise, just one, but the window stayed locked and the old stones smelled of rain and dust. Then a raven landed beside her with a click of claws and a silver scrap tucked in its beak.

“Trade?” croaked the bird. Vesper offered a curl of moon-mist from her sleeve. The raven dropped the scrap: not metal, but a word, thin as frost. Hoooo. Vesper whispered it. The bars shivered. She tried again, longer, and the sound rushed through the tower, over the battlements, past the bats and clouds. The silent bell answered with one deep bong.

Ever since, castle ghosts do not wail because they are sad. They are speaking the first password to sleeping bells. Next time you spot one at a barred window, you may catch the raven listening for that cold, silver Hoooo.