A Ghost House

An abandoned painter's studio A Ghost House opens with the smell of paint spilled accidentally after entering an old studio covered densely in dust horizontally and vertically in spiders' webs. I have no idea how Zworykina created a realistic terpenic paint effect with all-natural ingredients, but she hit the nail on the head. I suspect she used very cleverly a sharp incense and vetiver. What comes out next is the smell of a dark musty library. Patchouli seems to be responsible for the dark, earthy and slightly damp aura, whereas labdanum gives it the dusty edge. However, these are just ornaments for the main accord here: a skillfully balanced woody accord of oud+vetiver+guaiac oud. None of this trio overwhelms the other two, and they altogether convincingly paint the central focus of this picture: old cabinets, wooden squeaky floorboards and painting easels filling the space of the studio. This may not sound very appealing as a perfume, but A Ghost House is not a weird, unwearable conceptual fragrance. If you're fond of earthy-woody-resinous scents and are looking for something unusual this one might be right up your alley.

I really have enjoyed reading all of the reviews below mine! My experience somewhat mirrors Zetamamman’s - at least in terms of not having some sort of impressive experience, though the fragrance itself does tell an interesting story. I found AGH to be pretty strong on the patchouli and vetiver up front. It slightly reminded me of the dryness of D S & Durga’s Cowboy Grass. There are some other initial notes which I couldn’t tease out, but it was definitely both intriguing and pleasant. After some development the background of the guaiac wood comes to the fore with what is likely the rose. All of this is enveloped in a sort of oriental mystique, which adds to it's uniqueness. I didn’t really get any oud out of this, but I did only sample this a couple of times. This will definitely be on my short list. Thumbs up!

A Ghost House might be the most amazing fragrance I have ever smelt. It is the smell of rolling down big hills with my siblings and getting covered in grass after playing King Arthur in Corfe Castle all day. It is exploring old libraries with my love, it is the old wood of the church hall after Sunday mass where we would eat and pray and play. It's my dad's old dusty study where he would sit until late at night working and I would sneak in to watch and the cold air would hit the wood panels perfectly. It smells like warmth and safety in the cold. It smells like coming home.

Very good scent that has a fantastic labdanum/vetiver /woody vibe that recalls an older rustic home from an earlier time. When smelling it for the first time it reminded me of High Desert by Boyd's of Texas. Upon checking... They have similar ingredients. Both recall days past. But this is greener and a bit more astringent. Not as oudy or floral. In fact I don't detect much oud at all. Great longevity with average sillage. . . Both perfect for this fragrance. High quality as usual from this house. Highly recommended.

A goth scent, it’s cold and grounded like a crypt bathed in moonlight. Stone, privet flowers on the hedge, nighttime, a forgotten place, incense from the ages imbedded in the walls, tranquil. This has become one of my signature scents. If you haven’t tried this line, you should. Naturals and botanicals bring you to places in nature, so primal, that synthetics cannot. The difference between the real me vs the perceived me. The feeling of coming home.

The aroma began with icy-camphor chords. It cooled everything inside me, cleared my lungs and breath. I hear sharp pine needle, juniper wood, turpentine, ski ointment. Then the aroma softened and became beautiful, soft, cool, woody-incense fragrance with a very gentle and subtle floral highlights. Aroma is sophisticated and elegant both for men and women.

I did not have such dramatic experiences as the people before me. In the beginning I could smell the old, dusty, slightly musty attic, a both comforting and exciting mix. Soon it changed into a beautiful, clean vetiver, then a bitter and just as gorgeous vetiver. Before Zworykina, I never thought I would say "beautiful" about a bitter smell.

A sort of update. There are perfumes for smelling great, there are perfumes that are showy and there is a kind of perfumes that are meant just for you, for your soul. And as often happens, it seems you know some сertain perfume of this very kind inside out, but once in a while it is still able to break your stride and stop you stunned and overwhelmed with some piercing realization of beauty of life. So it happened to me and Anna’s Ghost House. At a glance you can’t call it beautyful, most of you wouldn’t call it even pleasant: musty wood, old stairways, dust and desolation – nothing particularly to love, but I loved it the first time I smelled and do love for years. I know it well, I know the smell of materials it is made of, seems like I can even repeat the composition myself, should I by any chance get my hands on Anna’s materials. But I still cannot understand how it does this things to me. But let me, I shall tell you the whole story. I grew up in the countryside in the continental North of Russia (-40 C in winter, late lazy spring, +40 C in summer, cold long autumn, vast forests – all those things). And as a child I was especially fond of early spring, it meant the end of long cold winter and the most important, it brought smells back into the world. Smells of melting snow and fresh ground, of hay remaining from the last year, of warmed walls of our wooden house, of the first spring flowers and fresh dough. Do you remember your childhood impressions, when each colour was vivid and new, each smell sharp clear and big and each day was full of promises? In spring all these were even more so. With time I got less attentive to new, more tired of people and way too cynical to feel any thing close to those childhood impressions. And besides living in a big city detaches you step by step from nature. There still are seasons in a city, but you usually do not have much of a process – a winter just jumps at you somewhere at the corner and you simply note that it’s time to change your wardrobe for a warmer one. In the countryside things still are different, there still is a process of season coming, but now as I am, what I mostly feel about it is a light irritation – too hot or too cold, too dusty or too rainy, feet got wet , nose is running ... well, you certainly know it by yourselves. But this morning something clicked and I just felt everything – not just melting snow, raining sky and wet trees,- I felt the world is moving into spring. Do you know the feeling? When all the forces of nature are going through you, when you are a part of all these, when a moment longer and you will be able ho hear the Earth moves. Everything around smelled of my childhood, it was absolutely impossible upon thinking but I smelled it I swear! The other day I would give my leg and arm to be able to feel that again, but today I got it for free. The cynical part of me coldly informed that this morning I used the Gost House and all the “magic” is probably comes from it. Let it be so, I don’t mind at all. More than that, I think it is a pure luck that there are things that can give you back your past, the freshness you’ve lost through all these years. Things that can give you a priceless moment of feeling alive.

The opening of Ghost House has a sharp camphoraceous terpenic turpentine-like paint accord, followed by a combination of balsamic incense-y frankincense, medicinal wet patchouli and sweet balsamic cistus, which is the main note in this perfume, with hints of cinnamon. I detect hints of rose from time to time. The fragrance finally moves to a cold rooty woody vetiver base with hints of guaiac wood. The use of vetiver here is similar to its use in Sultan Pasha Thebes. The perfume evokes a feeling of an abandoned artist’s house, you smell the damp wooden floors, paint spilled on the ground and old papers everywhere, a sad soulless place. The brilliance of this fragrance is in choosing the materials with the right profile, which is a skill that every respectable perfumer should have. For example, choosing a patchouli with wet medicinal nuances, choosing cistus instead of labdanum and choosing a vetiver with the right cold rooty profile.

Fantastic perfume! It smells at once abandoned and lived-in, familiar and absolutely novel, as if you came out into your own garden and found there a wonderful flower you sure didn't plant. Neither very complicated, nor intentionally simple it somehow brings you back everything dear you thougt you've lost. In a slow kaleidoscopic movements it shows you first an autumn garden covered in wet brown fallen leaves and then a old pine stump warmed by spring sun; a house in the wood left long ago; a well-kept library of somewhere in Oxford; a family home - visions change each other so smooth you don't even register. It spins, it moves around you, drawing attention, constantly changing angle of aspect, as if holding you inside a fairy circle, stealing a slightest wish to move giving you more instead - your memories alive. A rarest delight - a perfume for pleasure of solitude, loneliness long awaited and necessary

A Ghost House conjures up visions where the ideal soundtrack would be provided by The Focus Group - slightly eerie, with oddities in between nearly see-through draped curtains between this world and others; fleeting, intangible, out of reach. To me, there is plenty of oud and incense with hints of metallic shine, vetiver and labdanum agreeably prominent too. An experience which provides shivers on occasion, yet you reach back for more. Addiction? Seance? Psychedelic? Inner realms or spaced out? Is it a choice or not? What you find may not be quite what you think it is. Spooktastique.

A ghost house takes me to a place I ́v never been. It ́s both outdoor and indoors at the same time. It has elements (that I cant pinpoint) I would normally not call nice; but in this perfume it adds to the magic.