[2][3] The witch house visual aesthetic includes occultism, witchcraft, shamanism, terror and horror-inspired artworks, collages and photographs as well as significant use of hidden messages and typographic elements such as Unicode symbols.
Common typographic elements in titles, such as by Salem and White Ring, include triangles, crosses and Unicode symbols, which are seen by some as a method of gatekeeping (in an effort to keep the scene underground and more difficult to search for on the Internet).
[14][15] The use of hip-hop drum machines, noise atmospherics, creepy samples,[16] dark synthpop-influenced lead melodies, dense reverb, and heavily altered, distorted, and sometimes pitched down vocals are the primary attributes that characterize the genre's sound.
The genre rose to prominence in the early 2010s with renewed interest in individually produced electronic music and Internet subcultures that spawned on sites like Tumblr, Bandcamp & SoundCloud.
...But, at the time, when I said witch house, it didn't even really exist..."[19] Shortly after its mention in Pitchfork, blogs and other mainstream music press began to use the term.