A Haunting We Will Go

Horrific Haunts is the Macabre Monday theme this week over at the Haunted Design House blog and there's a little bit of a story nehind mine. I decided that I would look for a picture of a castle to alter, and I found one of Lancaster Castle in the 1890's and got to work turning the scene into night. And then I decided that I would have a little vintage child in the foreground and use some text along the theme of "playing in the garden". But it sort of grew from there and I've ended up with a children's birthday party. See the little girl in the red dress, crying and standing on her own? Well, it's her birthday, but she really isn't having a good day. She had a party planned, and made hats for all the children, and she knew she was getting a new pram (baby carriage) and doll. But look what's happened! Someone has taken her hat, put it on the dog, put the dog in the pram and thrown her dolly on the ground. Where it's been ravaged by a malicious raven. And none of the other children will speak to her because she doesn't have a hat. It's really not her day at all :P
And, lol, I was all set to tell you that Lancaster Castle had no history of ghosts, but I'd used it simply because I liked the picture, and then I thought I better chack on that. I should have realised that because of their great age, nearly all old castle will have collected ghosts and superstitions and creepy tales along the way. Well, Lancaster Castle was a prison for a long time, and the Pendle Witches were tried there, AND it's now supposed to be haunted by children! So I guess my picture fits. If you go visiting, remember to wear a party hat and maybe the ghostly kids will come and play with you :P
Here's the original image that I started with, and all the additions come from DezinaWorld and Itkupilli.:

And the current challenge over at Art On The Dark Side is "A Haunted House", so I'm entering this over there as well :)
AND, I found a new challenge blog, Make It Crafty, which Im very interested in, as they promise to give constructive criticism on your use of the given technique. Of course we all love the Ooohs and Aaahs and purely complimentary comments, but I am also interested in ways that I could improve my work, and there are always things I'm not quite happy with. The current technique is Create A Scene, and I'm always a little nervous about this, so I generally keep my images separate. Now there are no actual stamps on this one, I hope that's ok, as most of the images were gathered and placed by me. I also toned down the colour and brightness in many of the additions, so they looked more like they were part of the original picture. Things I did that I'm pleased with:
Changed the image colours so none of them stood out as a separate image.
Placed the hats on the children and the dog in the pram and the raven on the doll.
Things that I'm not particularly pleased with:
The sky behind the trees. Can you see it looks like the trees have a light behind them? That's because I couldn't get the night sky to look right any other way.
The red hand print. I loved the idea of this, but it's so un-incorporated into the rest of the image. I thought by adding a frame to the whole thing it might make it look like the handprint was on a picture, but I'm not sure it worked.
So, lol, I have all my defenses in place, throw any advice my way, although I'm nervous, I want the advice :D