How to Use haunting in a Sentence

haunting

1 of 2 noun
  • Then no one, not even the haunting, could find him.
    — Joy Harjo, New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2025
  • Learn to be alone with my thoughts and the haunting screams of my friends.
    — Katie Barsotti, The New Yorker, 29 Aug. 2023
  • Castro sees his work in part as a record of the city’s hauntings.
    — Zan Romanoff, Los Angeles Times, 7 Sep. 2023
  • The Belle of Louisville has a haunting past.
    — Rasputin Todd, Cincinnati Enquirer, 10 Oct. 2025
  • His voice is perfect and haunting.
    — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 28 Aug. 2025
  • Gilpin isn’t kidding about the haunting.
    — Hunter Ingram, Variety, 27 May 2026
  • Or, perhaps most haunting of all, was life on Earth in fact alone?
    — WIRED, 14 Nov. 2023
  • School Spirits is back from the dead for its third haunting next month.
    — Glenn Garner, Deadline, 6 Dec. 2025
  • But perhaps more haunting still was the sound of agents nearby laughing.
    — Nicole Fallert, USA Today, 27 Jan. 2026
  • From the East to the West, celebrity hauntings were at an all-time high.
    — Vogue, 28 Oct. 2023
  • Turn off the lights and surrender yourself to its haunting notes.
    — Jeff Spry, Space.com, 15 Apr. 2026
  • Their arc throughout the series has been about trying to find peace amid the chaos of their hauntings.
    — Emily Palmer Heller, Vulture, 5 Sep. 2025
  • And haunting is about distance, the presence of an absence.
    — Andrew Marantz, New Yorker, 5 Apr. 2026
  • Mangum’s account of her attack was stark, detailed, and haunting.
    — Tracy Grant, Encyclopedia Britannica, 31 Mar. 2026
  • This record is an aural spell cast over the listener from the first sprite-like sounds to the last haunting note.
    — Spin Staff, SPIN, 2 May 2023
  • These hauntings are not of the traditional sort.
    — Holden Seidlitz, New Yorker, 20 Mar. 2026
  • In the mood for some celebrity hauntings and ghost stories this Halloween?
    — Lydia Price, PEOPLE.com, 30 Sep. 2019
  • The woman onscreen works the dog collar into her haunting song.
    — Bryan Alexander, USA Today, 12 June 2026
  • For hauntings and humor, look no further than Vasti’s latest.
    — Jamie Harrow, PEOPLE, 16 Sep. 2025
  • Like every veteran coach, Van Gundy has his own haunting set of what-ifs.
    — Ian O'Connor, New York Times, 26 May 2026
  • Not the demons or the infestations or the hauntings or the exorcisms.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, AZCentral.com, 16 Sep. 2025
  • The track blends a haunting intro and a punchy chorus, leaving you with a lasting impression.
    — Armando Tinoco, Deadline, 14 Apr. 2026
  • The grey tone of the images also helps to sell the somewhat haunting and even tortured look of the lunar surface, too.
    — Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 26 Nov. 2022
  • They are stuck there longer than expected and the family is subjected to the hauntings.
    — Hanna Wickes, Miami Herald, 13 Feb. 2026
  • They are stuck there longer than expected, and the family is subjected to the hauntings.
    — Hanna Wickes, Kansas City Star, 13 Feb. 2026
  • Some of his magical-realist touches, like the haunting, give the play a fricative charge.
    — Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 11 Oct. 2023
  • Guilt, frustration, the haunting of meals uneaten, all of it bubbles to the surface.
    — Becky Krystal, Charlotte Observer, 31 Jan. 2024
  • And even if it wasn’t drawn from life, the episode would be a haunting parable about the far-reaching implications of white supremacy.
    — Judy Berman, Time, 23 Mar. 2022
  • Once a sanctuary from the outside world, the hotel has become a haunting cage, and both women long to escape.
    — Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 23 Oct. 2025
  • Unbeknownst to him, the house was the site of a terrible series of murders, and the hauntings soon begin.
    — Amy MacKelden, ELLE, 24 Feb. 2023

haunting

2 of 2 adjective
  • The truth can be far more haunting than any scary story.
    — Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly, 22 Oct. 2025
  • The score for Pan’s Labyrinth is so haunting.
    — Fran Hoepfner, Vulture, 3 Oct. 2025
  • Yet that depth is what makes Battle Royale so haunting.
    — The Atlantic Culture Desk, The Atlantic, 29 Oct. 2025
  • There’s something so haunting, with the lights fading and the world cast in this slate blue tone.
    — Selome Hailu, Variety, 8 May 2023
  • This study is a haunting window into the lives of pterodactyls.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN Money, 19 Sep. 2025
  • And maybe that’s why Billups’ look in court was so haunting on Thursday.
    — Jason Quick, New York Times, 25 Oct. 2025
  • The final scene is haunting, even to me, someone who has known Hood for years now.
    — Brenna Ehrlich, Rolling Stone, 3 Apr. 2026
  • And, just as haunting, just as unanswerable, why did her career stall?
    — Jeremy Lybarger, The New Republic, 24 Apr. 2023
  • Her haunting, seductive voice and complex lyrics keep him sane.
    — Bob Guccione Jr, Spin, 21 Aug. 2023
  • But the film has a haunted and haunting dimension linked to the music and the mood.
    — Ben Croll, Variety, 18 Feb. 2024
  • The message of the film remains as urgent as ever, and that’s a bit haunting.
    — James Sullivan, BostonGlobe.com, 4 May 2023
  • In every thrilling and haunting way possible.
    — Rodney Carmichael, NPR, 3 June 2026
  • For a guidance director, the most haunting sound is a parent's phone call about a child in crisis.
    — Scott White, Forbes.com, 26 June 2026
  • This insistence on a more sculpted and slim version of ourselves is haunting.
    — Melania Luisa Marte, refinery29.com, 14 June 2023
  • The effect on Lady Bird — and the rest of the nation — was haunting.
    — Nicole Briese, Peoplemag, 22 Nov. 2023
  • Joe ruins many lives in season 4, but one of his most haunting victims is Nadia.
    — Amy MacKelden, ELLE, 10 Mar. 2023
  • This is a haunting, unpredictable novel that’s hard to shake after reading.
    — Emma Alpern, Vulture, 2 Dec. 2025
  • Rio’s debut novel is a riveting read with a haunting ending.
    — Carly Tagen-Dye, PEOPLE, 27 Sep. 2025
  • Instead, the rest of the planet looks decidedly gloomy and haunting.
    — Michael Kan, PCMAG, 30 June 2023
  • The result was and is a unique and haunting anime, full of abstract concepts and visuals.
    — Ollie Barder, Forbes.com, 15 Aug. 2025
  • Ed Gein’s deep attachment to his late mother shaped his isolated life in haunting ways.
    — Nicole Acosta, PEOPLE, 4 Oct. 2025
  • The salt-spray air, the haunting aridity, the greens and reds of prickly-pear cacti—all of this had sparked many new ideas, the chef told me.
    — Betsy Andrews, Travel + Leisure, 17 Nov. 2025
  • When a new character dies each week, the loss doesn’t register in a way that viewers can mourn; there is no haunting effect.
    — Phillip MacIak, The New Republic, 17 Feb. 2023
  • On this day, at this church just outside of the Ukrainian capital, their sorrow seemed just as deep and haunting.
    — Matt Surman Anushka Patil Juston Jones Julie Ho Julie Ho Julie Ho Monika Pronczuk Emile Ducke Andrea Kannapell The New York Times Monika Pronczuk Anushka Patil Farnaz Fassihi Andrea Kannapell Carlotta Gall Cassandra Vinograd Cassandra Vinograd Michael D. Shear Marc Santora Maya King Michael D. Shear Marc Santora Michael D. Shear Cassandra Vinograd Farnaz Fassihi Farnaz Fassihi Farnaz Fassihi Farna, New York Times, 24 Feb. 2023
  • The effect is both haunting and beautiful, as this six-minute documentary shows.
    — Ellen McGirt, Fortune, 6 Oct. 2021
  • Though brief, the solo, as performed by the ever-compelling Brooks, is both haunting and hopeful.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 24 July 2021
  • The name Erin carries a haunting historical echo.
    — Amanda Castro hannah Parry, MSNBC Newsweek, 18 Aug. 2025
  • The photos are beautiful, haunting, marred only by streaks of moisture that color the frames, some more than others.
    — John Branch, New York Times, 9 Dec. 2023
  • Come to think of it, becoming a musician might be the ultimate haunting tactic.
    — Cazzie David, Vogue, 6 Feb. 2026
  • Years later, Set could still hear the haunting nighttime sounds of monstrous vermin tiptoeing through the house.
    — Jeff Pearlman, Rolling Stone, 17 Oct. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'haunting.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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