Houghton lived during a time of fascination with the supernatural, though even among other Christian Spiritualists, her approach to her religion was certainly unusual. She considered her spiritual practices to be a way of facilitating a closer relationship to her god, translating her religious fervor into spirit drawings. She claimed that these spirit drawings were made through contact with spiritual guides who existed somewhere beyond the physical world, and who gave her instructions that she documented in her work. In fact, she did not consider herself to be the author of her work, instead giving credit to the spirits who guided her. Houghton created her paintings by using an automatic process, a method of art-making where the artist allows the unconscious mind to create, rather than the conscious one. She began by attaching colored pencils to her planchette (a wooden device with wheels that holds a pencil), before graduating to freehand painting using watercolors, gouache, and ink. While her creations may seem non-representational at first glance, Houghton described her paintings as a system of sacred symbolism, where each element has a unique meaning.