Back when I first learned how to LiDAR scan in the summer of 2022, I noticed how creepy the resulting hole was after cutting out people in the point cloud, as well as the trace of movement if it caught a person walking by. They looked like ghosts! In August 2022 I wrote down the idea of ghost hunters who use historic documentation as a guise to get access to haunted properties.
In July 2024 I caved to my brother’s pressure and started playing Phasmophobia with him and some other friends. I do not regularly partake in the horror genre in any form, but investigating ghosts (not fighting them) turned out to be pretty fun once we got to know all the ghost behaviors. And we got to mess around with all the ghost investigation equipment. The idea was still rattling around in my brain, so in a way it was research!
Things felt kind of full circle in October 2024 when I found that National Park After Dark did an episode featuring Antietam’s Piper Farm, the farmhouse I documented in summer 2022. The building is (supposedly) haunted, it is part of the site of the “bloodiest day in American history” after all. I have to report that I experienced no paranormal activity during my week there. I was oftentimes sitting alone in rooms on the floor with a clipboard, but also rarely past 5pm… so maybe not peak ghost activity time.
Asking someone if they believe in ghosts always feels like a round about way of asking if they believe in the afterlife. Personally I am pretty ghost-agnostic. I mean, it’d be interesting if they were real. If they do exist, let’s not mess with them and be respectful, right? Dark Tourism and the ethics of capitalizing on a place’s supposed haunted-ness was a topic of discussion in my Curating Culture class for my museums minor in college. Context and how the information is conveyed is really important. Whose ghosts are we telling the stories of? Are we exploiting their deaths, playing it up for drama? Should we convey their life stories in a different way? I think that is something to keep in mind.
A building’s history is interwoven with the history of the people who lived (and died) there. Living humans are intrinsically linked to their built environments, so of course the dead ones are too. Heck, even in Beetlejuice the ghosts can’t leave the house they haunt, unless they feel like being eaten by a sandworm. If ghosts are real, they would be stewards of the building they inhabit just by nature of being there, observing the changes around them over time.
In 2025 I started doodling more to expand on my ideas, and shifted it to instead be people documenting a house who stumble upon a ghost through the use of a LiDAR scanner. They realize the ghost can be a primary source who can help unravel the history of the house for their Historic Structure Report, and enlist the help of someone more in tune with spirits to communicate more effectively with it. Enter Louise, Andy, and Neil.
In April 2026 I debuted the first version of Haunted Structure Report at Kingston Independent Comic Expo. I am trying to do the “make it exist first and then make it perfect” and “fail faster” type of approach. I have lots of ideas in my head and sometimes you just have to get something out and see where it lands, and know that you can improve upon it later. So this 16-page version is in no way the definitive final form of this idea, but a first foray into a comic that is a bit more fictional/elaborate than other things I have made recently.
Eventually (maybe for spooky season?) I will post Haunted Structure Report as it exists now online, but in the meantime I hope you have enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes of the idea.
đź‘ŹClapped Outđź‘Ź 