Hauntibles

When I was growing up, my parents had a mysterious antique on the wall - a narrow drawer hung vertically, subdivided into dozens of little boxes. Each of these compartments held a different knickknack like a rock, shell, or tiny doll. This strange art piece sparked my imagination, and I wondered about the stories behind each object.      Typeset drawers were originally used to store printing blocks of various sizes. With the decline of block printing, many people recycled these drawers into curio cabinets to store family keepsakes. How does all this fit into my game HAUNTIBLES? Well, there's a typeset drawer at the heart of the game, and it's filled with haunted knickknacks! I found images for these objects during the course of my research through various archives, rare books, newspapers, and other ancient collections. Here's how it'll work in the game: each object in the drawer represents a haunted collection or "hauntible" of five or more re...

 HABS imagery often shows buildings in advanced stages of decay. The photos might very well be the last record of these beautiful old structures, recorded by the government for posterity. One archival collection contributed more to HAUNTIBLES's visuals than any other. It's known as the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) . During the Great Depression, America's historic buildings were falling into ruin. So, the government hired architects to survey and document them. The program continues to this day and has chronicled thousands of buildings into a vast, spooky collection that includes - ancient asylums, crumbing lighthouses, derelict mansions, and every haunted structure you can imagine - all catalogued and meticulously archived within the Library of Congress. HABS is the nation's oldest federal preservation program. It includes not only photographs, but sketches and floorplans as well. Much of the HABS collection is digitized, but a few su...

Over the years, I've directed a number of historical documentaries for television. This required a large amount of research at the the Library of Congress & National Archives. It was here, among faded photographs and dusty card catalogues, that I first discovered the creepy imagery that would inspire the game HAUNTIBLES.  Early photos such as Civil War daguerreotypes break down over time. The figures captured in them now appear rather ghostly. My mind wandered as I searched through the old images. What were the people in these photos like? What stories could they tell us? How might they communicate from beyond the frame? The idea for HAUNTIBLES began to materialize. Many collections are digitized, but not everything's online. Sometimes, it's nice to take a stroll through the card catalogues and see what you find. Spooky old photos did more than just inspire the game HAUNTIBLES. Many ended up in the game itself. I incorporated these images direc...