THE HOUSE / RESEARCH · GAMES · FOLKLORE
01 / DR ANDREW WEDGBURY
The light switch
Turn the lights off.
Why can an empty room feel occupied?
Research into ghosts, folklore, memory and playable systems.
Research Log · 5 minutes
I've long been interested in the potential of designing fear without ghosts. We all know that the most terrifying ghosts are not the ones…
Wyrd News · 1 minute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKMaeHoJY2A&t=8s I think folk horror becomes much more interesting when folklore stops being lore and becomes mechanics. So, I'm excited to hear about Hunter's…
A miniature doorway and faint marks are visible beneath the paper.
OPEN NOTEBOOK / QUESTIONS IN PROGRESS
A few questions on the desk. Not settled answers.
A room can be empty without feeling unused. What do familiar arrangements, missing objects and repeated routines contribute to that sense of company? Starting with ordinary domestic experience offers a way into a larger question: how do we recognise a presence when there is nobody to see?
New technologies do not necessarily put old beliefs to rest. What changes when a story moves from a fireside conversation to a screen? Which details persist, and which are remade by the medium? Following those changes can help us ask what people still need these stories to do.
What makes a digital response feel as though someone is there? When we talk to systems that answer back, questions of agency, belief and presence become everyday matters. What might older stories about speaking objects and unseen companions bring to this conversation—and where might those comparisons break down?
THINGS KEPT CLOSE
No. 4433
Provenance / Found
In the Cabinet
A simple piece of brick is one of my favourite bits, this is a piece of brick that naturally crumbled off a building in Short Street, Stoke-on-trent a locallty reputed haunted site. It is in the collection because it fell…
FURTHER INTO THE HOUSE / FIELD NOTES
Wyrd News
I think folk horror becomes much more interesting when folklore stops being lore and becomes mechanics. So, I’m excited to hear about Hunter’s Moon coming to PS5 which appears to make listening to what a community believes about you part of survival itself. What I find interesting is the suggestion that belief itself might be…
Research Log
This week I am thinking about Environmental storytelling in game design and I’m going to start with a seemingly silly question, can a room still feel occupied even when no one is in it? It is, I think, quite normal for game designers to fall into the trap of obsessing over character arcs and scripted…
Research Log
What happens when a world forgets to die? Most digital worlds in modern games feel like they’re stuck in suspended animation. Frozen in a kind of spotless stasis where grass stays forever green, and swords don’t rust unless the devs tell them to. In our drive for performance optimisation, we have ended up chasing perfectly…
Research Log
Recently I have been thinking about the concept of Digital Hauntology. Much of my work starts in the same place: a scan of a handmade artefact brought into a digital environment. This is a wonderful way to work; it allows me to create characters by hand that I can give some form of ‘life’ to…
Research Log
The quietest hauntings are often the most frightening. Think about those familiar, domestic moments: the sudden, inexplicable cold spot in a warm room, the drawer that always sticks, or the faint scent of a perfume or tobacco no one currently wears. These aren’t grand ghost stories or epic mythological cycles. They’re the small, persistent…
Research Log
The Uncanny Pull of Staircases in Folklore and Fiction: Have you ever hesitated at the foot of a dark staircase, feeling both drawn in and dread? Staircases hold a strange power in our imagination; they are everyday architecture yet brimming with supernatural lore and uncanny tension. Folklore from around the world acknowledges this with ghostly…
