HAUNTED SPACES AND PLACES

          Exploration of spaces can not only reveal history but can demonstrate a sense of the living conditions of the place, people, and past spaces that had meaning (WG, 2010). As urban explorers encounter buildings and spaces haunted presences can be perceived, “within the graffiti writing subculture, such traces – either unsuccessfully removed, or simply worn and weathered by the elements – are known as ghosts” (Kindynis, 2019). Urban exploration in these spaces can also be described as how, “it remains a practice ‘intensely interested in locating sites of haunted memory, seeking interaction with the ghosts of lives lived “(Kindynis, 2019). Through understanding the reasons why people, places, or objects are no longer present in a space it “cultivates an awareness of the affective and atmospheric ‘resonances’ left behind in places now abandoned, isolated or forgotten: ‘the spectral presences of people’ no longer there” (Kindynis, 2019). Ghost ethnography can be identified in urban exploration building or houses and be identified to “denotes an exploratory, situated, immersive, reflective, impressionistic and imaginative approach to the study of space and place: an ethnographic ‘way of seeing’ the material traces and affective residues of social worlds” (Kindynis, 2019). Four key factors or drivers influencing explorers perception and motivations are, “first, to document sites in danger of decay or destruction; second, to experience the thrill of accessing a forbidden place; third, the desire for an “authentic” experience, an unmediated or unsanitized look at the inner-workings of a city; and lastly, a reverence for the counter-cultural aesthetic of “ruin porn,” which values ruin and decay over perpetual construction and newness” (Harvey, 2019). As urban exploration can benefit a way of “reclaiming our physical reality, of forging a deeper connection with a location”, it can give an individual sense of control and connection to the environment being analysed/viewed (Harvey, 2019).