Spectrology.org:About
About Spectrology.org
Spectrology.org is a collaborative archive dedicated to documenting, analysing, and preserving the traces of haunting in culture. Founded in 2025 by Dr Andrew Wedgbury, a lecturer and researcher in game design at Staffordshire University, the site represents the beginning of a long-term effort to build a serious, structured, and evolving public record of the unseen — the echoes, spaces, stories, and sensations that persist when their origins have faded.
Purpose
Spectrology.org was created to explore and preserve haunting as a form of intangible cultural heritage — evidence of how people remember, interpret, and respond to the idea of presence after absence. Rather than treating ghosts as superstition or entertainment, this project treats haunting as a legitimate cultural phenomenon that can reveal how we experience time, architecture, and memory.
The site provides a platform where folklore, academic research, creative practice, and personal experience intersect. It is designed to bridge traditional heritage work with new digital methods of documentation, including experimental media, interactive systems, and game design.
> “Every haunting tells us something about how culture organises memory.”
The Founder
Spectrology.org was founded by Dr Andrew Wedgbury, whose work combines game design, folklore, and supernatural heritage studies. His research focuses on the design of spaces and systems that evoke haunting — particularly through what he terms the *Three Laws of Supernatural Horror*: the unseen, the uncertain, and the lingering.
Dr Wedgbury developed the concept of Spectrology to unite scholars, artists, and the public around a common goal: to study the unseen not as myth, but as cultural data. He views this project as both a research tool and a creative experiment — a living system that will grow over decades, curated with the care and curiosity usually reserved for museums.
Goals
The long-term goals of Spectrology.org are both cultural and creative:
- **1. To Preserve Haunted Heritage**
- To collect and conserve stories, photographs, testimonies, and artefacts related to hauntings, ensuring they are not lost to time or algorithmic decay.
- **2. To Recognise Haunting as Intangible Heritage**
- To promote the idea that ghost stories, local legends, and supernatural folklore are integral to the cultural identity of communities — just as architecture, crafts, and oral traditions are.
- **3. To Encourage Collaborative Research**
- To build an open, semi-curated platform where academics, folklorists, artists, and the public can contribute knowledge while maintaining academic standards of sourcing and ethics.
- **4. To Connect Digital Design with the Supernatural**
- To explore how interactive systems, game design, and code can model or simulate haunting — treating digital space as a new environment for folklore and spiritual imagination.
- **5. To Build a Lasting Archive**
- To create a durable online resource that can endure beyond any one generation of researchers — a living library of the spectral that will continue to grow and adapt.
Structure
Spectrology.org is organised into several key categories, each with its own curatorial focus:
- Hauntings – Recorded phenomena, field notes, and testimonies.
- Relics – Physical and digital artefacts connected to stories of haunting.
- Places – Sites of interest: houses, factories, churches, and landscapes with supernatural associations.
- Doctrine – Theoretical and methodological texts defining the emerging field of Spectrology.
- Experiments – Interactive, creative, or artistic works exploring haunting through design.
- Spectrologists – Contributors and researchers who curate, verify, or extend the archive.
Each section is treated as a living collection — pages may be revised and expanded over time as new evidence, interpretations, or related materials emerge.
Participation
Spectrology.org is semi-open: anyone may read its pages, and contributors may apply for editing privileges. All contributions are reviewed by curators to ensure factual accuracy, clarity, and respect for sources and subjects.
Participation is open to:
- Folklorists, historians, and heritage researchers.
- Game designers, artists, and developers interested in hauntology and interactive heritage.
- Individuals or communities preserving local folklore, memories, or unexplained experiences.
Those who contribute are recognised as Spectrologists — members of a growing network dedicated to understanding haunting as a cultural system.
For guidance on writing or editing pages, see Help:Contribute.
Academic and Creative Context
Spectrology.org stands at the intersection of academic research and creative experimentation. It supports ongoing work in fields such as:
- Game Design and Interactive Systems
- Digital Heritage and Museum Studies
- Folklore and Anthropology
- Hauntology and Cultural Memory
- Supernatural Horror Studies
The project also supports Dr Wedgbury’s broader research into how digital tools — from code to architecture — can represent presence, absence, and ambiguity in meaningful ways. It demonstrates that the study of haunting is not just about belief, but about the mechanics of memory, storytelling, and perception.
Ethics and Attribution
All content on Spectrology.org is licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International Licence. This ensures that the archive remains open and shareable, while crediting contributors and protecting the integrity of their work.
Sensitive content (such as personal testimonies or site photographs) is handled with discretion, and contributors are asked to respect privacy, local customs, and cultural sensitivities when submitting material.
Ambitions
Spectrology.org is conceived as a project with longevity. In the coming years, the aims are to:
- Establish partnerships with heritage organisations, museums, and archives.
- Create educational resources for teaching folklore and digital heritage.
- Develop interactive exhibitions and playable experiences derived from the archive’s material.
- Publish research articles and practical guides under the Spectrology name.
- Secure funding to ensure long-term preservation and expansion.
Ultimately, the goal is to position Spectrology as a recognised discipline — bridging folklore, design, and cultural heritage — and to make Spectrology.org a trusted repository for anyone researching the persistence of haunting in human culture.
Contact
Enquiries, proposals, and collaboration requests can be directed to: contact@spectrology.org
Founded and curated by Dr Andrew Wedgbury, 2025. Spectrology.org is an independent research platform for haunted heritage and the study of the unseen.