Illustration by Seonaid Mackay

'You set up a tape recorder and leave it running, recording silence. You ask your questions into the silence, leaving a sufficient pause for a response. Later, you listen back to the recording. Through the mush and static, if you listen very carefully, you may be able to just about make out people speaking.'

Kirsty Logan explores the modern quest to capture a ghost in a machine, from Tesla and Edison feuding over a spirit phone, to the apparent capture of voices in white noise and on tape. And she discovers that somewhere in the 21st century our wish to contact the dead has changed, we went from wanting to catch the spirit of the dead, to creating ghosts of ourselves. Show less