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The Invisible

Ed Thompson

The Invis­ible is a pro­ject made up of three exper­i­mental photo-series using the last infrared col­our film on the planet.  As well as using the film for what it was ori­gin­ally designed for the pro­ject also aims to find other altern­at­ive uses for the film and sub­vert­ing its ori­ginal inten­ded pur­poses.
The Vil­lage

The first series of the pro­ject focuses on using infrared films abil­ity to pho­to­graph on the higher end of the visual spec­trum in an attempt to pho­to­graph ghosts in the most haunted vil­lage in Eng­land.
We nor­mally see a vis­ible wavelength of light between 400–700 nano­met­ers and that’s the range of light most cam­eras and films record. Infrared film pho­to­graphs light between 750‑1000 nano­met­ers, in a way it allows the invis­ible to be pho­to­graphed. This fact makes para­psy­cho­lo­gists and ghost hunters believe that it gives them the best chance of pho­to­graph­ing the spirit world.
When I was seven years old I was obsessed with the Occult, so when we moved from Wales to Kent my Osbourne Book of Ghosts told me that we were mov­ing within fif­teen miles of Pluckley: The world’s most haunted vil­lage. In the sum­mer of 1988 I got my par­ents to take me on a day trip, armed with a 35mm cam­era and a ther­mo­meter I went to pho­to­graph the ghosts. I failed com­pletely and then had to grow up.  25 years later and after a reas­on­ably suc­cess­ful career as a doc­u­ment­ary pho­to­grapher I went back to Pluckley, only this time armed with the last few rolls of dead-stock infrared col­our film in the world. I failed to pho­to­graph any ghosts again, but this time some­thing else was cap­tured: a sense of uncanny hor­ror.
The pho­to­graphs are charged with a filmic qual­ity and this makes them some­how more psy­cho­lo­gic­ally dis­turb­ing, the sub­ver­ted every­day of rural Eng­land. Some of the land­scapes look like murder sites; oth­ers look like they are out of cult hor­ror films. Other pan­or­a­mas seem truly alien, like they are from H.G Wells War of the Worlds after the Mar­tians have sprayed the Eng­lish coun­tryside with entrails.

Even if I failed to pho­to­graph any ghosts I found some­thing else, some­thing more dis­turb­ing than actu­ally see­ing a spirit. I cap­tured a feel­ing, which is just as invis­ible; that we cre­ate the hor­ror we see ourselves within our ima­gin­a­tions and with our own ghosts.
A note on Pluckley, Kent. U.K
The vil­lage of Pluckley is nearly a thou­sand years old; the first writ­ten record of it is in the Domes­day Book (1086). The Guin­ness Book of World Records (1989) named Pluckley the most haunted vil­lage in Eng­land and accord­ing to legend there are a num­ber of ghosts that haunt the vil­lage and sur­round­ing area and they include:
•    The spectre of a high­way­man speared to a tree at Fright Corner.
•    A phantom coach and horses, appar­ently mani­fest­ing Maltman’s Hill.
•    The Water­cress Woman: The ghost of a Gypsy woman who burned to death.
•    The miller haunt­ing the ruins of a wind­mill near The Pin­nock.
•    The hanging body of a school­mas­ter in Dicky Buss’s Lane.
•    A Col­onel who hanged him­self in Park Wood.
•    The Scream­ing Man: A man being smothered by a wall of clay at the brick­works.
•    The Lady of Rose Court, who is said to have eaten poisoned ber­ries in des­pair over a love tri­angle.
•    The Phantom Monk of Grey­stones, a house built in 1863. He may have been the unre­quited love object of the Lady of Rose Court.
•    The White Lady of Der­ing, a young woman appar­ently bur­ied inside 7 coffins and an oak sar­co­phagus who haunts the chuch­yard of St Nicholas’s Church.
•    The Red Lady, reputedly an earlier mem­ber of the same ancient Der­ing fam­ily who also haunts St Nich­olas’. The legend of the Red and White Ladies seem to over­lap. A third ghost has appar­ently also been repor­ted in the same place.
•    Der­ring Woods also known as The Scream­ing Woods. An area of wood­land where ter­ri­fied screams have been heard at night.
•    The Dev­ils Bush. An unknown bush near the Scream­ing Woods that if danced around naked anti-clockwise three times at mid­night will sum­mon Lucifer.