London – An updated map of buildings where someone in the past or recently thought they saw signs of ghosts. It is the initiative – between strange curiosity and interest in creating phenomena that attract tourists and visitors – launched on the occasion of the Halloween weekend by an institution that claims to be as serious as Historic England: a public promotional body sponsored by the British Department for Culture, Digital, Media and Sport. The organization has put out a call to owners and renters of haunted houses across England, according to Vox Populi, in which the story of “recorded signals” of some intangible entity has survived, to send in data and supposed evidence.

To then be able to draw up an online map that is as complete and colorful as possible to be available to the curious and hunters of the various ectoplasms. The lure of ghosts has always been very much alive in the United Kingdom, among castles and more modest homes, with a tradition of widespread public interest dating back at the ‘entertainment’ level to at least the 19th century. The ‘traces’ contained do not sometimes fail to produce a powerful evocative force of suggestion even in rational minds, as Duncan Wilson, the director and researcher who is currently chief executive of Historic England, has observed: ‘Once you start looking with attention – his words collected by The Guardian – You can discover them hidden under anyone’s eyes.