- To inhabit, visit, or appear to in the form of a ghost.
- A place much frequented.
- To haunt one’s thoughts or memory.
Haunt was an Imove project with fiction writer Steve Toase that sprang from his experiences and grew into a book Haunt and site-specific theatre piece of the same name. The first incarnation of the show was the result of a collaboration between workshop participants and artists Steve Toase, Tessa Gordziejko, Stef Jones, Zoe Parker, Al Orange, Tom Hunt, Rory Gordziejko and me. It took place in Harrogate in the summer of 2015 and incorporates material from one of my yet-to-be-published first novels. In 2017 we took the project to Cheltenham. Read work produced on the project and find out more about how the project progressed at Haunt.
Harrogate is known for its past as a wealthy spa town, and still has a reputation as a genteel place of tea rooms and flower shows. This is not the Harrogate of everyone. For some people this idealised history is a haunting presence in their lives, in the fabric of buildings where they live in one room, or the parks where they sleep. Their experiences are muffled beneath the dominant voice of Harrogate.
Haunt explores how people who are homeless, or bedsit residents, live inside these ghosts of the town’s past. Haunt gives people a place to tell stories not normally heard in the accepted narrative of the town and bring them to a wider audience.
N.B. Homelessness and vulnerable housing are problems that many people have dealt with during their lifetime. I share my own experience of being vulnerably housed in the Haunt blog.
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