There’s a place in Los Angeles called the Museum of Jurassic Technology. As the name might imply, it isn’t a museum in the traditional sense, but more of a collection of exhibits presenting what may be fiction as fact in a way that makes even fact begin to seem like fiction. When we’d gone through the whole thing, a friend pointed to a pigeon outside and asked, paranoid, “Is that even real?” The museum had recalibrated his sense of his place in reality.

Reading Leanne Shapton’s Guestbook: Ghost Stories was a similar experience for me. A collection of stories, vignettes, found photographs, and the artist’s illustrations, this book, like many ghost stories, blurs the line between what can be absolutely known and what cannot. The writing and images are equal parts funny, spooky, and devastating, and by the time I was done reading I felt haunted myself. (more…)

— 22 hours ago