Roughly a year ago, I moved from Columbus, Ohio to Portland, Oregon. It was a good decision in every sense of the adjective; I'm currently working for my favorite comic publisher and absorbing a culture and geography I'd been wholly unexposed. There is one big caveat: Portland isn't haunted. And that's unfortunate.
I used to run nightly (morningly?) at 2 AM through the streets of Columbus under Silver Oak branches and through veils of Midwestern humidity. A seductive sense of history beat through that city—primarily in my neighborhood and birthplace, Clintonville. Each house was built before World War II. No dry wall—only plaster. No aluminum or vinyl siding—only charred wood that looked like hell if it wasn't painted every five years. Every house looked like a fairy tale hibernated under its floorboards. This perspective is absolutely flavored by the fact that I grew up in what I believe to be a very, very haunted house that would chain itself from the inside. But that's another story.
Before I left, I wandered the streets with a tripod and my camera. These are the pictures of a city's subconscious, and I wish I would have devoted more time to it.
