Catalogue / Plate 18← All plates
The viewing
An estate agent's photo listing, where she is nearer every time you look back.
Sampleton Estates
Halloween horror: a ghost, sudden fright, a scream. No flashing. Sound only if you turn it on.

An estate agent's photograph listing for 14 Alder Close, with four rooms: the hall, the lounge, the kitchen and the bedroom. Move the pointer, or drag, to use a magnifying glass on the photographs. In every photograph a pale, tall woman in a mustard cardigan is hiding, and each time you return to a room she is nearer: first far off in a doorway, a mirror, the garden or the wardrobe, then behind a coat, a curtain, the window sill or under the bed. After eight photographs the listing shows a picture of you at your desk with her standing behind you. She comes towards the camera, and her face fills the picture, and she screams at you. Then it is dark.
Photo 1 of 8
14 Alder Close 3 bed semi-detached, £349,950
Bright entrance hall with stairs to the first floor and a door through to the rear.
She is in every photograph, and she is hard to see. Use the magnifier. On a phone, drag.
photographs decoded in … · photo 1 of 8 · hall, she is not there
Remake it
Build one interactive web page: A three-bedroom semi on Sampleton Estates, four rooms of ordinary photographs and a magnifier. Click through them and come back: in the hall she is a shape in a far doorway, then halfway down the carpet; in the lounge a figure in the mirror, then at the bay window; at the kitchen window, in the wardrobe gap. She only ever moves while you are looking at a different photograph, so you can never catch it. The magnifier is yours, and the dark corners are where she is: stare, or go in close, and her face is cut into the picture. After the twelfth photograph there is a thirteenth, of you at your desk, with her behind your chair. The page takes the magnifier out of your hand, carries it to her face, and she screams. Set it on an invented business called Sampleton, with its own drawn or generated pictures and no one else's files. It suits: A Halloween event, a horror film or game launch, a haunted attraction: anywhere a visitor has come to be properly frightened by something that looks like an everyday page. The change-between-glances loop suits any piece that wants dread without ever showing a monster for long. Do not let it fail the way this kind of piece usually does: A scare that ambushes with no warning, flashes, or takes the page away. Here a content note comes first, there is never a flash, only the magnifier is taken (the page and your pointer stay yours), the whole thing can be watched hands-free, sound is off until you turn it on, and Look again returns to the hall. Reduced motion stops the shake and the grain. It must work with the keyboard, on a phone, with reduced motion respected and no text under 12px. Tell me which libraries you chose and why.
Notes: when it suits, when it does not, how it fails
- When it suits
- A Halloween event, a horror film or game launch, a haunted attraction: anywhere a visitor has come to be properly frightened by something that looks like an everyday page. The change-between-glances loop suits any piece that wants dread without ever showing a monster for long.
- When it does not
- Anywhere a fright would be unwelcome, anyone who has told you they are easily frightened, and any real property listing: the point is that it looks like one.
- How it fails
- A scare that ambushes with no warning, flashes, or takes the page away. Here a content note comes first, there is never a flash, only the magnifier is taken (the page and your pointer stay yours), the whole thing can be watched hands-free, sound is off until you turn it on, and Look again returns to the hall. Reduced motion stops the shake and the grain.
Built from scratch for an invented business; nothing here comes from the site studied.