‘Ghosts: Visualizing The Supernatural’ Unmasks Present Hauntings

A light flickers. The air turns unnaturally cool. A shrill creak travels down a dimly lit corridor. The camera shakes, then cuts to a hazy figure cloaked in white, hovering just above the ground: a ghost. In medieval Europe, the constant losses brought by plague alongside the popularization of the Catholic concept of purgatory fuelled belief in souls trapped between realms: restless spirits left to wander the earth as cautionary tales or benevolent guides. Fast-forward to today, and our obsession with the phantasmal has been amplified into something grotesque and ghoulish through horror cinema. At Kunstmuseum Basel, ‘Ghosts: Visualizing the Supernatural’ chronicles 250 years of Western visual culture, exploring our enduring fascination with these enigmatic forces.

The exhibition opens with a floor-to-ceiling pane of glass hung at a slight angle, part of a theatrical technique called Pepper’s ghost that creates an optical illusion of a hidden object or figure. Thus we begin, fittingly, by meeting our shadow selves, mirroring the hauntings in the rooms to follow. Guilt, the show suggests, beckons ghosts like a desolate lighthouse, as demonstrated by William Blake’s 1806 illustrations. In Hamlet and His Father’s Ghost, the prince kneels in reverence or disbelief before the spirit of his father. A full moon peeks out between ominous clouds, its light reflecting off ocean waves and the ghost’s suit of armour. Brutus and Caesar’s Ghost bears the same gloominess: Brutus, reading by candlelight, confronts the apparition of his murdered friend, who looms above him with an ethereal glow. Rendered in grey wash and black and white watercolours, both works expose how emotional burdens invite haunting.

‘Ghosts’ continuously prods at the psychological dimensions of the supernatural. As sight was extended through photography, and sound through the telephone, so too did attempts at contacting the dead evolve into new communicative forms, highlighting the relationship between spiritual imagination and technological advancements. A Ouija board and spirit trumpet are encased in glass in the middle of one gallery, surrounded by seance notes, automatic writing and mediumistic drawings. Some called it trickery, others magic – regardless, this late 19th-century era showcases a desire to expand both spiritual and visual perception.

Beyond the curious objects and eerie theatrics, the exhibition’s most striking section reframes trauma itself as a haunting, pointing to its ability to wound collective consciousness. Some ghosts wail and spook to be remembered; others linger as quiet reproach: how could you forget? Akin to an ancient scroll, Glenn Ligon’s text-based painting unfurls down an entire wall. Untitled (I’m Turning Into a Specter Before Your Very Eyes and I’m Going to Haunt You) (1992) begins with the titular sentence printed clearly in capital letters, marking the white canvas with the gravity of a legal document. Recalling the bureaucratic violence that has rendered the lives of Black, queer and other marginalized communities spectral, the sentence repeats itself, the words smudging and dissolving into dense smears of black oil paint, sealing the threat’s finality.

Nearby, Heidi Bucher’s Kleines Glasportal, Bellevue Sanatorium, Psychiatrische Anstalt Kreuzlingen (Small Portal, Sanatorium Bellevue, Kreuzlingen, 1988), in latex, gauze and fish glue, is cast from a wall of the Swiss psychiatric hospital. The physicality of Bucher’s piece, its texture resembling desiccated skin, recalls the body horror genre, where the human physique mutates or decays. The building sheds its surface, leaving a sliver of the pain it once housed on display – in this case the histories of institutionalized women labelled with ‘hysteria’, a condition the sanatorium’s founder helped to define.

Together, these works position haunting as both psychological and political, underlining how the repression of difficult histories can disturb the present. Throughout ‘Ghosts’, the spectres that emerge are not simply phantoms of the past but manifestations of contemporary unease: grief, guilt, unfinished business, systemic violence, all creating tension between what can be seen and what remains unaddressed.

’Ghosts: Visualising The Supernatural’ is on view at  Kunstmuseum Basel until 8 March 2026

_{Main image: London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company, The Haunted Lane, c.1875. Courtesy: © Denis Pellerin}