About
The only living member of the Spirit Craft Collective. The fearless leader of the bunch. He's a middle-aged guy just trying to get by, like anyone else. With a little help from his partner Amanda, his dog Annie Banannie, and the ragtag group of camera-bound spirits who haunt his gear.
You know, like anyone else.
Origin Story...
They say most folks who come to a yard sale walk away with something they don’t really need. A cracked casserole dish, a stack of VHS tapes, maybe a lamp with a crooked shade. Me, I walked away with a Minolta. Five bucks. The old man running the table just shrugged when I asked if it still worked. “It’s yours if you want it,” he said, like he couldn’t be rid of it fast enough.
I took it home, loaded a roll of film, and that’s when things started to go sideways. The first photo wasn’t of my living room at all—it was of a woman’s hands folded neatly in her lap. I’d never seen her before. The next shot I tried to take—Annie snoozing in her sunspot—came out with Annie doubled, like she was split into two versions of herself, both looking straight at me.
It didn’t take long to realize the camera was haunted. Or maybe inhabited is the better word. Some spirit clung to it, shaping every picture I tried to take. The photos were less like photographs and more like fragments of someone else’s memory leaking through.
I’d always thought of myself as just a photographer, not a ghost hunter. But once you see something like that, you can’t unsee it. I started digging, asking questions, staying up late on forums where folks argued about spirit photography like it was just another camera club hobby. That’s when I found the story: sometimes, under the right conditions, a photograph can pin down a soul. If a person dies near the time their likeness is captured, part of them gets tied to the machine itself.
The Minolta wasn’t just a tool anymore—it was a vessel. And once I knew that, I couldn’t help myself.
My partner Amanda and I started hunting. Thrift shops. Pawn stores. Yard sales tucked on back roads in northern Kentucky. Each camera I picked up, I tested. Most were just cameras. But some had a… hum. A little weight to them. Like you weren’t holding plastic and glass—you were holding someone.
That’s how Spirit Craft Studio was born. A collective, though most of its members are invisible to anyone but me. I call myself the Lightkeeper, because somebody has to stand on this side of things and make sure the lanterns stay lit. Annie keeps me company, padding soft across the floor while I develop film. My Amanda shakes her head sometimes, watching me mutter to a Polaroid or tap on the back of an old Canon like it might talk back. And in a way, they do.
Each spirit-camera has its own quirks. Some are shy, only showing themselves when they feel like it. Others are loud, impatient, eager to stamp their mark on the world. The pictures are strange. Fuzzy. Off-kilter. Sometimes frightening. But always alive in a way no ordinary photo can be.
Folks ask me, now and then, why I do it. Why I surround myself with machines that rattle with the dead. I don’t have a clean answer. Maybe I just like the company. Maybe I like the idea that a photograph isn’t just proof of a moment but a doorway back into it. Or maybe it’s the mystery itself—that somewhere in northern Kentucky, in a box of somebody’s forgotten attic junk, there’s another camera waiting. Another soul, captured and left behind, hoping someone will pick them up for five bucks and give them another shot.
That’s my life's calling. I borrow the moments and put them on display. I keep the lights. I snap the shutter. And I listen when the dead have something to say.
Fueled By Coffee
(And Your Kind Support)
I run this cozy little ad-free corner of the internet for the joy of it.
I chase light, not clicks. I make photos. If this place brings a smile to your face please know: your support keeps film in the camera, coffee in the cup, and the adventures rolling.
Click on the coffee cup to toss in a few coins, if you like.
No pressure.
Either way, thank you for being a part of the collective
and helping my vision grow.