As we try to consider all the evidence that has been gathered over the last three years in the Social Haunting research a number of different themes have emerged. One of these has been the idea of the commons. On the night this photograph this photo was taken I found myself reading Gary Snyder’s early nineties’ classic ‘Practice of the Wild’. Snyder is an elegant writer who is often associated with beat zen in the sixties. A talented linguist, an anthropologist and an ordained zen monk Snyder is one of those writers who wrote extensively about the commons.

Currently I am secretary of Unite the Union’s, South Yorkshire Community Branch. I am proud to be a Community partner on this phase of the Working with Social Haunting Project. For nearly 25 years I worked in a Derbyshire Community School. And I am utterly clueless about what the word community means. I suppose I could construct some sort of answer, but I find myself none the wiser if someone mentions community education, or a religious community, or an industrial community

It seems a while now since Geoff and I drove up the A1 for a Ghost Lab in the old pit village of Horden, County Durham. I do not know the area but I was prepared to see a village much like the ones on the home turf of South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire: a bit strung out, one village melding into the other in a rolling landscape. I think that was there but all I saw was the sea.

The Sheffield based part of the Ghost Labs team (Geoff, Max and Mark) went up to Harrogate to join Pippa and Brendan from the New Vic Theatre at the Unite Pavilion at the Great Yorkshire Show. I knew things were serious when Geoff announced that he had his wellies as the day before there had been a lot of rain at the show.

Geoff Bright, Max Munday and myself, Mark James as part of the ‘ Working with Social Haunting’ team joined the Unite Community coach from Sheffield to go up to “ The Big Meet” otherwise known as the Durham Miners Gala. Held every year in July the Big Meet is a tradition which goes back many years where the ‘lads and lasses’ in the pit villages of County Durham gather in the city to engage in much merriment and listen to the odd political speech. Brass Bands from the