I spent a while working in commercial archaeology and studied for an MA in Landscape Archaeology at university. I now work mainly with GIS and historic mapping. What they all have in common is looking for details. Whether you’re trying to determine the soil change onsite to recognise an Iron Age pit, identify roundhouse gulleys on aerial photographs, or recognising historic features in the current landscape, you’re looking for clarity and consistency.

Modern Singapore is built on exhumed cemeteries and cleared jungle. The supernatural is (famously) the return of the repressed, and I’ve always viscerally felt that in Singapore. I always, always apologize before peeing on trees, like they taught us during compulsory military service. For me, ghost stories are about connecting with the dead. They’re about people and places we shouldn’t forget.

I read some research once—no idea where—that in war-torn countries, those hit hard with collective trauma, horror movies are very popular. I’ve wondered if that’s about agency. They say that someone who’s been through something traumatic but who has some agency to get out or fight back does better recovering than those who weren’t able to.

I think that money provides motivations capable of damning us all, and that the man who accepts the offer would protest at great length about any characterization of himself as evil. He thinks he is above the temptation, and he may even be right. But since he is unambiguously human, we can measure what he is better than we can measure the representative of the unknown organization.