The time is out of joint: Atmosphere and hauntology at Bodiam Castle

•Draws attention to the spectral and hauntological in the staging of affective atmospheres in a heritage context.•Installing atmospheres can be a means to redress historical absences.•Atmospheres always draw on and reinforce disrupted and anachronistic notions of time.•Designers purposefully deploy hauntological techniques to produce powerfully resonant and emotional social spaces.

Drawing on recent work in emotional and cultural geography, the author brings Derrida's concept of hauntology into communication with thinking about atmospheres. The research deployed a mixed-method approach including audio documentation, observation, focus groups and interviews to look at the use of spectrality in the making of atmospheres associated with A Knight's Peril, an interactive game played at Bodiam Castle in the South East of England. The paper argues that the figure of the ghost is a useful heuristic towards understanding how designers conjure and exploit the emotional and affective power of atmospheres. At Bodiam, these techniques are deployed in an attempt to facilitate new understandings of the past.