The Shades
Not every Ghost needs a waiting list. The Shades are our permanent range of Edinburgh ghosts: simpler in finish, always being made, and never sold out.
The Resident Shades
Edinburgh is full of quiet legends that never made it into a history book. A reader who has outlasted every refit of the library. A doorward still minding a close that stopped needing minding years ago. The Resident Shades are our small tribute to them. Each one is settled somewhere in the city, part of its background rather than any one story. The world has moved on. Nobody has told them.
What a Shade Is
In the oldest sense of the word, a shade is a lesser spirit: a lingering trace rather than a full apparition. It's the right name for the quieter half of what we make.
A Shade is a close cousin of a Ghost, not a twin. The draped body is much the same. The head is flatter, front and back, and the eyes are softer, leaving a little more to your imagination.
The finish is simpler too: a single colour swirled through white, so no two swirls ever fall the same way. The Reader is blue, the Doorward red, the Lamplighter yellow, the Listener green and the Late Clerk black.
And unlike our Ghosts, whose cloaks reach the ground, every Shade stands on a plinth made for its character. The Reader stands on a book. The Doorward stands on part of an old stone wall, and the Lamplighter on the base of an old gas lamp. The Listener's plinth has the soundwave of a single "Boo" debossed into it. And the Late Clerk stands on a wire office in-tray.
Our Ghost Drops arrive as small events. Each is tied to one place and one story, numbered, made once, then gone. Shades are the everyday half of the range. They're always here, for anyone who'd like a piece of Edinburgh's quieter folklore on the shelf without waiting for a release.
Because Shades aren't limited to a single batch, they're never withdrawn. A collection might be gone in an evening. A Shade will be here whenever you are.
"The collections come with a date and a bit of a fuss. The Shades don't need one. We just keep making them, quietly, the way we always have."
The Dayligaun Archivist
East Lothian Workshop
Ghosts, Shades & Revenants
The Ghosts
- Drawn from Edinburgh and the Lothians
- Ghost Drops: numbered, made once, never repeated
- Lost Souls: one-offs and small unnumbered batches
- Ghost Drops offered to the Register first
The Shades
- Edinburgh's quieter legends
- One colour swirled through white
- Each on a plinth made for its character
- Always available, no waiting
The Revenants
- A fixed character, not a place
- Same shape, new colours each return
- Stamped with batch and number (e.g. Batch 1 · 7/20)
- Released on the old quarter days, Register first