Ghosts In The Machine

​Client: World Book Night
2022


My submission for World Book Night 2022 is a typographic list of objects found in the home of the Collyer Brothers.

​Homer Lusk Collyer and Langley Wakeman Collyer, known as the Collyer brothers were two American brothers who became infamous for their bizarre natures and compulsive hoarding. 

For decades, the two lived in seclusion in their Harlem brownstone at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street) in New York City where they obsessively collected books, furniture, musical instruments, and myriad other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to crush intruders. Both died in their home in March 1947, both were found dead surrounded by over 140 tons of collected items that they had amassed over several decades.

Though not strictly a ghost story in the traditional sense, the analogy of ghosts could be applied to the story of the Collyer Brothers in the book Ghosty Men by Franz Lidz. 

The book details:
Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers, New York's Greatest Hoarders, Franz Lidz, Bloomsbury, 2003