Ghost Signs: Phantoms of the Past

Ghost signs are the fading painted advertisements that you often see on old brick walls and buildings. They're a window into a city's history, hinting at businesses that have long since disappeared. You can find these signs on the sides of buildings, above doorways, and in alleys - silent reminders of a past that still peeks through into our modern lives.

The HK Ghost Signs map is an historical archive of Hong Kong's ghost signs. The map itself has a striking visual style, with a black-and-white base map hinting at a vintage aesthetic - punctuated by bright pink markers highlighting the city's surviving ghost signs. Clicking on a marker on the map reveals a photograph and often some background information about the selected ghost sign’s origins.

Many of the mapped signs on HK Ghost Signs once belonged to shops and businesses that closed decades ago - their painted names and slogans surviving only as faint traces on stucco and brick. Collectively, these points form an alternative tour of the city, one that winds not along the main tourist routes, but through backstreets and forgotten facades. The map even includes 'star' and 'check-in' options for each mapped ghost sign, that make it very easy to create an itinery of signs you might want to visit and also the means to tick-off the signs once visited.

At the other end of the stylistic spectrum is the San Francisco Ghost Sign Mapping Project, which uses a straightforward Google My Map to plot nearly a thousand ghost signs across the Californian city. 

While its visual presentation is less polished than HK Ghost Signs, the project makes up for it with functionality. A handy menu lets you filter the map to show only certain types of signs, such as Building/Business signs or Ad/Brand signs. This makes it easy to focus on just one particular slice of the city’s painted history at a time.

Unrelated to ghost signs (but lovely nonetheless) - M+, Hong Kong’s museum for visual culture, has an interactive map of Neon Signs that are also dotted around the Chinese city. Bookmark both Hong Kong maps, and you may be able to find faded ghost signs sharing the same walls with neon - providing a striking clash of past and present in the same city space.