17 Sep 2014

Dr King: The Story of a Melbourne Ghostsign by Nick Gadd

Fading sign painted on a wall advertising Dr King
Photo: Nick Gadd

This Melbourne ghostsign is a recent reveal and was captured by Nick Gadd, the writer behind Melbourne Circle. Nick’s research into the sign was recently published in an anthology of papers titled ‘Melbourne Subjective‘. He investigates the sign and creates a tentative hypothesis about who Dr King was with reference to a fictitious, but plausible, customer/patient. It shows how ghostsigns and their stories are necessarily incomplete and that this allows us to join the factual dots with our own imagination. This is something I do on my tours, although I do stress what is fact versus my own speculation. Nick has kindly shared his full paper which you can download here, I really recommend you do.

Thank you Nick for sharing the paper, here’s another picture of the Dr King ghostsign in context.

Fading sign painted on a wall advertising Dr King
Photo: Nick Gadd

Subscribe to my newsletter for news, events and projects from the world of ghost signs. I curate the newsletter roughly monthly and welcome submissions.