GHOSTS
LIMITED EDITION • In special collaboration with the Kunstmuseum’s exhibition 'Ghosts' we have created 500 limited edition discovery sets that explore the scent of the supernatural and ask the question "What do ghosts smell like?" Experience five spirited fragrances that blur the boundaries between the living and the departed, using rare resins, ghostly botanicals, and antique musks that conjure the unseen visitors.
EKTOPLASMA: Strange, phantom and once of the flesh. Black water lotus combines with mate absolute, animalic ambergris, and wool grease
THE VEIL: A vapor-trail of skin and shadow. Matsutake mushroom combines with invisible musks that drift like an echo.
IN BETWEEN: The threshold between presence and absence. Damp oakmoss, vetiver, frankincense, labdanum, and ambrettolide.
POLTERGEIST: The scent of a chaotic spirit, a sacred disturbance. Mysterious wormwood blends with scorched birch tar, verdant galbanum, and fossilized amber.
FANTASMINO: A mischievous vapor both playful and innocent. Burnt sugars and smoke are woven with violets and electricity.
LAYER WITH
Scent is our most ancient and primal sense, capable of conjuring memory, emotion, and atmosphere more vividly than sight or sound. What might a ghost smell like? Not as metaphor or illusion, but as experience.
Heretic Founder/Perfumer was honored to receive a call from Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland, asking if Heretic could create a set of perfumes in response to their new art exhibition "Ghosts". He asked himself "could I distill the moment when the air grows dense, when breath stills and you feel something just out of reach? Could I bottle the tremble of a presence, the scent of the unseen?" In approaching this work, Douglas imagined scent as ectoplasm— ephemeral, shifting, impossible to hold. He worked with materials that speak in whispers: incense resins that curl like spectral tendrils, antique musks that evoke the past living within the present, and ghostly botanicals, vetiver roots, iris absolute, and fragments of smoky myrrh, that fade and return like a half-remembered dream.
The process was not formulation. It was communion. "I wanted these scents to haunt. To stir the marrow, to blur the boundaries between the living and the departed. to make the skin prickle, not from fear, but from that strange and holy sense of being watched, or perhaps, accompanied. This is not a perfume in the traditional sense. It is a ritual. A doorway. An offering to the unknown. I invite you to inhale slowly, eyes half-closed, and let your body become the vessel. Who knows what, or who, might answer back?" - DL
Apparitions do not walk, they drift. They do not speak, but they are felt. So too is scent. It moves like breath through an empty room. It clings to silence. It alters the air. Invisible, but undeniable. Ephemeral, yet unforgettable.
Created in collaboration with the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland, in response to their exhibition 'Ghosts'. This set includes five 2mL samples. Quantities are very limited, and this set will not be restocked once it sells out.
EKTOPLASMA: A silken exudate from the unseen, strange, phantom and once of the flesh. Black water lotus blooming in the darkness combines with mate absolute, animalic ambergris, and soft wool grease.
THE VEIL: A vapor-trail of skin and shadow. Earthy notes of damp and feral Matsutake mushroom combine with invisible musks that drift like an echo.
IN BETWEEN: The threshold between presence and absence. Damp oakmoss blends with vetiver, frankincense, labdanum, and ambrettolide.
POLTERGEIST: The scent of a chaotic spirit, a sacred disturbance. Mysterious wormwood blends with scorched birch tar, verdant galbanum, and fossilized amber. Part smoke, part green, and all wild magic, it's a bold apparition that doesn't haunt gently.
FANTASMINO: A mischievous vapor both playful and innocent. A fragrance of burnt sugar and smoke woven with crushed violets and electricity.
No phthalates • No parabens • No synthetic dyes • No formaldehyde • Vegan-friendly • Cruelty-free
Our handcrafted fragrances surpass all industry standards of “clean” with their plant-based and safe synthetic ingredients blended in organic, non-GMO sugarcane alcohol. These fragrances are composed of a proprietary "ghost accord" blend of naturally-derived and safe synthetic ingredients.
We encourage you to layer two to three fragrances to create your signature scent. These fragrances are composed almost entirely of natural materials; wild, unruly, and alive. Like spirits, they shift with the air, the skin, the mood. They do not announce themselves. They emerge.
BEGIN IN STILLNESS. Ghosts don't respond to command. They arrive when the body is quiet and the breath is deep.
CHOOSE WITH INSTINCT. Each perfume is a presence. Some gentle, some strange, some bold. Let the one that calls to you reveal itself.
APPLY TO THE PLACES WHERE YOU FEEL MOST HUMAN. Pulse points. Throat. Chest. Fabric worn close. These are living materials; they will warm, breathe, and change.
LET IT EVOLVE. Natural essences bloom differently than synthetics. They open slowly, move unpredictably, and fade like a memory: beautifully and with mystery.
EXPECT PRESENCE, NOT PERMANENCE. These scents are apparitions. They do not cling, they haunt. You may forget they're there until a breeze stirs something and you remember them again.
RETURNS: We only accept returns for defective or damaged products. If you’d like to sample the fragrance first, we recommend you start with one of our Discovery Sets or take our Fragrance Finder Quiz for a personally recommended scent.
SHIPPING: At this time, we ship within the contiguous United States, the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia and the U.K. To see our shipping zones, see our FAQ. If you'd like to see if there is a retailer in your area, please use our store locator.
Free U.S. shipping on orders of $125 or more (a $10 flat-rate applies to orders under $125). See FAQ for international shipping rates.
RADICALLY TRANSPARENT
We aren’t afraid to bare it all. We list every single ingredient in every single fragrance.
SAFE, NATURAL INGREDIENTS
No phthalates • No parabens • Non-toxic • Always vegan friendly & cruelty-free
GENDER NEUTRAL
Fragrances shouldn’t be assigned a specific gender, which is why all our scents can be worn by anyone.
