ABSTRACT
Airports can be strangely haunting, uncertain places. The sprawling buildings themselves, their typical location on the peripheries of the cities that they serve, and the difficulty of reaching them via ground transportation form a cluster of factors which tend to set airports apart and outside of the quotidian. This chapter explores spectral presence – the abandoned site of Mirabel International Airport in Canada – that intrudes into other airport spaces. Various scholars have suggested that airports are significant indicators of the flows of modernity, globalisation and the history of a transnational elite. Abandoned airports rarely remain undeveloped; after they have been decommissioned their location, previously outside the city but now surrounded by residential tracts and industrial parks, is reconceptualised as valuable real estate and the facility quickly disappears into its environs. Consequently, Mirabel's ghosts can no longer haunt anyone. In spite of this narrative, this 'aéroport-fantôme' pushes through into the present at unexpected moments.
