When Sandhu began work on Night Haunts, an art experience that is delivered through a website (www.nighthaunts.org.uk), he imagined a series of larks and adventures as he set out to chronicle those spaces even Londoners rarely contemplate, much less visit: the sewer system with its workers, the night sky with the avian police, a convent where a sect of nuns prays every night for the souls of Londoners. Although it took time to earn people's trust (dispensing with the enormous sound equipment helped), the adventures arrived. Sandhu has been chased by the police while following a graffiti artist on his nocturnal renderings; he's lost his cell phone while chronicling an exorcism in a former prison; and he has even been shot, when a bullet meant for vermin bounced and hit him in the hand. And he's gotten his subjects to open up to him; he says four or five a.m. is generally when comfort and trust take over and people feel at ease enough to leak their stories.

Each adventure becomes one of the Night Haunts episodes, essayistic journal entries that explore one venue, topic, or theme; he estimates each entry takes about 140 hours of work. Once written, the text is passed to Ian Budden of Mind Unit, a design agency specializing in websites, and he creates the visual ideas and motifs for the text. Budden also manipulates the words so that they ­appear at variable speeds on the screen. "We wanted to make the reading experience more subtle and immersive than on most websites and to make clear that the whole thing isn't seen as just a piece of sociology or newspaper reporting," Sandhu says. The site also offers a sonic element, created by sound artist Scanner, who provides audio loops - either found or recorded specially for the project. "Our ears are more acute at night," Sandhu says. "Sound becomes more pregnant with possibility."