phantasmal

This phantasmal region holds a particular lure for Osborn—not simply to uncover its hidden biodiversity but also to find out how living things can survive such extreme conditions.

The movie’s visuals, including its character design, were inspired by the lightly phantasmal, jauntily sinister illustrations that the artist Gris Grimly created for a 2003 edition of the Collodi book.

Dozens of Airbnb listings advertise phantasmal experiences as well, such as a “second-floor haunted oasis” or a “Phantoms Lair.”

On the question of what it’s like to echolocate like a bat or a dolphin, Yong posits that it might be like “touching with sound,” “It’s as if a dolphin is reaching out and squeezing its surroundings with phantasmal hands,” he writes.

That phantasmal sound, that subliminal beat, untethered to time but bound to the Earth, informed Gay’s approach to the album.