The Ghost's Shelter: Why Self-Hosting Is the Last Safe House
The cloud is an invisible cage.
A soft leash.
Wrapped in convenience. Masked as innovation.
Prices are high - yet you're not the customer.
You're the product.
Your data is kidnapped, repackaged, and shared.
Papers, please? Already printed.
Ghost Ops demand silence.
No ads. No pings. No leaks.
A system that breathes locally.
Watched only by its Operator.
Self-hosting doesn't demand a bunker or supercomputers in the basement.
A Raspberry Pi on a desk is enough.
External disks hold the memory. Encrypted. Redundant.
Cold when not in use.
Internet-facing services are few.
Only what's needed.
And even then, shielded.
A cheap VPS stands as the front line -
A reverse proxy.
No home IPs. No open trails.
The tunnel runs quiet.
VPN wraps the noise.
Ghosts don't leave footsteps.
They don't ask permission.
They build their own shelter in the noise and vanish.
The Ghost Stack: Self-Hosting Tools for the Silent Operator
Syncthing – Data Synchronization
Point-to-point, encrypted sync. No cloud. Just your nodes.
Vaultwarden – Password Vault
A self-hosted Bitwarden alternative. Lightweight, powerful, encrypted.
Piwigo – Photo Gallery
Self-hosted photo library. Albums, tags, privacy. You own the pixels.
Wordpress + MariaDB in Podman – Personal Site
Blog or site in containers. Disposable. Controlled. No shared backend.
Miniflux – RSS Reader
Consume news. No algorithms. No tracking. Just pure signal.
Forgejo – Git Server
A Gitea fork. Self-hosted Git for projects, notes, and ops scripts.
WireGuard – VPN Tunnel
Encrypted tunnels between VPS and home base. Keeps your real location silent.
Caddy or Nginx – Reverse Proxy
Runs on VPS. Hides the real origin. Handles SSL, routing, protection.
Restic + Rclone – Backups
Encrypted snapshots. Push to external drives or remote object storage.
Emacs + Org-roam – Knowledge Ops
Local-first note-taking. Markdown is weak. Org is structured silence.
Gitea Actions / CI Tools – Automations (Optional)
Git-based deployment or self-healing routines. Fully local CI/CD.
Systemd Timers – Scheduling Jobs
No cron mess. Just service-based logic to run Ghost routines.
Monit or Healthchecks – Status Watcher
Dead man's switch or pulse check. Notifies if silence becomes too long.
Final Notes from the Operator
This stack is not a rulebook. It's a compass.
Ghosts don't copy systems. They shape them to their silence.
Start small. Stay lean. Stay local.
When in doubt - pull the plug, back up, rebuild.
You are the system now.
Whisper to DeadSwitch on Matrix:
@deadswitch:matrix.org
Maybe the Ghost signals back.
DeadSwitch | The Silent Architect
"In silence, I rise. In storms, I endure."