Archives have always had an aura of neutrality and coolness that masks the heat behind the data they record: births, marriages, crimes, wars, business dealings, genocides and deaths. Long thought of as the musty haunts of scholars with a specialized interest in the demographics of Rome or 15th-century France, archives have been seen as controlled and quiet places. In this article, the author discusses how the idea of the archive becomes an object of obsession. The author reminds the reader, that although archives are repositories for facts, they depend on living beings to animate them, and so mistakes, alterations, and distortions come with the territory.