Executive producer Jeff Pinkner decided he wanted fellow executive producer David H. Goodman and supervising producer J. R. Orci to collaborate in writing the episode; Goodman wrote the first half, while Orci wrote the rest of the episode. The two later worked together on only one other episode, "The Equation". Frederick E. O. Toye directed the episode, as he had worked previously with the writers on Alias. The writers had the idea for a couple of weeks of Olivia walking into an apartment and discovering walls covered with drawings of events that "no man could possibly have known about". They wanted to take "urban myths or legends of strange events" and come up with a fringe science equivalent; this led them to creating the story of Roy, a man with seemingly "psychic" abilities, which they then expanded by offering a real scientific explanation in the form of Walter's past research. In the show's early development, the producers were also unsure about how other aspects should be developed, such as Joshua Jackson's character Peter. For instance, in "The Ghost Network", they debated whether or not Peter would break into his childhood home before finally "stalling and just let him do it"; Orci came up with Peter's explanation to Olivia, that he used to live there so it wasn't really breaking in.
