One night Adam Blai and I created an interesting light painting photo session. It was a series of photos. Late at night, with music blasting down the halls, we photographed every room on the hotel third floor, placing the large Anubis statue, Egyptian Guardian of the Dead, as the one consistent in every picture. Something was definately in the air that night. This was the photo captured for Room #17.

The 'ghost' in the background of this particular photo though was faked. It was me. Adam had come to the hotel a few times for ghost hunting adventures as well as various photography sessions. Only this one time did we actually 'fake' a photo. This night, to create a ghost-like effect, Adam had me stand in the dark of Room #17, and then he had me quickly leave the room while the lens was still open.

Regardless of the trick photography, something very eerie was in the air that night anyway. Adam writes about it below:

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Caption for the Room with the Lonely Blair-Ghost -by Adam Blai

Sometimes the ghosts at the hotel seem so lonely, like sad children scolded and made to stand in the corner. I imagine them standing in both worlds, somewhat seeing us, listening, hoping to be heard in turn. Some of the ghosts in the hotel seem to like to play, if a little insistently. Some are mean and want to be left alone in their space. Some are so quiet; you might never know they are there: one is watching. Can you see it?

At one point in that eerie evening of making art Blair was describing how most people will experience the hotel from stories they hear, or things they see and read on the internet…and that he won’t always be here. That the images and website might be around for a long, long time after we are both gone. We went back to work and I tucked this idea in a mental pocket like something you find and want to look at later in better light.

When I looked at this image the next day it came back and clicked: we were roaming those haunted halls, documenting things for some future people, yet unborn, for a time when we would both be dead. Three generations are in this picture: The photographer in his present, Blair in the future as the ghost he will be and the silent witnesses from decades past that watched us that night and maybe cracked a wry smile at that particular turn of our conversation…