History & local legend
Filmmaker Blair Murphy bought the Grand Midway Hotel in Windber in 2001 after learning it was listed for sale on eBay. He moved into the thirty-two-room building without knowing its haunted reputation. The first presence he noticed, he later said, was a persistent feeling that someone followed about ten feet behind him. He called it the Man in the Hall.
In an October 2026 interview, Murphy also recalled a visitor using a ghost-hunting device that announced a presence behind the group. A lamp fell from a nearby shelf seconds later. Murphy regarded that as one of many unusual incidents during his years in the building.
His interest in the supernatural eventually became visible on the hotel itself. A huge Ouija board covers the flat roof, while a giant tarot image occupies an interior ceiling. Both became record-setting works of art, joining the older stories associated with the rooms beneath them.
