Grand Midway Hotel

The Grand Midway Hotel from Kerouac Fest

The Grand Midway Hotel is located in Windber, Somerset County. It isn't a public hotel, but an artists co-op owned by film maker Blair Murphy. He made the move from LA to Windber when he won the hotel in an E-Bay auction. The turn of the century, 33 room building is plenty roomy enough for the artists, who host an annual Kerouac Fest, and their ghostly guests.

Blair's had a posse of psychic investigators stop by, and so far they've found rhyming Sarah, a young girl with long curly hair in a white pinafore with a doll, a girl in the wall, another that won't show herself, and heard various voices.

Sarah told psychic Voxx “609, come and see me anytime – I play in riddle and in rhyme – my father killed me, what a crime.” Voxx believes that 609 is spook speak for the year she died, 1906. The next ghost, responding to Patty Wilson's questioning, told her she had been hiding in the wall since 1929. Rosemary Eileen Guiley and Adam Blai got another woman's spirit to blurt “I can't help you if you can't see me,” after repeated requests to show herself.

The Ghost Research Foundation investigated the Hotel, and left with the following impressions: A spirit called the Professor lurks in the second floor office. He has a liking for Anne Rice books on the shelf. When they entered the “Canopy Room”, they felt intense cold and heard a spook say “We are not leaving!” They sensed a strong female presence there, which was not too surprising as the place was once a bordello. They also felt that the basement had a body or two buried in it at one time.

That's how it is with those E-Bay purchases. You have to take the house as is, no returns.