I was working in the lab, late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
Bobby Picket
A newbie property photographer’s naivete: What if one day I show up to an unprepared home and have to cancel the photoshoot? SUVs sitting in the driveway, piled clothes in the bedroom, last week’s mail scattered across the counter – what a nightmare that would be *shudders*…
Spineless cameramen. They would never survive at VHT Studios. The kinds of horrors our photographers encounter aren’t for the faint of heart. Suspicious shadows in an empty bar, disappearing animals in a petting zoo, supernatural suspects in an old hotel? Tall tales some say. But our photographers live to tell otherwise.
Maria D.’s Story
I took these in early April 2020 on a Friday night on Frenchmen St., in New Orleans. They were to document the way COVID-19 was affecting local businesses in the city, and typically on a weekend night, this area is a street party. With everything shuttered and people on lockdown, the only signs of life were the glowing microphone stand in a corner bar and the dancing shadows on the walls.
Chip J.’s Story
About two years ago (pre-VHT), I did a photoshoot at a large rural property about 30 miles south of Minneapolis. This property included a petting zoo featuring exotic animals. The homeowner met me at the door, asked me if I needed anything, and then left me alone to do the shoot.
As I photographed, I heard bumps in the walls, occasional creaking floorboards, and so on. I then heard some sort of hoofed animal walking into the home through the front door left open. I turned around and there was a goat. I shooshed it out.
The home was decorated in a rustic log cabin style, but everything felt odd about it. The décor involved all types of animal photos, decorations, and mounted animal heads on the wall. I’m not usually sensitive to mounted heads, but being alone in a place like this was really unnerving.
I later learned that this “petting zoo” was under investigation for killing the exotic animals they raised. Apparently, the owners would let visitors pet and feed these animals, and then they would later kill them to profit from their pelts. A lawsuit against them was later dismissed after they agreed to get rid of their exotic animal collection.
The home I photographed mysteriously burned to the ground about three months after this photoshoot. The original owners still own this property.
James S.’s Story
In August of 2010, I was hired to document the renovation of the Hotel John Marshall in Richmond, Virginia from a crumbling, condemned building to upscale Class A luxury apartments. The Hotel John Marshall opened Oct 30, 1929, the day after the Wall Street Crash that triggered the Great Depression. The luxurious new hotel was billed as “The Finest Hotel in the South” with 418 meticulously decorated guest rooms and three palatial ballrooms. Throughout the years, many famous guests graced its rooms, including Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Mary Tyler Moore, Elizabeth Taylor, and Elvis Presley. Presley would famously book the entire 7th floor whenever he performed in Richmond (remember this for later).
The John Marshall closed in 1988, and it fell into such disrepair that in early 2010 the building was officially condemned by the city. When the decision was made to renovate the building, police had to be summoned to clear the premises of vagrants and squatters. The building was an absolute disaster. The walls and floors were falling apart, there was mold and asbestos throughout, and broken glass, plaster, and debris littered the floors.
Rumors that the John Marshall was haunted swirled around Richmond for years, and many of the construction workers were reluctant to work there. However, they never hesitated to share their many on-the-job experiences in the hallways, stairwells, and rooms. They mentioned mysterious shadows, cold and hot spots, and unexplained footsteps. We were regaled with stories of multiple suicides, a stabbing, and even a murder. Many times, they even knew which floors and sometimes which rooms the incidents took place in.
My business partner and I tried to photograph the rooms when the workers were not present, and we typically each took a different floor to cover more ground. It was absolutely an unsettling place to work (as the accompanying photos illustrate), and I was always on high alert for unusual sounds and movement. But one story stands out among all the strange occurrences I witnessed.
One late evening, the two of us were sitting in the hotel lobby reviewing the day’s photos. The workers had all left for the day – the building was totally secured. We were completely alone. Suddenly, an elevator door closed and started to go up like it had been summoned by a call button. We watched in silence as the numbers above the elevator door lit up with every floor the elevator passed. When it hit the 7th floor, it stopped for about half a minute. Then, the elevator started to descend. The two of us looked at each other and braced ourselves for whoever or whatever was coming back down. The doors opened.
We saw nothing walk out, but something was definitely with us. It sucked the air right out of the room. As we stared at this nothing, suddenly the locked front doors rattled. And whatever was there was gone. Was it Elvis on his way to another show? Was it a lackey being sent out to grab some late-night snacks for the King? We certainly did not stick around long enough to find out.
In what feels like a year of genuine horror, I hope you were able to take a break this afternoon and enjoy (or shudder at) some real estate photographer folklore. Have a safe, spunky, and spooky Halloween!
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