Berwind-White Coal Country History · Guinness World Records (Ouija Board, Tarot Card, Cenotaph Collection) · Artist-Owned Historic Building
The Grand Midway Hotel stands in Windber, a company town established by the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company in Somerset County, Pennsylvania starting in 1897; the Midway building's own construction date is not precisely documented, and the often-repeated 'late 1880s' predates the town's founding. The coal industry that built Windber also brought the transient population — miners, migrant workers, and rail travelers — that sustained the hotel through its first decades.
Over the following century the building passed through uses that accumulated their own histories: as a brothel serving the region's largely male workforce, as a funeral parlor, as a bar and restaurant, and as a wedding reception venue. By the late 20th century it sat derelict.
In 2000, Blair Murphy, a Los Angeles-based artist, found the building listed for sale on eBay and purchased it on impulse. He moved in, began renovation, and reopened it as a hotel and artist compound in 2001. Murphy's tenure has been defined by a combination of artistic installation and Guinness World Record achievement: in 2016, he and eight collaborating artists painted a 44x29-foot Ouija board on the hotel's roof, earning the Guinness record for the world's largest Ouija board. A second record followed for the world's largest tarot card. In 2025, Murphy unveiled the world's largest cenotaph collection — 27 cenotaphs honoring literary figures and early horror icons including Edgar Allan Poe, William Fuld, and Algernon Blackwood.
The record-setting Ouija board was painted in tribute to William Fuld, the early 20th-century Ouija board promoter and manufacturer, who died falling from a roof.
Sources
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2019/10/this-haunted-hotel-is-home-to-the-worlds-largest-ouija-board-and-tarot-card
- https://www.grandmidwayhotel.com/
- https://hauntedus.com/pennsylvania/the-grand-midway-hotel-haunted/
ApparitionsCold spotsShadow figuresEVPTouching/pushingPhantom sounds
Martha is the hotel's most precisely documented spirit. On July 4, 1911, an 18-year-old woman was watching fireworks from the hotel's second-floor porch when a steel pipe, launched into the air by one of the mortar firings, struck her in the throat. The injury severed her jugular vein and ruptured her spinal cord. She died within minutes.
The Canopy Room is the Grand Midway's most feared space, a characterization that carries particular weight given what is painted on the roof directly above it. Something in the Canopy Room, according to multiple independent investigator accounts, despises Ouija boards. Guests and investigators attempting to use spirit boards in the room have reported physical attacks — touches, shoves, and impacts for which no natural explanation was found. The consistency of this specific response across multiple visits from different investigator groups has become the room's defining characteristic.
Other documented phenomena at the hotel include cold spots in the former brothel rooms, shadow figures on the stairwell, and EVP captures throughout the building. The building's layered history — as a site of commerce, sex work, death preparation, and celebration — has left what investigators describe as a complex paranormal environment with multiple distinct presences rather than a single dominant entity.
Owner Blair Murphy, who has lived in the building since 2000, discusses the activity openly and incorporates it into the hotel's artistic identity.
Notable Entities
Martha (July 4, 1911)
