Summertime at night is the right time for spectral photography.
Usually the nocturnal photo shoots we complete are whimsical and innocent, such as the shadow dance-off that Adam and I took part in during last weekend’s Bloch Party, or the Kermit the Frog shots we took last Winter. But sometimes we stumble into a realm of photography more informed by the supernatural.
One source of ghastly images this summer has been the University of Kansas campus. Set on a hill overlooking both the Kaw and Wakarusa river valleys, the KU campus is at once a shining academy on the hill and the rugged ancestral Indian grounds the white man first referred to as Hogback Ridge.
Aesthetically, there is much to interest the nighttime visitor to the KU campus: The primordial mists and willow trees of Potter Lake. The snow-white glare of the streetlights on the newer buildings. The hum of the generators and giant air conditioners. The alluring darkness of the tunnels and steam vents behind the old limestone buildings. The sculpture of Moses kneeling reverently before the stained-glass burning bush at Smith Hall.
Another lovely aspect of the KU campus at night is the colors. A row of columns stand especially tall in the dull orange glow of an almost burned-out light. The bright yellow windows of Anschutz look like panels on a giant spacecraft that's stopped to recharge its batteries overnight. The lights, leaves and sky combine to paint the hill in a spectrum of soft yellows, greens and blues – a gentle but highly expressionistic palate that reminds one of Van Gogh.
Music Hall Mystics
Among the many picturesque landmarks and buildings on campus, the one that fascinates me the most is the music building.
Today, Murphy Hall is a modern, well-lighted place, but you should have seen it in the fall of 1999. They were demolishing, rebuilding or renovating most of the building, transforming an already confusing structure into a labyrinth of blocked-off hallways, burned-out lights and construction equipment. My friend Andrew had a class there that year, and he was convinced the place was haunted.
To test his theory, Andrew recruited two of us to go on a ghost-hunting expedition, which we excitedly agreed to. The three of us met one Thursday at midnight, drank a few beers in the bushes and proceeded to scour the premises for any trace of spirit life.
We were greeted by the sounds of warbling tubas, atonal piano scales and faint violins, lured on by flickering EXIT signs that instead led to chained-off doors you could open up just enough to see a sudden drop-off several stories deep.
Though the sound of instruments indicated there were people in the building, we didn't see a soul until we went outside, where several figures were walking around garbed entirely in white. These, however, were not specters, but a small crew of Mexican construction workers wearing haz-mat suits to protect themselves from lead-based paint and/or asbestos.
If we had sought to find an honest-to-goodness ghost, we had (perhaps predictably) failed.
Still, the adventure provided me with images that would haunt me for years, such as a partially chained-off hallway door giving way to an abyss of broken pianos.
Return to Murphy
This month I got returned to Murphy for only the second time since my student days. Dave and Mike were helping Andrew Morgan put some finishing percussive touches on his album, and Andrew had secured the key to the large rehearsal room for the week.
After playing bell trees, celestas, chimes and drums, Natalya and I decided to explore the premises while our friends got down to serious recording.
Once again, we didn't run across anyone, just took pictures, rode elevators and followed stairwells, aimlessly combing the miles of silent hallspace within the music building complex. In the courtyard, we took off our shoes and sat on the steps facing the full moon.
Almost two hours passed by the time we made it back to the rehearsal hall, and the guys had finished recording everything except for a few crashes from the giant gong. As the last blast of the gong faded, we said our goodbyes and drove back home through an empty campus.
When we uploaded our photos the next day, we were spooked to find that there were indeed spectral images lurking in the corners of the digital compositions. The midnight ghosts of Murphy were real after all.
A closer look revealed that these spirits were not unfamiliar. Like all those "Sixth Sense" style movies where the protaganists discover they're actually dead, we recognized the ghosts in the photos as ourselves.
Skeptics among you might chalk this up to a slow shutter speed and not the supernatural, but I personally felt as if the apparitions I'd searched for years ago were finally appearing to me through the medium of digital photography. In the words of an acquaintance of mine who is an expert on the occult: If you let a black cat loose on the world, that cat may one day find its way back to you.
We later learned that David had stayed around and played piano for several hours after our departure, and I felt a lot better knowing that any spirits we'd photographically conjured had likely been dispelled by D's soulful sweeps of the Steinway.
It will probably be a while before I go back to Murphy Hall, at least in the dead of night. Fortunately, we preserved a number of images from our journey in this photo set. Even if there aren't real ghosts in the music hall, the music majors among you can attest that the difference between zombie and music student can be hard to distinguish. So be wary if you visit.
Speaking of zombies, if I don't wrap up this post, I'm going to become one myself. Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more stories of brushes with the spirit world.
