The Grand Midway Hotel and it's record breaking Ouija board
While I can't imagine the size of a Ouija board being a hotly contested record to best, it has been done by film-maker and novelist Blair Murphy, his family, and the help of several artists on the roof of the Grand Midway Hotel in Windber, Pennsylvania. As reported by Guinness World Records, the outstanding work measures 1,302.54 square feet and is visible in Google Maps. The more interesting parts of this story as written by Guinness isn't just the feat itself. Instead, what's more fascinating are the people who accomplished it and why.
Blair Murphy had purchased the hotel, which had already been documented as a haunted site, and now lives inside it with his girlfriend and newborn daughter. The hotel has also hosted many invite-only guests, as it serves well as a place of artistic inspiration and a hotspot for heebie-jeebies. After having some residents among the living, the paranormal activity of the place began to wind down. That was, until, Murphy and his girlfriend bought a Hasbro-brand Ouija board in an attempt to rile up some ghosts. As they described it:
“Things flipped out throughout the hotel. Energies were swirling. Guests were getting completely freaked out, it seemed to kick things up into an entire new level of paranormal activity. We were seeing floating people and hearing voices and even the hotel pets were flipping out and reacting to unseen forces. Our dreams were pretty wild. And it wasn't just us."
So the next step, of course, was to paint a giant Ouija board on the roof. The world's biggest one. I must interject that I've seen enough horror films in my lifetime to assert that doing so may not have been adviseable. To Blair Murphy, however, it has been (by their own words) an ongoing, romantic adventure. Being a world record holder is a point of gracious accomplishment by Murphy and company, and their story is definitely inspiring. To read more, check out the write-up by Guiness World Records and be sure to visit the Grand Midway Hotel website where you can find details on all it's ghostly properties.
