Spirits of the Night

Halloween is a holiday with a rich and complex background. It grows out of several streams of tradition, principally that Celtic festival of the dead, the Roman harvest festival, All Hallows Even in the UK and The Day of the Dead in Mexico. It is a night were the spirits of the dead supposedly move among us unleashing destructive forces.

In the spirit of Halloween I want share a few spooky photos that I've created in the past month.

A favorite October pastime of mine is to visit old graveyards. One of my favorites is found in my home town. I've used it many times over the years as a source of inspiration. It's in a state of disrepair and has many gravestones that are cracked or broken. For years I've had the idea floating around in my head to create an image of a ghost morning over one of these gravestones. So on the night of a full moon my model Masha and I set out to create this image. We arrived at the graveyard around dusk and did a preliminary scouting of the area to find the best place to photograph. As we scouted Masha made the spooky discovery of various bone fragments sprinkled around the cemetery! (The cemetery was built on top of a swamp and over time has slowly sunken into the ground so it is completely plausible that the bones we found were the bones of the dead buried there) Needless to say this grim discovery certainly set the mood for the evening. Luckily this was our only interaction with the dead and the night went very smoothly.

This next photo was inspired by a spot near my childhood home. Down a path in the forest you will find a cave built into a hill in the middle of the woods. As a kid I was always delightfully terrified of this mysterious cave. Why was it there? What was it used for? Who made it? I would always feel the urge to peak in and see if anything was in there. Even when I revisited it as an adult it was still a little spooky. No matter what time of day the inside of the cave is so dark the only way to see inside is to physically go inside. I still expected something "other wordly" to be living in the darkness.