Spellbound #12542

The Story

This abandoned farmhouse sat at the top of a long sloping hill covered in high grass. Very worn, there was not a bit of paint left to see and most of the windows were boarded up to keep the weather out. A very old twisted apple tree in bloom shared company with this farmhouse left over from the old days that must have been some family’s homestead long ago.

That day in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I saw many abandoned farms while driving long loops out through the countryside not far from the shores of Lake Huron. Why so many empty farms? Probably because the area is so remote and winters are very harsh there. Towns are very small and often thirty or forty miles of forest apart. It would take a lot of fortitude, willpower, and work to make it there and stick it out. At some point, those things may have run out or the next generation didn’t want to continue.

I walked up the hill to shoot an image or three, and with each step closer to this house an eerie feeling increased. As usual, I’m not concerned with those things and haunted places don’t bother me, but walking uphill toward this abandoned farmhouse my antenna was registering something and the spooky meter was ticking. The situation was weird, very weird, even on a sunny day.

Well, far enough and close enough, then. I shot this image handheld and let any closer-in detail work go. Because this place was apparently significantly witchy, it easily earned the name Spellbound out of the experience. The rather apparent title was given before I had walked back to the truck.

Originally a color image, it was converted to black and white to increase the haunted feel. It seemed a good way to match encountering a little spooky creepiness leaking in from the other side! Some of the original color was very lightly borrowed back in certain places to make this pale hand tinted image.

Location: very rural Michigan in the Upper Peninsula.