The phrase “ghost photography” might conjure sepia images from 19th-century spiritualist séances or grainy night-vision paranormal reality TV footage. What is a ghost if not an absence made manifest? The best seasonal stories entice us with weird details, promising a narrative but leaving it unresolved, a cold October wind whistling through the plot holes.

The photos in Eric Killorin’s “Lost & Found Vermont” series, while not exactly capturing spectral figures, fit that bill. The 71-year-old from Middlebury took up photography as a retirement project three years ago and combined it with his love of exploring abandoned places and learning about their history.

“There’s something about the solitude of these buildings,” he said, “that once bristled with activity and now are just completely forgotten.”

Killorin finds his sites through social media and a community of like-minded explorers, then accesses them with various degrees of difficulty. He spotted the Edelweiss Lodge near Killington on a drive; using the camera he had on hand, he shot stark, creepy images of its empty rooms, where real leaves have accumulated on the forest-themed polyester bedspreads.

Getting to the East Haven radar station — a remnant of Vermont’s role in the Cold War — was more of a challenge. Killorin drove as far up the rutted road as he could, and when his e-bike couldn’t quite tackle the 30-degree incline, he hiked the last couple of miles. It was worth it for his eerie pictures of the mountain site, where operators reported a UFO sighting in 1961.

There’s something about the solitude of these buildings that once bristled with activity and now are just completely forgotten.

Eric Killorin

Killorin often portrays places that once held throngs of people, such as the Green Mountain Race Track in Pownal and the Diamond Run Mall in Rutland. The former was established in the early ’60s to draw tourists to the state; its stands, with room for thousands, are now rusting and covered in graffiti. At the mall, Killorin said, where every inch of interior glass has been smashed, he was understandably freaked out when he entered to see people emerging from a wall. They turned out to be other urban explorers, not zombies.

Ghosts of industry haunt Killorin’s projects. Massive equipment silently rusts at the Belvidere asbestos mine in Eden, which shut down in 1993 amid growing awareness of its health hazards. The huge piles of tailings make an apt metaphor for the scale of environmental toxicity; a dangling phone receiver and an empty office chair speak to the ensuing human costs of the shutdown.

More intimate pictures paint less gloomy portraits. Killorin grew up helping his parents rehab old buildings, so when new owners bought the abandoned 200-year-old Means Mansion in Middlebury, he showed up to document their painstaking renovation, which has lasted for going on three years. The images start spooky, documenting peeling wallpaper and broken windows, but progress to show the workers’ smiling faces as they bring the place back to life.

Asked how he chooses Vermont places to photograph, Killorin said, “You could stop every 10 feet and photograph an abandoned barn, but there’s got to be a story.” ➆

See all of “Lost & Found Vermont” at erickillorin.com.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Old Haunts | “Lost & Found Vermont” pictures the state’s abandoned places”

This article appears in October 14 • 2026.

Alice Dodge joined Seven Days in April 2024 as visual arts editor and proofreader. She earned a bachelor's degree at Oberlin College and an MFA in visual studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She previously worked at the Center for Arts and Learning in Montpelier, Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, and Midway Contemporary Art in Minneapolis. She is a visual artist with one lizard, two cats and too many chickens.