WINDBER — To say that Blair Murphy is an aficionado of the macabre is like saying the Steelers play football.

Murphy’s haunts in Windber’s former Grand Midway Hotel include a barroom bedecked with skeletons, bizarre murals, coffins and a black ceiling. It has been the host location for two DraculaCon gatherings dedicated to “music, literature, history, film and the paranormal.”

A costume contest and private dinner in the historic hotel’s dining room highlight the convention, which helped launch filmmaker Murphy’s latest project: A low-budget zombie movie being shot at locations across the region.

Footage from the convention’s events will be included in the film.

“I don’t want to mislead anyone,” Murphy said. “There is nobody backing it. We are a bunch of friends getting together who have certain skills.”

In fact, the whole thing didn’t start out to be a feature-length film at all.

It was supposed to be a quick video showing off unique locations in Greater Johnstown and western Pennsylvania to entice Hollywood filmmakers.

“State Rep. Frank Burns wanted to create a film commission,” Murphy said. “What a film commission does is court Hollywood. You show them, ‘Why not make your movie here rather than going to Canada or someplace?’ ”

Burns calls Murphy “a tremendously creative guy,” and applauds his attempts to raise the region’s visibility. Burns said he has not been able to identify funding for a local film office, but hopes Murphy and others can coordinate with Pittsburgh’s film office.

Zombies were just supposed to be an attention-getter, Murphy said.

Shooting locations were planned around several area landmarks and geographic features.

“It started out as a gimmick to chase characters from location to location,” Murphy said. “I underestimated how popular zombies are. As soon as I started shooting, more friends than I asked for volunteered.

“A lot of people came out of the woodwork.”

What was supposed to be a 10-minute video quickly grew to a half-hour. Soon, Murphy and his team realized they would have enough for a short feature film.

Shooting began last fall and has continued intermittently as the mood and artists’ availability permits.

“This is being shot on a barbecue level,” Murphy said. “The shooting schedule is whenever I throw a barbecue and convince everybody to come to town.”

Murphy, 46, is hoping the winter weather continues for another shoot later this month.

He won’t give the exact date or location because he doesn’t want a lot of outside noise or traffic. He will not reveal the working title either.

“I am purposely vague about the whole project,” Murphy said. “Parts of it are forming as we go along.”

Why zombies? Murphy suspects that western Pennsylvania’s history as a location for the genre has fueled its popularity. Director George Romero’s 1968 cult classic, “Night of the Living Dead,” and its 1978 sequel, “Dawn of the Dead,” were both shot around Pittsburgh.

“It is the signature monster for the area,” Murphy said.

“New Orleans has vampires. We have zombies.”

For Murphy and his crew, the living dead have another advantage:

“They are cheap,” he said. “It is a lot easier to create a zombie than a werewolf for instance.”

In fact, when word leaked out he was filming zombies, volunteers showed up in their own makeup. It was almost like a contest to see whose creation was the “ghouliest.”

One volunteer boasted he had a special talent.

“He said, ‘I can jump out of a second-story window,’ ” Murphy said. “So we put him in the film.”

The problem was: He couldn’t do it. But the footage of him hanging from the window and being pulled back inside made for good horror.

Murphy said his creative group feeds off the community’s response.

“The result has been all kinds of talented people coming on board,” he said. “Their enthusiasm translates directly into value out of this.”

A native of New Jersey, Murphy earned his bachelor of fine arts in cinematography at University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. He spent a decade in Los Angeles working for the likes of Marvel Films, producer Stan Lee and pop music star Prince. He produced and directed the low-budget horror film “Jugular Wine: A Vampire Odyssey,” which was released directly to video in 1996.

He moved to Windber about 10 years ago when he and two artist friends bought the decrepit Grand Midway Hotel after finding it on the Internet.

Eventually his partners moved on, but Murphy says he’s here to stay. He clearly has found a home in the spooky hotel.

Although he is reluctant to talk publicly about specifics, he agrees with local legends of ghosts in the Grand Midway.

Murphy’s websites, www.iliveinahauntedhotel.com and www.cemetery.net, include descriptions of the ghosts and visitors’ stories of encounters.

The Web pages also show how the 32-room Grand Midway has become a magnet for artistic souls and fans of the bizarre. In addition to DraculaCon, the hotel has hosted the private event Kerouac Fest since 2003.

The summer gathering of artists continues the legacy of beat generation guru Jack Kerouac.

Born in Lowell, Mass., in 1922, Kerouac was a novelist and poet who coined the phrase “beat generation.” He died at the age of 47 in 1969.

“This building has a pretty tight circle of artistic friends,” Murphy said. “There are local people within 30 miles and people who travel here from L.A. and New Orleans. That group has been the creative force.”

It is the same group that performed William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” outside the hotel in Miner’s Park during June’s Windber Rumbles motorcycle events connected with Johnstown’s Thunder in the Valley.

Murphy said he developed both his passion for filmmaking and his morbid sense of style from his family. His father was a funeral director and his grandfather was a projectionist.

“I always wanted to play with the toys,” Murphy said.

Some of the Grand Midway’s decorations come from his father’s now-closed funeral home.

Others were donated and still others were collected through browsing local thrift stores.

Murphy said he has enough zombies for this month’s shoot, but could need a few extras next month.

“A lot of zombies will get killed,” he said. “I might put out an announcement like: If you are free show up between 3 and 5 on a certain day.”