Therese De Vos was lying in her queen-size bed. Room 426 was filled with the glow of the TV and muted bits of talk and laughter from some cheesy sitcom. She felt her eyelids getting heavier as she was ready to fall asleep. She was tired. After all, she spent the whole day running around: working on her pitch, meeting people from the workshop, networking, moving her camera up and down, left and right, chasing that perfect frame.

De Vos was falling asleep when the violent sound of someone yanking at the door handle just outside her room awoke her. Employing reason, she thought perhaps someone from the workshop was just trying to get into their room, or maybe it was the sound of dryers in a maintenance room. The only problem was that there were no laundry rooms on the floor.

“My neighbors are just being loud,” she thought. “I need to go back to sleep.”

After an hour, the sound persisted. The vibe was different. Why would someone yank on the door handle for so long? It did not make sense. She turned on her lights, and she could clearly hear two men speaking. “That’s just ridiculous,” she thought. “I have a long day tomorrow and need to sleep.”

De Vos called down to the front desk and asked them to speak with her neighbors. “We went there, but there was no one and no sound, Mam,” she was told. Meanwhile, the sound persisted. It felt like it was playing with her: continuing, stopping, and then continuing again. “Am I going crazy?” she thought.

She barely slept that night.

The next night it got so bad that she was afraid to stay in the room alone and stayed at the house of her subjects.

“Please don’t think I’m crazy,” she later told the receptionist. “But something is going on in that wing, I swear.”

The receptionist looked at her with a slight smile.

“You’re not crazy. The room you stay in just happens to be diagonally across from our most haunted room — 425,” said the receptionist nonchalantly. “Some of the biggest paranormal activity we’ve ever witnessed happened there.”

The receptionist pulled out a thick book and set it in front of her. “Here are all the written testimonies from the guests experiencing similar things,” the receptionist said. “I’ve witnessed it too, as have all the girls from the staff.”

The book was filled with pages and pages of haunting anecdotes - unexplained sounds, shadows and unsettling feelings. Paranormal activity is somewhat the norm for The Elms. The hotel burned down twice in 1898 and 1910. It was also rumored to be Al Capone’s getaway.

De Vos decided that the least she could do was to move to another room, another wing, another floor. She's now waiting to see if the paranormal persists.

Joyce Chein, an optometrist by day, feels as though she had lived her whole life before discovering her passion for photography. Chien worked in a lab at the University of California - Berkeley when she discovered her love for optometry. "It was fascinating," Chien said.

Her passion transitioned into a 20-year-long career as an optometrist. "I get to help people," she said. "What could be better than that." Although she loves optometry, it leaves little room for her to express her creativity. That's how photography entered her life. "I started photographing six years ago," she said. "And it became my passion."

As a healthcare provider, empathizing and connecting with people comes naturally to Chein. It started with photographing her children and gradually expanded to the community around her. Besides being an optometrist, a photographer, and a mother of two, she also enjoys teaching. Chein is an assistant clinical professor at the New England College of Optometry, Boston, where she teaches and trains interns.

"I only get this one life, and I want to be able to do as much as I can," Chein said.

Whether it's optometry or photography, Chein is passionate about helping people. "I think it [photography] is good as a hobby, and I love it as a hobby. But I really want to be able to serve others with it and do good," she said. "And it is only a matter of finding out how it can be done."

Between work and her family, Chein hardly gets dedicated time for photography. "I don't sleep very much," she said. She constantly has an eye out for story ideas and notes things that happen around her. "You make time when there are things that are important to you."

Chein's passion for photography and community service attracted her to the Missouri Photo Workshop. “I wish I found my passion at a younger age," she said. "But life is funny and circuitous."

There is more than one way to reach your final destination. “Take that fork in the road,” she said.

A yearning to spread love and spark empathy motivates Brandon Bell, a Houston-based photographer for Getty Images, to pick up his camera each day. Over the last week, Bell felt insecure about asking for too much access too soon, especially considering the families were already skeptical of the media. “I've been fearing that if I don't take my time with this, it will look like I'm there with a motive instead of just really being there to be with them,” Bell said.

Bell’s MPW story is about two families that moved in together during the pandemic and are co-parenting their children. It was the energy of the kids that drew him to the story initially. “I saw these two girls with purple hair and green hair playing in front of this house that just looked very, very compositionally interesting,” Bell said. “And then there were two other kids running up and down this ramp in front of this house.”

Bell wants to leave a positive impact on their lives, but the kids don’t believe that he will be gone by the end of the week. "Joannah, the children's mother, was like, my kids are really already missing the idea that you're gone even though you're with them,” Bell said. He plans to keep in contact with the family after leaving the workshop.

His faculty members have encouraged him to create intimacy in his images of the family, even though Bell thought it was too soon. “This was a constant kind of struggle I had with my editors,” Bell said. “Moments come and they go, you gotta capitalize, but I think like being patient and really trying to show the family that your story and your kids, they matter to me, and that's why I'm here.”

By Thursday morning, Bell only had 3 frames left. Though he and his editors had differing approaches at the beginning of the week, he is thankful for the experience.“I've had to humble myself and tell myself ‘you didn't come here to project your thoughts. You came here to listen and learn,’” he said.