The Haunted Hotel

J. Stuart Blackton, 1907, Vitagraph: a traveler checks into a rural inn and the furniture begins to serve itself. Stop-motion, a table that sets dinner, a hotel that is a trick. It is one of the first American animated films that is also a live-action haunting, and it taught a generation of animators that objects could act. The guest does not sleep. The hotel does not care.