‘Somebody please tell me if I’m crazy’: Man looked out his Boston hotel window at night. Then he saw a building with every floor lit and no one inside

A man staying in a Boston hotel said he looked out his window after dark and saw a large glass building with the lights on across every floor and no one inside. Dalton, who posts on TikTok as @dadcorp, filmed the view from the room. The video had drawn 961,300 views, and the caption read, “Is this the backrooms?”

Dalton opened the clip by asking viewers to weigh in on what he was seeing. “Somebody please tell me if I’m crazy,” he said. He said he was staying in Boston and could see the building from his hotel room view. Earlier that day, he said, he had thought the building looked cool and looked it up.

He identified the tower as 10 World Trade. He said the developer had planned, built, and finished the building without signing any tenants at all. Once it was dark, he said, he could see in the windows. The camera moved along the curved glass front and showed bright, empty floors.

Seaport lab tower was finished on spec as the market crashed

In the TikTok, Dalton said the lit floors had “the most liminal spaces vibe you’ve ever seen.” He said every floor was fully lit and every light inside the building was on, and that it was completely empty. “You can see all the way through the floor plan, and it’s just sitting there vacant,” he said.

He asked, “Does that not freak anyone else out?” He called the scene eerie and pointed to how much unused space was visible through the glass. The clip showed the camera moving down the facade, with unfurnished space visible on the illuminated floors.

According to the Boston Business Journal, 10 World Trade in Boston’s Seaport District sits entirely vacant. The outlet reported that the building was built “on-spec,” meaning without pre-secured tenants, right as Greater Boston’s life-science and laboratory real-estate market crashed. The building’s vacancy is just one of the stranger sights Boston has offered lately, as a traveler waiting at Boston airport thought he saw a couple of mice only to realize he was surrounded by many more.

The same report described 10 World Trade as a 570,000-square-foot, 17-floor luxury lab tower developed by Boston Global Investors. The Boston architectural firm Sasaki designed the building, the report said. 

Viewers offered their own readings of the empty, lit tower. One commenter treated the scene as unfinished construction rather than a completed building with no tenants. They wrote, “maybe it’s unfinished.” Another viewer focused on the power left running in a building Dalton had described as vacant. They wrote, “It’s such a waste of electricity!”

One commenter claimed to work in the building and described an empty arrival point. They wrote, “I work in the front desk, first floor lobby and I’m there to greet no one.” A separate commenter offered a shorter explanation for the vacant floors, writing, “Money laundering.” 

Other viewers connected the empty tower to housing. One wrote, “What bothers me is I think about how many people could be getting a safe night sleep in there but never will because greed and capitalism rule all.” Another wrote, “we’re in a housing crisis and this is what the rich folk are doing.”