An art show exploring the history and ghosts of one of the city's most notorious buildings opens Friday night at SAW Gallery.

Fantomatique, the work of Montréal-based media artist Frédéric Lavoie, explores the dark corners of the former courthouse and jail at Daly Avenue and Nicholas Street.

The site hasn't held death row inmates in more than a hundred years and since 1988 it has housed galleries, dance studios and arts organizations.

But many people who work in what is now the Arts Court complex have strange "haunting" stories to tell, and with the building set to undergo a major renovation, SAW Video's Christopher Rohde said it was the right time to explore the building's history.

"It seemed like a great way to document the building as it is at the moment before these big changes take place but also to comment on the fact the building has always been changing," said Rohde.

"Sometimes you can be walking down the hallway at your workplace and pass by the same closed door a thousand times without ever really wondering where it leads to," he said.

Lavoie dug up old blueprints, talked to the artists who work in the building about their ghost stories and created video installations and sculptures that tread the line between the building's true history and people's imaginings of the paranormal, like a chair that rocks on its own.

He also took his video camera on tour, wandering down into the basement vaults and to the old gallows the way a ghost might.

The show's opening Friday night is from 7 to 11 p.m.. It runs at the gallery until Sept. 29.