Creepers

On a cold October night, five people gather in a run-down motel on the Jersey shore and begin preparations to break into the Paragon Hotel. Built in the glory days of Asbury Park by a reclusive millionaire, the magnificent structure—which foreshadowed the beauties of art deco architecture—is now boarded up and marked for demolition.

The five people are “creepers,” the slang term for urban explorers: city archaeologists with a passion for investigating abandoned buildings and their dying…