Have you ever explored somewhere abandoned, ie an old cinema or an old factory that has perhaps given you the creeps?
Also, does the abandoned place actually still exist, ie it is still abandoned and disused or has been converted into something else or even demolished?
Explored kind of implies a bigger venue than just an old house, and who hasn’t been through an abandoned house? But this one, Barker Ranch, was kind of noteworthy. Very creepy but not a very large house despite the ‘ranch’ moniker.
(for those that hate playing chase the link, it is a link the wiki article on the Manson family hideout located in Death Valley)
When I first went to SE Asia, 20+ years ago, there were places you could go to, that were isolated and still overgrown. Many have since been cleaned up, the tall grass cut back and are frequented by tourists. But then, you’d just arrange a ride, and it’s be just the two of you at this isolated, jungle overgrown, centuries old temple structure, and ruin. You always got warned to watch for snakes.
The same is true of the Inca Trail, in Peru. If you walk the trail, to the ruins, you climb through country that is uninhabited, no signs of people, no sounds, no lights. And you climb to several sets of totally isolated Inca ruins. We were with a group of 8, plus guide, at these huge unkempt sites. We camped, one night beside a small but beautiful building complex, magnificently situated over a spectacular view. While it was isolated many people must pass through when they hike the trail, yet it feels abandoned.
I couldn’t resist an abandoned anything but I urge caution when doing this. One building that I looked at was so rotted out that I immediately backed out. It literally collapsed on itself 10 years later. Sad, it had lots of history to it but it was not salvageable in any way. I laughed when I heard it was for sale after looking at it.
If anybody here likes exploring abandoned buildings or has done in the past and has any pictures they could share of their experience in the abandoned building, I’d love it if they shared the pictures here! I’d recommend investing in a decent tripod though as there is a lot of low light and gloom to cope with.
One word of warning though.
Asbestos.
If you are going into derelict properties it is worth while looking up a website on asbestos and how to spot it. If it isn’t broken it may be OK but if somebody has been in before you and shattered the stuff be very wary.
The best rule is don’t disturb any thing and avoid kicking up dust and debris.
Back in 1972, I explored the ruins of the old Virginia Dare winery in Cucamonga, California, and took a bunch of pictures of the dilapidated buildings for a photography class (these are not my pictures). The 1960 TV show *Combat! *was filmed there because it looked like worn-torn ruins.
Years later, the old winery was renovated into a business park.
Years ago, I went through the abandoned Torrance Hospital at night. It’s still there, but supposedly there’s a more aggressive effort to keep people out now. It’s an abandoned psychiatric hospital with an open, newer one within walking distance. It’s been closed for decades and the creepiest place I’ve ever been. The plaster’s peeling from the walls, beds are scattered in some rooms, as I recall there’s a shower room on one of the underground floors, and the boiler room was something else. If you’ve ever played a Silent Hill game, Torrance was the only real place that’s given me a similar feeling of dread as one of those.
One overcast Saturday morning in 1968, a friend and I explored the grounds and derelict structure of Houdini’s old estate (“Houdini’s Castle”) in Laurel Canyon. We had been there for about 20 minutes when a guy in his twenties, t-shirt and jeans, holstered handgun on his belt, appeared; informed us that we were on private property and ordered us to leave. Being idiots, we tried to engage him in our excited conversation about the history of the place. No dice. In a calm, neutral voice he just repeated the order to leave, and walked us back to the gate we’d climbed over to get in. We’d gone in with no bad intentions, just irresistible curiosity, but of course we’d known damn well that we were trespassing. End of story.
Penang Island in Malaysia. I used to go there frequently for business. One time someone took me to an old, overgrown anti aircraft bunker that the Japanese built during WWII. It was a small underground complex that, with some difficulty, you could get into.
I explored the old ruins of Storybook Land, an amusement park on Rt. 1 in Northern Virginia. Even when it was operational in the early 70s, I thought it was weird, it had these representations of different fables like Goldilocks or the old woman who lived in a shoe complete with plaster of paris figures. When I went back in my early 20s, it was like something out of a horror movie, with creepy fairy tale statues in various states of decay.
Had the chance to take a photographer from Kazakhstan to the Packard plant in Detroit. I’d never sought it out myself before that. It’s hard to describe how massive it is, and we didn’t really do much exploring of it ourselves as a matter of practicality. I have photos similar to 7, 16, 25, and 30 under the “The Plant Today” link.
Creepiest place I ever explored was an old Civil War era fort in Maryland (I don’t remember what it was called) that was built underground and was flooded almost to ground level. We got permission to dive into it and it was…really spooky and more than a little frightening. When I was younger I did a lot of cave diving, but diving into that fort, going down stair cases and into flooded rooms still gives me the creeps thinking about it. Not sure why…I mean, it was only a bunch of rooms and stair cases flooded with water, after all. But it did.
The National Park Seminary in Silver Spring, MD. It was once a girl’s school and it was bought by the military in the early 40s to be used as a supplementary facility for Walter Reed Army Hospital but they never actually did anything with the property. When I was in high school in the mid-90s it was a popular place to hang out as it was a complex of really cool buildings (see pics at bottom of Wikipedia page). The structures were all shuttered but it was simple enough to pry back a plywood sheet and climb in to explore. It was in pretty bad condition, as it had been ignored for decades, but it was just a really cool place.
It has since been renovated and developed into condos (but the original buildings still exist).
A friend of mine is a amateur-bordering-on-professional photographer, and for the last two years photographing abandoned houses was her project. She got kicked out of a house once, for entering when it apparently wasn’t totally abandoned, yet.
Hpwever, her pictures are wonderful. Moody, dreamy, sad, creepy. One of them was bought by a publisher for a book jacket.
It’s a house, but it’s on the highest elevation in the town and covers about 4.5 acres. It was once a really beautiful home. I wrote about it for a local online rag:
After it closed in 1964, I used to go with my brothers and roam around the grounds of Freedomland theme park in the Bronx, where we used to go when it was open. It was a huge place, with dozens of abandoned buildings and rides. We went into the deserted buildings of the Casa Loca and Mine Ride, and walked along the drained course of the Northwest Fur Trappers Ride. It was way cool.
Our last expedition came to a sudden halt when we heard guard dogs barking in the distance and scurried for the hole in the fence as quick as we could.
Chacachacare is an abandoned island in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago located at 10° 41’ north latitude and 61° 45’ west longitude.
There is a hospital and other infrastructure being reclaimed by the jungle, you have to hire a boat to get there and they will drop you off and pick you up when you are done exploring. The hospital looks like it was abandoned in seconds, everything is still there beds, meds, instruments, patient records, furniture.
Don’t go alone and make sure your party has some basic weapons like machetes, you’re not likely to run into trouble but there have been reports of robberies. The island is getting more popular with tourists and I assume the remains of the hospital will be looted eventually, there have been rumblings about making it a historical site.
When I was in grade school some friends and I climbed into our town’s abandoned movie theater through a broken basement window. There was still film in the projector but I can’t remember what it was.
It was pitch dark in the auditorium and when we opened a storage closet and found a poster for the original Frankenstein movie we were so scared we scooted out. I’ve since regretted that I didn’t “borrow” that now valuable artifact.
And, yes, we did get into trouble. The county sheriff came to the school, lined us up in the office and paced in front of us, hand on gun, saying, “I could haul you all off to jail.” I don’t think we caught the overkill at the time but it kept me from wanting to do it again.
About thirty years ago, when the pre-1900s state “Insane Asylum” was being demolished, my husband was in charge of the project and asked me if I’d like to see inside of it. That was a sad and haunting sight. Odd and angry graffiti in the cells which were tiny and made completely out of stone with very high ceilings. I doubt that they were ever heated. No windows and no fresh air.
In the office old patient records were strewn on the floor. Incredible to think of such indifference to the personhood of the inhabitants. I could almost hear the howls of despair that must have echoed there.
For the last few years I have been traveling in the winter to Yucatan and Quintana Roo, MX and, besides the well-known Mayan ruins, there are many smaller, non-commercialized ones scattered throughout the area and it’s been great fun discovering them. Haven’t found any artifacts, though. Perhaps they are on private land but so far I haven’t run into any problems with owners. Usually I hear about them by word of mouth and the practice of checking them out seems tolerated.
I’d recommend investing in a decent tripod though as there is a lot of low light and gloom to cope with.