Strange Things Discovered While On The Road.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Since I travel around a lot, I’ve stumbled across some curious things in the way of closed up businesses and wonder, if any of you have found such odd places as listed below.

A big, square building of what must have been a large Chinese restaurant. Complete with the remains of a decorated fountain in front with small bridge, Chinese lights, central island and so on, now dry. The building has been abandoned for well over 20 years, but is watched. Inside are the remains of colorful hanging tapestry, tables, chairs, serving equipment and kitchen supplies as if the owners locked it up one day and never returned. (Rumor on this one says they did just that. The building and land is not for sale and family members keep the building from being vandalized.)

A restaurant, small, long closed up, with glass doors. Locals say it went out of business over 20 years ago. Looking through the windows, one finds a stripped interior but – now get this – a still fully stocked bar! The little bar has been touched only once when a few street people broke in and camped there, polishing off several of the still full bottles before the cops arrested them and chained the doors shut.

A convenience store/gas station. Looked pretty new, but out of business for 2 years. Through the windows one could see the shelves and coolers still stocked, old papers in racks by the doors, impulse items on the counter. The power had been shut off long ago. Locals said the owners, a family, had a dispute with a family member, locked the place up and never reopened it nor cleaned out the stock.

A once pretty popular bar. Closed 6 years, windows and doors boarded up. Inside, if one puts in the effort to find a way to look in, are all of the bar tables, chairs, bar lights, bar and fittings, but no booze. No one knows why it shut down. Is up for sale.

Nursing home. Closed 4 years. Small. Inside are still beds, chairs, medical equipment, kitchen equipment, nursing supplies and televisions. All medication and dangerous supplies, like needles, syringes, I.V. solutions, electronic gear has been removed. Shut down for health and patient rights violations. Grounds are wildly over grown. Ownership unknown.

Housing development. (Discovered this after taking a wrong turn.) 10 complete houses, lawns, paved roads, fire plugs. Most vandalized but not ruined. Looks like something from a movie about the end of the world. The road into the place is dirt and over grown, the place cannot be seen from surrounding area because of thick woods. Houses mostly have stoves, refrigerators, cabinets, doors and windows of styles roughly 10 to 15 years old. There are no for sale signs, no warning signs, no ownership signs. Lawns are jungles. Some of the roofs appear to have begun to rot. Did not ask any locals about it.

Old early 1940s or 50’s style two story office/apartment building. Walk up. Lower stores still in use. Up stairs are old, glass fronted cubicles and offices, all still equipped with old skeleton key locks like out of old, bad detective movies. Transoms above doors. Some still have old style desks and chairs in them, some have old lamps, trunks and tools. Has old style, high ceiling bathrooms at end of hall, with diamond tiled floors. Facilities still work. Lights are old style, hanging flourescents. Frosted, wire windows open on air shaft that cannot be seen from outside and over the street. Second floor is usually locked off, but the day I wandered in, someone had opened it, probably to air it out. Did not talk to the locals about it.

I also turned off of a well traveled road into what was a short, dirt drive way up to what appeared to be reasonably new apartments. A nice duplex. At first, I thought I’d come in the back way because of the overgrowth, including head high bushes. I found out I was wrong. The apartments were a couple of years old, locked up, and looked like they had been built, finished and just never sold. Through the windows, there was no furniture, but they were equipped with the basics like stove and refrigerator. Even the rooms were carpeted. I was at the wrong address, I discovered, and left. When I passed by there 5 years later, I swung in and found the places vandalized. Who would build a duplex, then just let it rot?

I never found out.

2

The house 2 down from mine is vacant, but we’ve lived here for 5 years and it hasn’t been put up for sale yet. Maybe there’s a reason for that, but I don’t know.

There’s an old, abandoned, and very decaying house across the street. We broke in before (well, walked in, the back door is wide open). There’s still furniture and everything, photo albums, toys, documents (bills and such, apparently it used to be a store too) etc.
The garage loft was full of goodies, we climbed up there once and left with an old polaroid camera and 2 boxes of records. The loft caved in a few months ago.
I asked a few people who’ve lived here longer than I and they insist that a family was murdered there, and that it might have been drug-related, but I’ve never bothered to confirm any of this.

3

One possible answer is that these properties may be tied up in legal wrangling. There is a movie theater in our town that has been untouched in over 10 years. It is part of a disputed divorce settlement and it’s ownership has yet to be resolved. Meanwhile, the roof is falling in, but no one can fix it. It’s really sad.

4

There is a small underground community of people (myself included) who love exploring abandoned houses, buildings, tunnels, etc. The practice is generally known as “Infiltration” after the 'Zine of the same name ( http://www.infiltration.org ).

The San Francisco area is particularly rich in beautiful buildings which are too historic to tear down, but too old and delapitated to open to the public. My friends and I used to go hunting around looking for places to nose around in. I love the creepiness of a dead house.

My favorite was a giant rotting victorian era asylum hidden up in the hills. It was last used to house and treat tuberculosis patients back when it was a fatal disease and was closed down at least seventy years ago. The creepiest thing was a giant ballroom full of these really heavy wooden wheechairs all pointed twards the window. It was like the room was full of sitting ghosts, all looking outside.

5

Star - my house was vacant for over 2 years. It may be a legal dispute. In my case old guy (90+) died without a will. Paperwork ensues. Finally settled, goes to daughter in religious order. Paperwork ensues. We reach agreement on house. County discovers old man had enclosed 2 porches, now considered permanent improvements not listed on CO. Paperwork ensues. Surveys done. Discovered house is in 1 town, garage in another. Guess what ensues…

Also I’ve seen cases where the owner is placed in long term or hospice care, another house on my block where the parents were killed in an auto crash, only child was retarded, etc. Can be a lot of things.

6

One of the wierder things I’ve seen is a boarded-up 7-11 store. You never see these things go out of business, but a few miles from my parents’ house, there it is. Even stranger, a new 7-11 was built about a block away from this closed one! You see the old boarded-up one, drive about a quarter-mile, and there’s another one still in business.

The creepiest thing I’ve seen is the old sanitarium that used to stand about ten miles south of where I grew up. It’s name was “Eloise”, and it was a large complex of buildings that, in times past, was an insane asylum. All of the buildings were made of red brick and were of a very utilitarian style. It had been closed for over a decade, and all the buildings were extremely run-down. The fact that it was next to a large cemetery didn’t increase its appeal. Most of the buildings were torn down a few years ago, and now only one is still standing as a historic structure or somesuch. Naturally, it is rumored to be haunted.

7

An old warehouse-type building that had been converted into a garage. It had been abandoned for at least 20 years. It had huge windows in the front–surprisingly unbroken–and you could see all of these old cars (maybe '50s and earlier) inside. I always wanted to stop and poke around, but the building wasn’t in a good part of town.

8

I think the strangest thing I’ve ever seen on the road was a few years ago, me and my youngest son, Billy were driving to Alabama. It had already gotten dark, but right after we passed a rest stop, there was this huge dead thing lying next to the road. I caught sight of what it was, but you know how your mind just can’t wrap itself around something.

It was a dead lion! We even turned around, since we didn’t say anything to one another, we just stared, kinda stunned and Billy asked, 'Can we turn around and see if it still alive?
I found an exit and flipped back and this time there was a large red trailer truck that had stopped next to it.

Every now and then the subject will come back up, and Billy will ask, ‘think we could ever see an elephant on the side of the road?’

9

Oh, dude. I got one for y’all. You won’t believe it.

I dated a very wealthy girl whose father had gone nuts, converted to the Church of the Latter Day Saints, left his large family and married into a new large family, chased those people around with an axe one rainy night and got divorced, and finally settled down in Provo to write a book on the American Revolution after being diagnosed with some sort of inherited progressive mental illness. He had left behind a 6000 square foot house in Northern Virginia, furnished and fully paid for, with the requisite year’s supply of canned food for a six member family. The father had an enormous trust fund, so I guessed he just didn’t care.

Years passed, people broke into the house, neighbors complained. Nobody ever really heard from the father anymore, but several family members had weird experiences where anonymous religious notes would be left on their cars or in their mail boxes.

Finally, the girl actually got in touch with her father–he rarely returned anyone’s calls–about the place and then asked me if I wanted to move into it, for free, and fix it up. A house with a living room bigger than the square footage of my apartment, and a church-sized Hammond organ? Hell, yeah!

The day we were supposed to start the renovation work, I showed up before the little woman. I walked around back, and noticed that one of the doors was ajar. I walked into the finished basement, which I had never seen, with a flashlight. It was so big, with three bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, and of course the massive, stocked storage room that ran the length of the basement. I had heard about it, and I was saving that for last. Skeletal animals in various states of decay lay on the floors. The toilet, and the tub, were full of feces and book pages.

And there, in the very back corner of the last bedroom in the basement was a mattress on the floor, obviously slept in. Surrounded by religious tracts and history books–American Revolution stuff. And a full, open, unmolded can of peaches.

I got the hell out of there in a hurry, but to my credit, I searched the tall grass out back for footprints, then walked along the treeline to see if anyone had left a track into the woods. Nothing.

About that time, my girlfriend pulled up. I met her in the driveway. It was sunset. I pointed out that the power wasn’t on yet, and it was going to be dark, soon. Why don’t we hit happy hour instead? Thank God she was always up for that.

The next day we showed up earlier, and the power was on, and we had friends with us. The first thing I did was make a lot of racket coming in, then went down to the basement with a trash bag and cleaned up the living space so that it wasn’t so obvious. The peaches were still there, still looked like they had just been open. That bedroom also had a door going straight into the storage room. I went in and turned on the lights. It was pretty full of food, still, with a lot of old empties, and a couple that looked new. Next to the door, on a shelf, I found the can opener. In the lee of the door was a set of golf clubs, a few aluminum baseball bats, and a rusty kitchen knife on another shelf nearby.

That’s where I would have hid, but then again maybe canned peaches don’t go bad.

I never told the girl what I thought was going on, and she wasn’t really bright enough to figure anything much out on her own. I actually did eventually move into that damned cursed place. Baaaaad idea, but not fatal.

10

I don’t have anything to add, I just wanted to say that I find infiltration.org and this thread very interesting.

11

Just down the street from where I lived in Black Eagle, Montana was a boarded up school… very odd, with some simple playground equipment around back and a fire escape that we used to climb up. I never really learned anything about it, I was young and stupid.

Just a few months ago we were driving around and saw… a boarded up Burger King!! We were in shock… it’s very rare, at least around here…

Growing up in Montana, I used to find abandoned old cars in the weirdest places… we’d go walking through the feilds just outside town, and find old cars just sitting there, quietly rusting. Kind of surreal.

12

Greenville, TX is a town of about 25,000 people in east Texas. It used to be much more prosperous, when cotton was making farmers in the area a lot more money, but since the 40s or 50s it has been going downhill. I’d say about 2/3 of the buildings downtown are abandoned, me and my friends would explore them.

There is a hotel (The Cadillac) which is 6 or 7 stories and has been abandoned for years. A few years back someone bought it for $10,000. There are several homeless people who live in it, and there are rumored to be a few drug labs. I never went far into it because it was booby trapped - there were air-conditioning units in the ceiling right behind the doors to the rooms, which opened inwards. Many of them have had the hatch unscrewed and they would balance them against the door, left slightly open. If you open the door the hatch swings open and about 50 pounds of air conditioner hits you in the face, I knew a guy whose nose was flattened by that.

There was an old abandoned Salvation Army building, it was full of pigeons. Back when I was in high school a couple of unbalanced Satanic friends of mine killed most of the pigeons, they showed me their shoes the next day, the blood was about 3/4 inch deep on the floor. It has since burned down.

Back in the early 80s somebody tried to build a house in an undeveloped area, but after it was mostly finished they found out it was on top of a well, and it was abandoned. Satanists moved into it and used it for sacrifices, would drop the corpses down into the well.

There was a restaurant in downtown that had closed down some years back, and behind a boarded up door there was a stairway leading up to what looked like apartments above the restaurant. I found a newspaper from 1947 there, and a whole section that was hidden behind a sliding door that was hidden by a sofa set up on it’s side in front of it. You could also go out onto the roof from there, and it had a pretty view.

13

Well where I live in Indiana there is an old mental hospital named Mascatatuck. That place is friggin’ creepy looking. I’ve heard stories about the people in there after awhile they changed it into a children’s hospital b ut it never removed the creepiness of that place. Not to mention that it’s back in the woods in B.F.E. Man is that place creepy lookin.

14

Badtz, are you serious?!

I always though that Satanists were kind of a made-up thing. Are you sure these wern’t just your run-of-the-mill Judas Priest-listening, glue-sniffing, small town high school fuck-ups?

15

Between Frankfort and Versailles, Kentucky, on a little road whose route number escapes me, sits a nearly-abandoned distillery. The road that takes one there runs alongside the Kentucky River, and the distillery dips the base of some of its buildings into the water of that river.

I say it’s only nearly-abandoned because I’m pretty sure it’s still used for storage, but it’s still kind of creepy and yet beautiful at the same time.

It’s a series of huge brick buildings – probably two dozen or more, and the road winds among them. There’s a chain link fence that separates them from the road, and at one point there are walkways over the road to connect the two buildings on opposite sides of the road. There’s even a conveyor belt that runs alongside one of the buildings. All the exterior light fixtures are old-style, and most have working bulbs in them. At one end of the distillery grounds, there’s a huge pavilion nearly hidden among the overgrown bushes and weeds, with white lattice that shows its age.

An empty guard shack stands at the often-open gate, just beside a sign stating that all visitors should check in. One of the eeriest things? As one is driving into the distillery grounds, there’s a weathered sign reading “Caution: Congested Area”. That area hasn’t been congested in a long time, I’ll wager.

When I lived in the area, I used to love driving through there in spring when all the trees were full. It felt almost magical – a whole world removed from time. I never saw a living soul there.

16

Inky

Thanx for the link! I thought I was the only one who loved old and mysterious places.

Locally, is a small cement brick house that has been around since I was a kid and, until about 8 years ago, magically remained untouched. I do not recall anyone ever living in it, though I suspect that it used to be a summer home. It even has a small, cement, partially enclosed ‘sitting’ porch facing East, to watch the sunrise. It sits in a small patch of woods, off of what used to be a lightly used access road. That now has become a heavily used thoroughfare.

When I discovered that it had been broken into (door standing open), I investigated. It obviously was built during the late 40s, having a small living room which turned into a small kitchen/dining area which held a door gong to the porch. The house is a simple rectangle, with a single small bedroom and a bathroom. Inside were the battered remains of 1950s style dark wood furniture, like corner tables, a small 4 legged ‘box’ with sliding doors, an old chair, the frame of a couch, an old chrome legged, veneer topped round table (I remember those) and the frame of a twin bed in the bedroom.

Homeless folks had been sleeping in it, judging from the beer cans, empty food tins and mild clutter. Surprisingly, it was not trashed.

Someone came along and boarded it up again, and a short time back when I passed by I discovered that the still intact, wooden front door had been removed entirely and leaned against the wall. The house looked rather comfortable, really. I might drop in again.

Some years back, before ‘renewal’ at the small local airport, there were old WW2 Naval buildings that were abandoned. I explored the tiny hospital, made all of wood with an ambulance bay that could barely accept a standard Ford truck today. Most of the patient wings were gone, but in what was left I found bedrails, steel urinals, steel bedpans, steel instrument tables, rusty military metal desks, some rotting chairs, really rusty enameled old type instrument cabinets and one floor sized, rusty goose necked examination lamp.

That was in the late 70s. By the 80s, they burned the place down as a fire department training course and put in a crappy putting range.

I did get in to one of the few, long, old style administration building left just as they got ready to burn it and, as a Boy Scout, with my troop, was allowed to strip out wood and things to use in building our campsite, miles away. Inside were several old military desks, lockers, metal filing cabinets, stacks of rotted papers, miles of exposed wire, doors with glass tops that were intact and quite well made, solid wooden doors (which no one salvaged and went up with the building).

I found an old electric Victrola, which played 78 rpm records, and a stack of same next to it. I managed to salvage some, but before I could get back in, the other Scouts, in a destructive mood, not knowing that the items were not junk, smashed the rest along with the Victrola.

I have one or two of the things left and one is the ‘Ballad of Davie Crockett.’

There were bomb shelters to protect munitions in the event of an attack, which never came. Huge, steel corrugated pipes, or half of one anyhow, were set on their sides to make a ‘Quonset hut,’ then cemented into the ground, covered with cement, then layered with dirt and sod until they formed half of a hill. Big steel doors were hung in place and in front of them was a concrete pad just wide enough to let them swing open. That ended in another half hill, faced with a cement wall, which was to act as a bast diverter. Unfortunately, by the time I discovered them, they were empty, cavernous, echoing moldy chambers of rust.

They also are gone.