I don’t explore abandoned buildings but I’ve collected hundreds of photos of them. I find that there’s often a heartbreaking beauty to places that have lost their people after the world moved on.
My one story on this topic. Back in the late 70s my then wife knew a guy that knew a secret tunnel entrance to a long closed State Mental Hospital. Not sure if that was the exact title of the place. The tunnel was actually a real thing. The grounds were all fenced off with trespass proof barriers but honest to God…there was a secret tunnel entrance and we knew where to find it. Not just us, others had explored the hospital before us but if you didn’t know how to get in it would have been difficult.
Absolutely heartbreaking. Only way I can describe it. Patient files were scattered all over the place…beds with restraints…all kinds of sad proof of how the developmentally disadvantaged were treated up to the early 70s.
Not obsessed, but certainly fascinated by abandoned places. OP, you might like the collection at Atlas Obscura:
It’s a lot of everything that can possibly be abandoned, and I’ve found it to be a great way to pass this “stay at home” time.
These folks are rather enchanted with the visual aspect of the experience: opacity
I’m a fan myself.
When I was in 6th grade we lived on a street that had an old closed down Hospital. The neighborhood was home to a large gang of us kids. We decided to sneak in and look around. We just walked up to it. The first window we tried pushed right open.
It was so creepy. It had the hospital odor, still. I’m not sure how long it had been closed. There was a surprising number of artifacts left there. Old wicker wheel chairs and hospital beds and all kind of things. We found what we thought was the morgue. It was locked. Thank god, cause I wasn’t stepping foot in there.
We found the kitchen. Just full of things. I couldn’t believe how much stuff was in there.
I still have a beaker I found. It has a chip out of the lip. I like to put a flower in it occasionally.
I heard from a friend that someone bought the place and fixed it up as apartments. I would like to go see it again.
Yep. I love old places. The old part of my house is a log cabin that had stood here abandoned for probably 80+ years when we bought the land.
Interested? Yes. Obsessed? No. Injured? Not yet. Busted for trespass a few times anyway? Well…
Not obsessed but certainly explored some, mainly during hiking. I find them interesting and hope to run across a ghost or two, most of them come up empty in that, but you never know.
Abandoned threads amirite?
The only abandoned building I specifically remember being inside of was a a state park which still had the husk of an old house or warehouse with only the multilevel concrete floors remaining from the inside. Being built on a hill, there was a precipitous open drop from one concrete floor to the next which just screamed danger.
However, I did do my share of crawling through tunnels, but they weren’t really abandoned. I made sure to only explore them at night.
I too find abandoned buildings fascinating. You wonder about the people that used to live/work in them, the people who designed and built the buildings, and why the buildings were abandoned. I live near an abandoned chicken coop, it’s probably a 5x10 foot building. Inside is an old tv, old store displays, a cash register, and other various stuff. The man who used to own the property ran a store elsewhere.
If you want to lose an evening (or many evenings) check out The Proper People on YouTube. These guys seem to do their exploration very respectfully, they don’t break in, they don’t take anything or deface things, they are just there to photograph. They go to abandoned auto plants, water parks, churches, bowling alleys, and a hanger holding the Russian version of the space shuttle!
For a nice variety of abandoned place pics try the AbandonedPorn subreddit, despite the name there is nothing pornographic.
I sublimated my interest (not obsession!) in old and abandoned buildings with external photography. Old buildings (and trees and boulders) display character, personality, and thus are suitable subjects of portraiture. One avoids trespass arrests, too. 
With camera or sketch-pad, capture the essence, the experience, of that anthropomorphosed object. It works the other way, too - portray a person as a structural metaphor, like a ruin with beauty or evil showing through.
I fear the COVID economic tsunami is producing many more abandoned buildings as businesses close and residences empty. Disaster breeds ghoulish opportunity. Yikes.
Am I allowed to share blog posts to a few I’ve visited here? Is that okay?
I’ve done some Urbexing; mainly because I have a friend who shoots it a lot. If you’re in the know, there is an unofficial ‘underground’ (no pun intended) network of those who know various locations & how to get into them. I’ve got some very cool photos that I took in various decaying places.
Abandoned America website has some great galleries & some books for sale*, too.
- As independent contractors, photographers are hard hit during these times when there’s no wedding, bar mitzvah, sweet 16, birthday, portrait or other paying shoots. Buying a book or a print goes a long way to help them out. I know Matt & have shot with him before but any books you but support him, I get no compensation.