This is going to sound super cheesy and sentimental compared to the normally hilarious, snarky but still heartfelt shit you read on here.

An unexpected joy for me was falling in love with each place, the people I never got to meet there and the history I get a private tour of. No matter if the place is completely gutted or filled with untouched treasures, I can sit there for hours buzzing with this feeling that I'm a special guest honoring something that had been long forgotten and it's such an amazing feeling. It's being able to find stories and secrets knowing I'll go to the grave with them or save them for another explorer to find to keep the magic going.

I always feel super comfortable and safe like I'm home to most places I go to and I honestly get into a bad mood if I don't explore for a while it's like a weird home sickness I didn't think I had.

I enjoy the photography a lot.
The lighting
Having to try harder with preplanning and processing (not just shooting a landscape and calling it good if that makes sense).

I enjoy the hours of maps research before hand and planning.
I also enjoy the memories left behind (in houses).

And as someone mentioned, the reaction of a "noob." Nothing like nothing explains UE in a way that an outsider could understand like experience. It's fun to hear, "This is awesome, I totally get this now," instead of explaining why you like trespassing.

I just today got to experience the feeling of knowing that I got to explore somewhere that won't be able to be explored again like how it was before. Like getting to know I got to witness a piece of history that is no longer

Posted by Flashyfashionfraud This is going to sound super cheesy and sentimental compared to the normally hilarious, snarky but still heartfelt shit you read on here. An unexpected joy for me was falling in love with each place, the people I never got to meet there and the history I get a private tour of. No matter if the place is completely gutted or filled with untouched treasures, I can sit there for hours buzzing with this feeling that I'm a special guest honoring something that had been long forgotten and it's such an amazing feeling. It's being able to find stories and secrets knowing I'll go to the grave with them or save them for another explorer to find to keep the magic going. I always feel super comfortable and safe like I'm home to most places I go to and I honestly get into a bad mood if I don't explore for a while it's like a weird home sickness I didn't think I had.

I completely get it! It is an amazing feeling. It's great when you can find an exploring buddy that has same connection with locations because you don't have to explain anything you are feeling... he/she is feeling the same thing.

Abby Normal

Posted by Technomancer Slipping under fences makes you feel good about being built like a razor blade.

Or in my case, it reminds me that I'm built like a tank and should probably go to the gym. All the same, I've only had one problem going through a fence, and it was a hole higher up in it.

Posted by Abby Normal I completely get it! It is an amazing feeling. It's great when you can find an exploring buddy that has same connection with locations because you don't have to explain anything you are feeling... he/she is feeling the same thing. Abby Normal

I'm glad! Most definitely, it's just a comfortable silence appreciating an unspoken beauty of something. My now ex best friend was my buddy for 2 years and it was like that for us for the longest time, it was just this wonderful silence of appreciating and taking in the beauty and history of the place.

I took Bonnie&Clyde to this abandoned home on a private beach and it was the same with that. Just felt super comfortable and we could be there all day just appreciating everything. Like an honorable guest.

I love finding super personal items on explores. In the cabin of a tower crane we found a construction helmet with a ton of stickers all over it from all over the country, and it was crazy to realize that every day someone comes up to the top of that crane and swings it around for a while, and that that person has an entire lifetime of experiences I will never know. The little personal things remind me of how mind-blowingly insignificant my life and my struggles are, and its amazing.

Also ivy is sick.

the delicious smell of asbestos

The feeling of content and wonder. I always loved mystery books and movies when I was a kid, and exploring places almost feels like I'm investigating the history and finding out hidden secrets. When I find photos and documents somewhere, I always write down the info or take pictures so I can find out as much history as I can. There is something just sacred about these abandoned places and knowing the backstory and honoring its existence is weirdly rewarding.

When I try to explain the feeling and emotions I get in these places, nobody tends to understand. However, I'm so glad I found this forum because you all understand everything.

Solitude.

It is different from just being alone somewhere. Alone is just isolating yourself from others, if I am in the back of the house reading while the wife and boy are watching TV in the front. That is alone.

Solitude, for me, is something more. A complete removal of self from everyone else. Secluded, remote.

Those short moments, and hour here, thirty minutes there, of complete removal from life and people, I need those moments. Before UE I would go for walks through cemeteries, countryside, parks, or other places that I would not run into anyone. Now I get to include my hobbies of photography, and history along with the moments of solitude.

Still hope to find an exploring partner, but mostly just for particular areas that I would not want to go alone on for safety sake.

Adrenaline...

I like the challenge. Starting out standing outside of an 8' barbed wire fence, looking past the guard shack to whatever concrete monolith I've set my eyes on that night, having no idea how the hell we'll get in.

Walking the perimeter, timing the guard's patrols, scanning for alarms and POEs to the fence; getting in, ducking between bushes or old rusty vehicles to the building of interest, and looking up at it - they always seem so much more daunting when you're right beside them. Swinging up onto some old girder or scaffolding, or squeezing between boards to get in - all in pitch black and deathly silence lest the guard sees or hears us.

Moving around inside, checking every hole or corner, looking for hidden passageways, tunnels, anything of interest. Tip-toeing along corridors or catwalks and up old and neglected stairwells, checking every door for contact sensors and stopping and holding our breath in a hasty panic every time we hear something - anything - that sounds like footsteps, keys, voices - and realising that it was just the wind or water dropping, and pressing on anyways because we're just that crazy.

Taking in the history of the place, of what it once was and how it once worked - realising that people used to come here for work everyday like it was the most normal thing in the world. And here we are, having overcome all of these barriers to entry, knowing that we are one of the few people who will ever see it again. This place where so many have built up their lives, come in to celebrate with their co-workers the jubilation of a child being born or to mourn the heartbreak of a lost loved one. If the buildings we explore could talk, oh the stories they'd tell. We as explorers can only speculate and piece together the narrative of the many who once walked their halls based on the odd photo still pinned to someone's desk, or the forgotten plans for a company once flourishing, the dream of its founders - now leaving behind only a crumbling empty shell and a million fleeting memories.

Winding up old staircases, ladders, piled couches - whatever gets us up - and eventually stepping out onto the roof, looking out over the city below and to the sky above; looking down to where we started, outside that fence, where our past selves looked up longingly and envious of our current selves.

We made it! Cracking open some suitable beverage for the occasion, and philosophising at length about whatever old thing the trip up put into our minds - the sort of conversation you can only have with people whom you've faced such challenges with.

Many of my non-UE friends don't fully appreciate why I do this hobby, but in 50 years I guarantee I'll remember what I did that particular night - yet most of them don't even remember whatever drunken hootenannies they got up to the next morning.

The oddities, really. Disturbing things.

One time i was in this building that had no windows, a weird little hut. It was part of an old military installation and i think it was the commander's office or something. Anyway, i was using my camera's screen as a flashlight, slowly walking around when my friend whipped out a maglight and shined it over where i was. Across the doorway i was about to go through, about a foot above the ground was a massive spider web, and in it was the biggest black widow spider i've ever seen. I'm probably remembering it bigger than it was, but it looked about the size of my hand. Big red hourglass on its belly. I tried to get a picture but it dashed as soon as the light was on.

Same place i found a rusty vault door with "KEEP OUT" stenciled on in yellow paint in the basement of a building. Looked original, but the door was only open about half a foot. I couldn't see inside. The hinges were so badly rusted that i could barely pry it a little bit wider. Looked inside and saw this:


Graffiti is another thing i really enjoy. It's like an art gallery sometimes. Most of it is crap tagging, but i've found some actually really well done art, some interesting poetry. I even found a wall sized mural of clifford the big red dog done as a memorial to normal bridwell inside of a crumbling building. It was an amazingly well done mural too. An art gallery available for free to those willing to take a risk and trespass into the unknown, furnished by unknown benefactors with masks and rattle cans. I like it.

And all those well known urbex phenomenons that pop up. Lonely chairs, glass chimes, rooms where everything in it is burned, but the structure looks pristine, candles like crazy, one locked room in a building where every door has long since been kicked in.

But my favorite thing is being an archaeologist. Finding old documents, items left behind. Reading newspapers to see what when a place was abandoned and what was going on in the world at the time. Lost letters between people who probably aren't even alive anymore. It's fascinating, it's an adventure.

Posted by TunnelRunner33 When I found a sticker that had been left by an explorer years prior, posted the sticker here, and received confirmation from the person who had left it, that was an almost magical moment for me. It was almost like an omen, verification that I was on the right trail by participating in this hobby.

This is so cool! It is a connection through time and space that no storybook could provide.

_{Edit: Replaced missing end quote tag ~Wang}

Posted by KD20 Finding my first time capsule house. There are several posters on here who seem to find them fairly regularly and I always enjoy seeing their pictures and reading about the history they have uncovered. Prior to June, I'd been in many abandoned houses and although some contained cool artifacts, none would be considered a true time capsule. In June, I happened across an abandoned house on the way home from attending a race in Indiana so I made an impromptu stop. It turned out that absolutely everything had been left behind and most of it hadn't been messed with. Calendars, photo albums, toys, clothes, and furniture were all there. The best part was that the house provided me with enough information that I've been able to put together a pretty good history of the family although I still have a few loose ends to tie up. The house is in a very rural and very isolated part of Indiana and I've seen no signs that anyone other than animals has explored it.

I've spoken to a friend, who is on this site and a veteran ue, about this very phenomenon... when you seem to be the very next person to enter a space since those who left it. And everything, like you said, remains untouched.

Posted by Flashyfashionfraud I can sit there for hours buzzing with this feeling that I'm a special guest honoring something that had been long forgotten and it's such an amazing feeling. It's being able to find stories and secrets knowing I'll go to the grave with them or save them for another explorer to find to keep the magic going. I always feel super comfortable and safe like I'm home to most places I go to and I honestly get into a bad mood if I don't explore for a while it's like a weird home sickness I didn't think I had.

This is so beautiful, and not cheesy at all. I'd add to the feeling of being a guest in that there seems to be some sort of invitation we've rsvp-ed to.

Posted by 13thmurder The oddities, really. Disturbing things. Graffiti is another thing i really enjoy. It's like an art gallery sometimes. Most of it is crap tagging, but i've found some actually really well done art, some interesting poetry. I even found a wall sized mural of clifford the big red dog done as a memorial to normal bridwell inside of a crumbling building. It was an amazingly well done mural too. An art gallery available for free to those willing to take a risk and trespass into the unknown, furnished by unknown benefactors with masks and rattle cans. I like it.

God yes this. A lot of people here seem to despise graffiti more than anything, but for me a few of my most profound moments in an abandonment have come from reading what someone else has created. Sunday actually, I found what was basically someones journal entry, spray painted on a wall from ceiling to floor. Some of the things people write are so tragic and so close to home with something you've been through that it catches your breath. There's a difference between some idiots who wrote "alan+edna 4evur" and someone who desperately poured out their heart and emotion onto the crumbling wall in front of you.

Posted by The Viscount Andrew Dalton Many of my non-UE friends don't fully appreciate why I do this hobby, but in 50 years I guarantee I'll remember what I did that particular night - yet most of them don't even remember whatever drunken hootenannies they got up to the next morning.

Your whole post is exceptional and I agree with it all, but this part really stood out to me. I used to BMX a lot and I'd alway say to people, "You spend 50 bucks on booze, have a good time, then wake up the next day not remembering it and feeling like crap. I spend 50 bucks on new handlebars,I get to go riding, and I when I wake up the next day my bike is still there and I can go riding again."

Some people will just never understand what makes us tick. But that's okay, I think it's better this way. Without sounding too much like a hipster, I think it is better for UE to remain out of the mainstream.

Anyways, the first thing I thought of when I read the original post is, like you said VIscount, the challenge. I love when someone with me says something like "There's no way to get inside" or "Damn, we can't climb up there." It's such a satisfying feeling when you find a way to get where you want to go. It's like completing a puzzle, except you get way more of an adrenaline rush.

Curiosity, adrenaline, and a few more cerebral reasons/emotions.
In that order, more or less.

To me, even as a kid, it was going on a Mission.
Long before anyone defined or condensed it.
It started with the back alley when I was 3 and long walks on the RR tracks with my grandfather at 5.
I still walk the tracks more then half a century latter and thoroughly enjoy it.
Curiosity is a joy unto itself.

Posted by blackhawk Adrenaline...

I would agree except that I expected some degree of adrenaline rush from some of the places Ive visited

my unexpected joy was meeting some really cool people, other explorers, in the real and online..