I made the mistake of taking my girl at the time to the old high school in a part of town equivalent to gravel. On the way out one of the 'residents' came up from the staircase at the far end of the hall, with his grocery bag of earthy possessions. He peaked into one room across from the stairs before she uttered "Oh shit" and this guy just kinda casually turned his head and looked down the hall at us. This was right after we came out of what I can only assume was what the guy was using as his bedroom.


Other than that, I've had the fortune of never running into anybody else during an explore.

I've run into people a few times but most of them were friendly encounters with other explorers (a few times), police (once) or construction workers (once). In both cases with police and workers, we were not even asked to leave. I was once asked to leave by a guy who pulled up in a pickup truck while I was at an abandoned school but he wasn't a jerk about it, so no harm, no foul on either end.

The only time I've actually been chased was not by a human. I've told this story on here before but I was at an abandoned industrial location in Cleveland and had worked my way through most of it. This particular location is a complex of five buildings that are all attached to each other. There was a concrete driveway between the last two buildings and I was about to cross it into the final building when I heard barking. Then a big black dog bounded toward the door and I backed out real quickly. When I looked back, he was standing in the doorway barking and wouldn't proceed beyond it.

The other unfavorable experience I had was just the other day. A friend and I attempted to explore an abandoned house we stumbled upon on the way to another location. We were looking for a way in when a crazy angry guy stuck his head out of the house across the street. He started yelling at us across the street and his large front yard. We tried to quickly explain that we were just taking pictures and he yelled to "come over here!" He shut the door to his house and we packed up and left. As we were leaving, he came out of his house fully dressed (he hadn't been wearing a shirt when he was yelling at us and it was 25 degrees out). We were already leaving and he realized he wasn't going to catch us so he resorted to flipping us off and stomping back to his house.

Posted by Gothic Ghoul I made the mistake of taking my girl at the time to the old high school in a part of town equivalent to gravel. On the way out one of the 'residents' came up from the staircase at the far end of the hall, with his grocery bag of earthy possessions. He peaked into one room across from the stairs before she uttered "Oh shit" and this guy just kinda casually turned his head and looked down the hall at us. This was right after we came out of what I can only assume was what the guy was using as his bedroom. Other than that, I've had the fortune of never running into anybody else during an explore. click to view

A room with a view... lol, a "hello" would have sounded a bit better

Posted by yaggy Got chased out of Norwich back in the Kenny Rogers days. It was a rite of passage. Apparently he threw down lots of those gunpowder snaps so he'd know where we were in the tunnels when we stepped on them. High-tailed it right up into the Chapel and out the panic-bar doors. Had to hide from khaki-wearing developer types earlier in the day, so seems we just picked a bad day to be there. Also found written on a door "learning this place so we can find you" with that day's date written below it. Somebody was taking their job way too seriously.

Ahh, the Kenny Rogers days, aside from us old timers, no one would even know what this means, love it

A raccoon chased us out once lol. What a jerk.

Was once chased off a property by a guy trying to run me over with his truck. My friend, being faster than me, took off and left me to fend for myself.

Chased? No.

Kicked-out by angry contractors sent to board the place up? Yes.

I wasn't necessarily "chased" but I had to sneak out of a building while the cops infiltrated it. I counted 14 and I only think that was all of them. Everyone in the building got arrested except for me and my bud thankfully. I was super lucky and I feel terrible for those other guys but I think that they got off the hook with minor offences.

Me and a couple of friends were exploring a new building being built for a university by my house, and after a few minutes found a way in. Literally within 30 seconds of us all getting into the building we saw a flashlight coming our way about to turn the corner to right where we were. We all immediately started to book it to a spot we had decided on beforehand. The security guard (mind you this was a beefy, 200+ lb, tatted up dude) turned the corner and saw us as we were getting out, and it must have really surprised him because he let out the loudest and highest pitched scream I've ever heard. It honestly sounded like a child's scream. We took off. He must have composed himself or realized we were just exploring and not ghosts coming to haunt him because a couple of seconds later he yelled "FREEZE!" but we were already pretty far away and not about to stop. I felt so bad for scaring the dude and also felt pretty bad for laughing so hard about it, but it was pretty dang funny.

I have recently gravitated towards a different approach in exploring. Most people when they go to a city they look up what neighborhoods to avoid. Those are the places I want to go. Where nobody else does. I regularly find myself in the worst neighborhoods in Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia, Harlem, etc.

Police are one thing. But if you have ever had a run in with a drug dealer, or a dog fighting ring, its an entirely different scenario. I've been physically asked to leave an actual neighborhood solely because of my purpose there. Drug dealers and dope fiends dont take kindly to you photographing their territories.

For me its all about telling a story. A story about a place where most other people are too afraid to go.

About two weeks ago I came across a rottweiler chained up inside the courtyard of an abandoned hotel. At that point I knew I shouldnt be there and booked it to the nearest exit.

I've been followed for many blocks by drug dealers and gang lookouts. Ive been called crazy for putting myself in a position like that, but for me its about telling the story so many others fail to acknowledge.

I was wandering down the LA River a couple weeks ago and got too lazy to walk all the way around to get back to the bridge and hopped a wall into a power plant/ water treatment type place. Hopped another gate to get out of there and ended up in a construction site where an old indian man in his truck told us we couldn't be in the construction site so we hopped back over and checked out the water treatment plant a little longer.

Ive had two time Ive been "chased", though neither was really a chase.

The first time I was in an abandoned Caboose and was nearly done photographing everything. There was one thing left, a little sort of closet. I opened the door and peaked my head in when suddenly something flew at my face. I hurriedly jumped out the nearby window ( it was a short drop ) and took off. A photo snapped accidentally revealed that it was a bird, and we both had a good laugh about it later.

The second time was at an old house that is falling in on itself. I figured that the place was abandoned and no one would care so we went in. Literally 30 seconds after getting out two trucks pulled up with some rednecks. The first guy was this burly guy who leaned out and muttered "whatya fellers doin?" I answered with the excuse that I had just got out to pee (this was just off a highway ) and proceeded to pretend to pee. As I was "peeing" another truck rolled up and this guy jumps out and asks, "are these boys causin you trouble?" I give the same excuse and the first guy drives away. The second stayed until we had gotten in the car and left. I got a few shots of the outside but now my curiosity is peaked, I must know what is inside that these people want to protect so badly. Probably wont mess with it though as the people around here can be really annoying and its best to just leave it alone.

Weirdest experience with being chased away was a outing at an abandoned farm. One of our group knew the landowner so he asked him that day if we could explore the property. The owner agreed, or so we thought, part way through checking out the exterior of a barn we hear a quad coming across the field and its the landowner, he started shouting at us to get the hell the off his property like he had completely forgot he went to his house and chatted with him an hour before.

At an abandoned house in the middle of the woods in Illinois, my friends and I were chased out of the woods by three unknown assailants. We to this day do not know who they were, but they probably weren't police. It was really dark, so all we could hear was them whistling at us, and then we could see their flashlights. When we made it out of the forest, we could see their lights still looking around in those woods. Then when we got back to our cars, one flashlight began to emerge from the tree line and we booked it. Its all here in this video that we made about the place....

https://www.youtub...NcN3lwPJQBM&t=618s

I have people say: "If you don't leave now I'll call the cops", all the time, but I never actually got kicked out of a place.

Only once. Some friends and I were exploring an active site (it was after hours, so we were definitely not supposed to be there), and in that site, we ended up in the basement. The building had a pool and we had been wandering around the filtration system in there and whatnot. Upon going up some stairs we hear movement and see a man that, unlike us, probably was supposed to be there. We turn around and start to leave quietly, but he noticed us and started doing the "hey you stop" yelling thing, so we all bolted and scattered. We could hear him pursuing us as we ran, but we eventually lost him and met up afterwards. Looking back, even if he had caught us, there's not much he'd be able to do, but in the moment it felt like the best course of action. Fun times.

Along that line, I have been escorted out of a premises more than once.

The worst experience I've had being chased happened when I hadn't actually made it to the location yet but was still on my way to it. It was the middle of the night down by the railroad and some redneck's pitbull came after me like a bullet. In any case, the dude managed to call off his dog before it tore me a new one, but it scared the crap out of me. In hindsight, it was probably because I was carrying a big animal spine wrapped up in some plastic bags at the time. Pic related.

click to view

Another time on an abandoned property I ran into a person who was also likely not supposed to be there, but neither of us said anything. A middle aged woman made eye contact with me and stood and stared at me without moving for a good minute. There was nobody else with her. It was extremely unnerving. I had to find my companion and tell them "Don't freak out, but there's a woman in a red sweater standing over there just looking at us".

That experience was enough to make us bail for the day simply because we weren't interested getting to know her personally. Something about it just gave us a really weird vibe. To this day I have no idea what she was doing. She didn't have construction gear on or a camera with her, she was just there, looking kind of lost.