(Can't seem to find the general guide to making posts again, so here goes nothing, I suppose. I would appreciate any pointers / constructive criticism if I did something wrong here.)

This weekend a couple of friends and I drove up Northern Indiana to buy fireworks for a tailgate on the 4th. The night before, I read about a sem-famous abandoned church on the forums here, and decided "might as well" since it's all in the same area. I made a post asking for warnings the morning of, and lightly (almost not even) warned we set off. Fireworks purchased, we headed into Gary, and our stomachs dropped as we made our way into the city proper.

I've had vague exposure to ideas that put Gary adjacent to Chicago and Detroit as one of the worst, most dangerous cities in America, but that couldn't have prepared me for the decay I saw as we drove in. Overgrown softball fields, stores with metal bars across the window etc. started to plant ideas in our head that maybe this wasn't the exciting adventure we thought it was going to be. Nevertheless, we pressed on.

Arriving at the church itself, I pulled my camera out and got to snapping.



The overgrown fence made us think we'd have to exert some effort to gain entry, but we were relieved to find a fairly huge gap. Onwards into the vestibule and narthex we pressed (I hope you'll excuse me if my usage of the terms is wrong, I am neither Christian, nor an architect, nor any sort of combination of the two).









Into the crossing, and a stage. Oddly enough, there seemed to be chairs in the form of tires and pieces of car seats. Maybe I was just too early for the evening show.



Climbing up into the elevated seating with the intact [!] stairs, we found the next part of our route. After carefully climbing through an emptied window frame, we walked across the roof into the next part of the building.



Inside looking out:



We came across a broken stairway that seemed to lead to the next level. With a little bit of bravery and not a little bit of upper body strength, I was able to pull myself up and climb onto the next floor. My friends chose to look for a "safer" entrance.

It wasn't a terrible climb onto the ceiling from there. I'll omit the numerous pictures of graffiti I took along the way and cut to the chase.





After meeting with my friends (they found a safer way up) and walking around, during which we found what appeared to be a (temporarily) abandoned homeless encampment (I'll spare you the inception joke), which we elected not to photograph. After exhausting the upper levels, we went back down towards the door to the basement, which we had spotted on our way in.



Talk about ominous! Thankfully, we were reassured by a smiling face when we peeked the corner with the flash on. Onwards and downwards!



If only that smiling face could have accompanied us down into the labyrinth down there. The meager solace of our phone's flashlights had to do instead. Caution: the photos from down there are a little blurry (or at least more blurry than the other photos), definitely not cuz my hands were shaking or anything..





Having satisfied our curiosity, we came back up from a different staircase we found within and made our way to the point of egress.


Exeunt, stage right.