Were you ever enrolled in a school, gym, or maybe worked in a building that is now abandoned? I find these to be rare opportunities and are actually quite special. I was fortunate enough to explore the hospital that I was born in, 18 years ago. Everyone in my area has been born there until they switched to the new hospital in 2013.
One of the many, many halls in this building (it's seriously HUGE)
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We found all these chemicals in the boiler room, which really made me think, why are these here? It looked like someone was brewing up some sort of concoction
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The morgue, how many bodies have been on that metal bed?
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I wanna hear more stories about buildings that you've known that became abandoned!
Now that's quite the opportunity, hopefully I don't have to wait 50 years for this to happen to me. I've always wanted to explore an abandoned hospital in general though. The lighting in #2 really gives off a zombie survival/horror feel, pretty sweet actually.
I photographed Lincoln Mall (Matteson, IL) days before it closed in January 2015, then spent late last year and most of this year documenting its decay and demolition. Closest I've come...
[last edit 10/24/2017 2:02 AM by jonrev - edited 1 times]
There's a thread somewhere, but there's a neighbourhood where a bunch of my friends lived, in three separate apartments. One of them we spent American Thanksgiving and Christmas together often, and recorded a music video for their punk band.
After the area was abandoned, I returned and found they had left behind a zine I had written. It is weird finding your own work abandoned.
There was a Howard Johnson Inn in my old hometown that used to be the staging ground for the local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter to meet up and head out to the Honor Flight, which is where veterans are flown to Washington DC to visit the memorials for the wars they fought in. When I was younger, I volunteered at the event one year, greeting veterans and helping them carry their bags to their rooms at this hotel. This hotel also had an Emma Crumbies bakery/restaurant attached, and it was the first restaurant I ate at when I first moved there.
Eight years later, I explored it as it was being demolished.
This used to be the toy store on the block. It was packed full of shelves of Brio trains and Playmobil, that's what they specialized in. Brio was in the corner behind where I stood in that photograph, and those windows had displays of Playmobil.
The main department store, in its final days, and on demolition:
I know I was telling my mother about a hospital where she grew up and she said that she got her tonsils taken out there. I plan to visit said hospital, and this is the closest I have been to being somewhere that I have been while active.
I was actually talking to my mom a few days ago and she brought up something really cool:
When my mom was growing up, her father was in the military. They moved around a lot and at one point in her childhood they ended up in Adak, Alaska. It was an island in the middle of nowhere that had a military base on it. My mom loved Adak; she had a horse and would play outside all day. At its peak; Adak had a McDonalds, some bowling alleys, a movie theater and a Baskin Robbins. She was browsing the internet and found that almost the entire town has been abandoned. It has only about 100 people left living their and almost everything is closed. I’d estimate 90% of the buildings there are abandoned and the one school the town has contains about 12 students.
To me, this is crazy. Can you imagine a place so full of life where you spent two years of your childhood being almost completely gone? I plan on going with her to visit. She will see the overgrown fields she used to play in and the businesses with boarded up windows. Even the house she lived in is more than likely trashed and abandoned.
I really like that you brought up this topic; as it’s interesting to think about how that would feel. It’s a crazy world out there.
Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not, we never are. But that's not the right question. The question is, are we living a life that is worth the harm?
More recently than my reply, my friend who used to live in the apartment in my story shared a Facebook Memory family photo taken in his old apartment. And his bandmate who lived a couple blocks away also shared new pictures of massive construction now going on in the area.
Yes, a few. I once explored under my work while I still worked there and then the whole building after we moved out and it lay dormant for year until it was demolished to make way for a shopping centre.
There's also this clip of me and a friend in my old school.
Two of the neighbouring towns next to my hometown in the Kalahari. They are both ghost towns, but not 100% deserted. The local mine, Sishen iron ore, bought out the towns to expand, but some of the residents feel ripped off so they refuse to leave their homes. As soon as the last residents leave, the towns will be demolished. I hope to visit both towns during my trip back to South Africa, while they are still there. I can't think of any other places.
Good thread. The only time I've come close to this happened on my way back from OPEX in Buffalo; was that 2007? I think. Anyway it happened twice! The first was kinda not exactly what you are getting at, and the second was my middle school. First one, I went to the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company corporate office. I think it's gone completely now but when I was there it was active as a chair upholstery place. Get this: they had the original chairs from The Price is Right there. It was awesome! My middle school was a freaking nightmare. It wasn't a mess, it just brought back so many memories of the creepiness that it freaked me out.
I've had the opposite happen - I explored an abandoned marina type building and then a couple of years later went back to find it had turned into a (very delicious) pub!
There was a swimming pool in my city that I used to have school swimming lessons in during the 90s which closed a few years back.
Sadly my only attempt at exploring it was foiled by the police shortly after climbing over the fence - it was only around 50 metres from the main police headquarters after all - I never even managed to step foot inside it. It was demolished shortly afterwards so I never got to see it again.
I hated the place as a kid though so I don't think it would have been too great for me!
Back when I was about 7 there was an amusement park (if you could even call it that) my best friend at the time lived near. We would often beg our parents to take us when my mom and I were visiting the area. It has been abandoned since, I haven't had the opportunity to go check it out but I'm looking in to taking a trip out there in the new year. Hoping it's not demolished, hard to get any info on its current status.
Posted by Fleeting Yes! I have explored a place I had been when active. It's an entire block of stores. Unfortunately, I was not able to get into all of them.
This used to be the toy store on the block. It was packed full of shelves of Brio trains and Playmobil, that's what they specialized in. Brio was in the corner behind where I stood in that photograph, and those windows had displays of Playmobil.
The main department store, in its final days, and on demolition:
I recognize that mirror! I have a lot of fond memories of going in there to just wander around the place. My friends and I have been trying to get in there for ages, every time we tried to even scout the place, we got the evil eye from a security guy that seemed a little bit too in the know about what we were trying to do :c
I got dragged through here as a kid for back-to-school clothes shopping every year and Christmas shopping etc. They had exhibits on the giant asphalt parking lot, US Army display of Nike Surface to Air missiles. Sinclair Oil with a display of life size fiberglass dinosaurs, autocross and gymkhana sport car races and of course traveling carnivals.