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 Weirdlig
   
Gender: Female
 |  | How did you start exploring?
< on 2/5/2012 3:25 AM >
|  | | | First of all I DID try the search...and it told me I had to select something to search for. After I searched for it. So while I'm sure this thread has been made before at some point, I'm pleading ignorance to the search function ;)
My start to exploring was bizarre and accidental.
I had an apartment...a car...a lot of good stuff going for me, life wasn't bad and for the most part I obeyed the law and stayed where I was supposed to. Then one day my transmission dies on my $250 car [who'da thunk it?] and I have to take a lesser paying job. Said job leads to losing the apartment and from here I move in with my mother at 25 years of age. Needless to say, my entire life suddenly sits on its balls.
So now I'm a hundred miles away from all my friends, 200 miles from my girlfriend, with no car or anything of even moderate enjoyment. It only took about six months for me to start losing my mind...life consisted of a shitty job, riding a bicycle wherever I could get, and a depression that withdrew me from normal socializing and onto the internet. Suddenly I'm that "internet guy" who lives with his mother and has to peddle faster when he's late to earn minimum wage.
Time goes on and I grow deeply...deeply depressed. For that summer I'd spend sometimes near a whole day just seeing how far I could get away on that crappy little bike with a quarter of the brakes functioning, somewhere over 30 miles at the most.
Anyways, one day I end up taking the railroad tracks back from a long ride [for some reason this didn't seem like a bad idea for my nads]. Eventually I come to some massive oil towers and a path leading through the woods. Up a metal staircase I find something I couldn't have imagined existed...a massive campus of forty something abandoned asylum buildings left to rot since the seventies.
I'd heard some loose talk of it before from a few people but didn't think much into it. Somehow an abandoned state hospital didn't register as possible even when I heard the words.
I must have wandered for several hours, trying to send crappy cellphone shots to my girlfriend all while attempting to fully understand what the fuck I was experiencing. I remember hearing police sirens extremely far away on the road and hiding in a room like an idiot.
I grabbed a tie, one I still wear to work sometimes even today, and made plans to head back. The next week I showed it off to my girlfriend...which, bizarrely, was somehow romantic. The cellphone pictures and my inane yammering about what we were about to experience did no justice. This time we had grabbed her old P&S camera...we didn't realize this was our first urban exploration.
After utility workers [and a deer] kicked us out, we stayed away from the concept for several months. It wasn't until a conversation about it with a friend that I realized 'Wait...there's MORE!?' I was determined to see what else society had forgotten.
The past year and a half has been an attempt to recapture that feeling, even with that first asylum hitting demolition. Sometimes it comes back, sometimes it's distant, but nothing we've ever been inside...even houses or shops...has ever been normal. And that's what I really want.
tl:dr It was an accident.
Add your detailed +1s.
http://www.flickr....irdlingphotography |
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musket boy
 
Location: Maui
Gender: Male
It smells like your grandpa and your feet stick to the floor
| |  |  | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 1 on 2/5/2012 3:37 AM >
| | | | i left my house
uering |
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Harvestman
Location: Somewhere in SORTA/TANK Territory!
Gender: Male
Everything about me has a poker face.
| | | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 2 on 2/5/2012 3:54 AM >
| | | | I saw that a bowling alley that had been abandoned for a while, and where I used to bowl as a kid, was partially demolished. On a whim, I told the driver of the van to pull into the apartment complex where my grandmother lived, which was right down the hill from the alley.
I just sort of climbed in, wearing gym shorts, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt, with no flashlight or any sort of protection, and with just my point-'n'-shoot camera. I got in and out of there in about 20 minutes, but I'll forever remember it as my first "real" explore.
Oh good, my slow clap processor made it into this thing.
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Drawbar
Location: Maine
Gender: Male
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 3 on 2/5/2012 9:33 AM >
| | | | 22 years ago a friend and I used to drive back and forth to school, and in town there was this grain mill that was abandoned. One day we stopped in, marveled at all the ladders there was to climb and just started climbing them. We just kept going back until we learned that complex in and out, and then we started checking out other buildings in the area.
I am a law abiding citizen to a fault, but over the years I have found that it is better to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission, so I just go into abandoned places as I see fit. The funny thing is, my set of morals is aligned with most members on this website...I do not destroy things just to gain access and I take only photos and leave nothing but footprints.
In the past year I have started doing photography as a hobby which is what lead me to this site. It is just natural to align my years of exploring with my new love of photography. My new wife shares this love of exploration and photography so we are hoping do do some nice photo shoots this spring in some of these places in vintage clothing, and a trash-the-wedding-dress style shoot as well.
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Dougo
Wrong account -- Look for other Doug
Location: Victoria, Australia
Gender: Male
| | | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 4 on 2/5/2012 9:49 AM >
| | | | Men's public toilets after dark that were located in quiet parklands.
FacialBook is killing online forums. |
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Kuroneko
  
Location: Tokyo
Gender: Male
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 5 on 2/5/2012 1:24 PM >
| | | | Posted by Dougo
Men's public toilets after dark that were located in quiet parklands.
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That explains where I remember you from then - Royal Park, near the soccer grounds? Sitting in that old Holden ute?
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ThatTeenPhotog
Location: West of Cleveland, Ohio
Gender: Male
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 6 on 2/5/2012 3:10 PM >
| | | | Still haven't gotten into really cool old buildings or anything. But my first abandonment was with my Grandmother (you may begin laughing) last summer, both of us are photographers and she had found this cool old cotton gin that was abandoned. We got out of the car, and I took some photos from the outside. But being completely beta at the time and fearing rednecks with shotguns I didn't poke around as much as I should have. I'm thinking about following the train tracks when I have a free afternoon see what turns up...
I live in the 'burbs with a major lack of abandoned buildings. |
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superphoenix
Location: New York City
Gender: Male
There's a madness to my methods
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 7 on 2/5/2012 4:20 PM >
| | | | Read a NatGeo article on catacombs, which had a little segment on cataphiles. I did some more research and that led to me seeing urbex over the Internet. At a point, I was frustrated in living in it vicariously, I wanted to go out and experience it. So, not having any idea what to do, I infiltrated some active churches and schools that never seemed to lock their doors.
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Asher0719
Location: MSP
Gender: Female
The World Abandoned
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 8 on 2/6/2012 1:40 AM >
| | | | When I was 11-years old I checked our mail box only to drop the key down the sewer drain. When I told my sister what had happened she said we had to get the key back, and somehow our first thought was to wander through the drains until we found it...genius, I know.
We entered through one of the storm drains and wandered for hours, trying out best to keep an eye on where exactly we'd gone, but eventually we got so caught up in it we didn't care anymore.
Needless to say we never found the mail key, but the adventure itself led me to realize this was something I could do whether it be exploring drains, houses or other buildings.
~Asher |
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etchleon
Location: toronto today...
Gender: Male
E Tenebris Lux
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 9 on 2/6/2012 2:34 AM >
| | | | I was bored young teenager, walking around at night, and I saw a loading dock with the door to the big building open, and in I went to see the wonders of boxes full of clothing and household goods.
But I was hooked on going into places I was not suppose to and it grew from there.
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bonnie&clyde
Location: 510 & 415
Cleverly disguised as responsible adults
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 10 on 2/6/2012 2:49 AM >
| | | | Posted by Weirdling
First of all I DID try the search...and it told me I had to select something to search for. After I searched for it. So while I'm sure this thread has been made before at some point, I'm pleading ignorance to the search function ;)
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Search on here sux ass. I have done searches using exact phrase or title & still got nothing. I have searched & everything to do with nothing I typed shows up. It is a total crap shoot whether it works for you or not.
The question is not when are we gonna stop, It's who's gonna stop us?
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Weirdlig
Gender: Female
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 11 on 2/6/2012 2:07 PM >
| | | | Posted by bonnie&clyde
Search on here sux ass. I have done searches using exact phrase or title & still got nothing. I have searched & everything to do with nothing I typed shows up. It is a total crap shoot whether it works for you or not.
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So I take it no one started exploring from the search feature?
http://www.flickr....irdlingphotography |
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Dayman
Location: Oxford, Ohio/Middletown, Ohio
Gender: Male
"Too Much, Too Soon...You're way out of tune"
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 12 on 2/6/2012 11:25 PM >
| | | | I found some random videos of abandoned buildings while milling around youtube and became very interested right away. I had always found things like this since I was very young. I noticed an awesome abandoned building in the spring last year and eventually went inside and wandered around and became enamoured with the whole concept and eventual found the site searching for local locations and a result for the UE DB came up and I went through the site and found a close place and called up a close friend that I recently introduced to the concept and planned a trip and had an exploration in the summer.
The Artisan Pizza Blood Line
http://www.flickr....yathomedefenseman/ |
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Dougo
Wrong account -- Look for other Doug
Location: Victoria, Australia
Gender: Male
| | | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 13 on 2/7/2012 9:26 AM >
| | | | | Posted by KuronekoThat explains where I remember you from then - Royal Park, near the soccer grounds? Sitting in that old Holden ute? |
Rodney, is that you?
FacialBook is killing online forums. |
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miskingo
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 14 on 2/8/2012 10:22 PM >
| | | | Back in high school I heard rumors that my school had an attic and a basement. I set off and promised myself that I would find both before I graduated. With a LOT of work (including "borrowing" teacher keys) I finally got into both. Turns out the basement was just an old crawl space filled with dirt, but the attic was sprawling and took me days to explore the whole thing. I didn't really explore for a while, but constantly had to deal with my friend rooftopping all the time (I was terrified to do it back then.) A while after I graduated, my 12 year old nephew told me about a "creepy tunnel" his friend took him in. He showed me, and it turned out to be a storm drain outfall. I have been exploring ever since.
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ACA83
Location: Winnipeg
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 15 on 2/8/2012 11:15 PM >
| | | | It was just as my friend had turned 18. I was 17, and just got my license and my first car. We were out driving with some friends, and my buddy who turned 18 decides he wanted to check out a porno shop.
So we drive to this older industrial area that has a random porn store in the middle of a big lot, with businesses surrounding the area. He goes in, and we're in the car in the lot just killing time since none of us were over 18.
I look over to my left, and there's this huge, dark building in the distance. It was raining moderately, with a bit of lightning now and then. My friend gets back from the store, and I point this building out to him. Everyone agrees its worth checking out, so I drove a bit closer and hit the high beams.
The first two floors were cinder blocked off, but the third was wide open. And in between cracks of lighting, you could just see the end of of those really old egg crate style fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling, covered in rust. The walls were peeling and heavily graffitied. We made a decision then that we HAD to return on a night when it wasn't raining and we were more prepared.
So we went home. I started asking around about the building, finding out about its history. Four of us returned, two guys and two girls. The two of them went in with the flashlights and a camera, while my friend and I stood out back on watch.
They spent some time inside and after a while returned telling us just how awesome it was inside. We were feeling pretty nervous and decided not to head back in with them, and went home.
That night she sent me six pictures. They made me completely change my mind, and I HAD to go back there.
The return trip after that went really well. The building was in such an area that it was largely unvisited on the weekends. We got a ton of pictures in on my awful camera I had at the time, and made several visits between May of 07 until it was demolished in November of 08.
Writing this just made me nostalgia trip really hard. I haven't seen the friend we explored that place with in more than a year, and I sent her a little reminder than in 3 months, it'll have been 5 years since we found that place. I think I'll go visit her soon...
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Harvestman
Location: Somewhere in SORTA/TANK Territory!
Gender: Male
Everything about me has a poker face.
| | | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 16 on 2/8/2012 11:56 PM >
| | | | Posted by miskingo
Back in high school I heard rumors that my school had an attic and a basement. I set off and promised myself that I would find both before I graduated. With a LOT of work (including "borrowing" teacher keys) I finally got into both. Turns out the basement was just an old crawl space filled with dirt, but the attic was sprawling and took me days to explore the whole thing. I didn't really explore for a while, but constantly had to deal with my friend rooftopping all the time (I was terrified to do it back then.) A while after I graduated, my 12 year old nephew told me about a "creepy tunnel" his friend took him in. He showed me, and it turned out to be a storm drain outfall. I have been exploring ever since.
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Funny you should mention this.
Part of my school was formerly a convent, and that part is now part-band room and part-foreign languages. They use the third floor for storage, and me and two of my friends have been trying to get up there for a year and a half. You can get up there using an elevator (installed for handicapped people) and the appropriate key, or by picking locks. We suspect we're gonna be picking some locks before the year is over.
Oh good, my slow clap processor made it into this thing.
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miskingo
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 17 on 2/9/2012 12:29 AM >
| | | | Posted by HarvestmanMan
Funny you should mention this.
Part of my school was formerly a convent, and that part is now part-band room and part-foreign languages. They use the third floor for storage, and me and two of my friends have been trying to get up there for a year and a half. You can get up there using an elevator (installed for handicapped people) and the appropriate key, or by picking locks. We suspect we're gonna be picking some locks before the year is over.
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Some ideas for you... You say "appropriate key", but the service key slot on older elevators will often take any small key. You could also try to fashion a piece of coat hanger to place into the lock. Another idea is to be a teacher/counselor aide (not sure if they have that where you are.) Tell them you need the key to open something and run open the door.
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Zoidrage
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 18 on 2/20/2012 12:54 AM >
| | | | My start actually happened on a double blind date with a friend of mine and these 2 girls. We went out and did the whole dinner thing and all that, and then my friend suggested we go to Dever State School. At that point in time i had no idea what urban exploration was and all i knew we were doing was going to a creepy abandoned place at night.
We walked around the grounds for quite a while (for those who have never been the buildings are fairly institutional and boring, but the grounds are huge) then security came by, they had seen us, but we ran and manage to hide and avoid them. We then went to leave only to find a cop car cruising slowly past where i had parked my car off in the woods. We waited for him to pass, made a break for the car, then pulled out onto the road. However the cop came back around the corner and proceeded to pull us over ha. They questioned if we were in Dever and we just kept denying it, the cop the wanted to search my car (at this point there were 4 patrol cars there) which i obliged to because i had nothing to hide.
While the cop searched the car we just shot the shit with the other cops on the scene, long story short, they found nothing and let us go with nothing but a verbal warning to stay out of there. The girls we were with didnt stop talking about it for months.
I made many many many visits to Dever after that and know it like the back of my hand, though eventually it got boring, as there isnt really a whole lot in there to see and do besides run around the miles of tunnels under it. Explored a few other places after that and eventually moved and never found a group to go exploring with after that.
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Anna Hopkins
| | Re: How did you start exploring?
<Reply # 19 on 2/20/2012 1:19 AM >
| | | | I've always been kinda curious all my life. When our elementary school got remodeled over a summer, my friends and I would pretend there were secret passages inside the walls. We would knock on them and whisper about where they could lead. We spent every recess inside, creeping around the halls of the school and knocking on walls. I was thought of as quite the trouble maker at that point, because, oh no, I wouldn't go outside into the cold snow during our break. But we still had fun. At one point, my friend convinced me that there was a tunnel behind my locker. I stole my dad's multi-tool and tried to break into it by unscrewing everything, but I failed miserably. After that, we kinda just let the issue drop.
When I reached my Sophomore year in high school, there was a Freshman who was particularly interesting. He always interrogated our school's handyman about the legendary places hidden inside our school. Apparently, there was a secret passage under the counter in the boy's bathroom, and another one in the basement. To sweeten the deal, there was a dumbwaiter within the school. For months, he pestered the poor man, and I followed behind. At one point, when we were staying late at school to finish a project with the middle schoolers, we found a pair of small cabinet style doors above the handyman's office. By climbing onto a table, then a giant TV, the two of us managed to get up there, and easily crawled our way inside. It was fascinating. There was graffiti dated back to the eighties from students who had crept up there. We felt like we had disturbed something trapped in time. After crawling around a bit and leaving our names and dates in sharpie on the walls with the others, the two of us crawled back out, filled with a new breath of life.
Eventually, he found the tunnel in the boy's bathroom, but was never able to go down it. He also found the tunnel in the basement, but it was locked behind a door and he only got to see it once. The handyman finally cracked and opened a door we believed led to the dumbwaiter (which was, in fact, an old closet filled with really old sports equipment covered in grime), and for awhile, we dropped the dumbwaiter issue. Then he actually found it and showed it to me. Lo and behold, there it was. Fully functional, with thick ropes and enough room to hold one of us. It was the most beautiful thing I'd seen in that entire school.
Then we went to Israel, and that was where the fun really began. It was a class trip, and the two of us, upon being prompted by his recklessness, went everywhere and explored everything. Abandoned car park, abandoned hotel, and when we went briefly to Jordan, we would have walked into forbidden places in Petra (like the treasury, which is closed off to normal customers now) had we had the guts, and had the queen not decided that her horses should be photographed at Petra that day (seriously, when an arab man with a gun came up to us and told us we weren't allowed to be there, we gingerly decided that it wasn't worth the effort.  ).
And now every time I pass by an abandoned building, my heart flutters with longing. I'm still working to get more experience under my belt, and satiate the curiosity I can't quench.
Bah. Words can hardly describe how it feels to walk into an abandonment. But I guess everyone else knows that feeling, anyway, so words don't need to describe it.
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