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Last weekend, I visited an old circuit board factory in Massachusetts. I’ve been exploring for a few years now, but this was my first really big location. And I mean BIG. I remember being surprised by just how much it went on as I drove by it.
The place was owned by a pretty shady company before its abandonment. They manufactured circuit boards in the 1960s, and used some pretty toxic chemicals in the process. The location was shut down in the late eighties when it was discovered that the facility was heavily polluting nearby waterways.
Finding a way in took a while. The place was notorious for being easy to access for a long time, but was recently sealed up. I was only able to get in through a door on the lower floor. Someone had unscrewed one of the boards and placed it to look like it was still screwed in place.
All of the hazardous waste signs around the building were enough to make me bring a respirator in advance, but I couldn’t have predicted just how bad it would be inside.
I take it that a few of you know how the Chernobyl Elephant’s Foot was formed. The plant’s radioactive core melted through its containment and flowed all the way down to the basement, melting and mixing with everything it touched. The resulting mass of uranium mixed with melted building formed an entirely new material that to this day, we’ve only ever seen form a few times in history.
It turns out that something similar happened in the building I was exploring, albeit a bit less radioactive. Decades worth of rain flowing into the building through the unmaintained ceiling had washed all of the dichloromethane and whatever other chemicals the factory used down to the lowest floor. And that just so happened to be the floor I entered through.
I could tell that something was off about the area from the moment I turned my flashlight on. The place was NASTY. There was so much insulation hanging from the ceiling that it covered some areas completely. Every metal object in the room, structural or otherwise, was rusty enough to be crushed into powder. I kid you not when I say there wasn’t a single surface in that room I’d willingly touch.
My respirator thankfully blocked out the smell. I made my way deeper into the building. It was pitch black. The building only got more and more messed up as I traveled further in. Metal doors were busted clean off their hinges, ropes of hanging insulation were everywhere, and the cavernous size of the place made every sound seem like it was echoing from another room. Worst of all, there was some sort of graysih-black sludge covering parts of the floor. It looked like the chemical runoff from the upper floors had mixed with all the trash and dirt on the ground to form what I can only describe as chemical mud. A bit of it got on my ankle and it burned to the touch. I found the stairs shortly after. Thank god.
The second floor wasn’t nearly as bad as the first. The air just generally felt a lot better. Some outside light was able to get in through the holes in the ceiling. I’d heard rumors that someone had built a skate park somewhere inside the building, and it didn’t take me long to find. It was the first room I came to on the second floor. The most recent photo of it that I could find was from 2014. Not only is it still there, it’s still being maintained. Some of the wood is definitely newer than the rest. It makes me wonder who was actually crazy enough to sneak all the supplies into the factory and turn one of the rooms into a skate park.
There was a lot of original intact wood paneling on the second floor. Although it was still extremely badly damaged and covered in graffiti, it was better preserved than the floor below. You were actually able to imagine what the rooms used to look like. I even came across a closet full of old documents. They were still well enough preserved to read.
There was a third floor as well. I was only up there briefly because I’d been gone for a few hours at that point. There was a hole to the outside in the ceiling right above a large rug, and it had turned the room into something of a forest. Moss and ferns completely covered the floor. Considering just how bad the bottom floor of the building was, I was shocked that anything could grow in there at all. It was a really nice break from the toxic hellscape below.
I left shortly after. When I got home, I noticed that the stuff on the first floor had actually melted and deformed the bottoms of my shoes. It made me realize just how bad the chemicals I came into contact with were. Even though I didn’t get through more than a third of the building, I thought it would probably be best that I didn’t return.
I went back a day later.
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That place screams lung cancer. Did you wear any PPE
[last edit 9/26/2023 9:08 PM by Kabes - edited 1 times]
-Kabes | |
Posted by Kabes
That place screams lung cancer. Did you wear any PPE
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I wore a respirator and goggles both times, and plan to buy a disposable hazmat suit for my next visit.
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I can't believe someone wanted to make a skatepark there, that seems like a very unpleasant place to smoke weed and skate. Props to them though for making it work, and thanks to you for sharing this with us!
[last edit 9/26/2023 10:05 PM by Aran - edited 1 times]
"Sorry, I didn't know I'm not supposed to be here," he said, knowing full well he wasn't supposed to be there.
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Posted by Aran
I can't believe someone wanted to make a skatepark there, that seems like a very unpleasant place to smoke weed and skate. Props to them though for making it work, and thanks to you for sharing this with us!
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Breathe in that devils cabbage and asbestos at the same time!
D.I.C.K "You'll find us in your manhole" | |
Impressed the floor didn't fall out from under you
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Yikes! Seems like the kind of place where you might find both PCBs and PCBs. 
[last edit 9/27/2023 3:22 PM by Wowee - edited 2 times]
I will stop procrastinating tomorrow... | |
Posted by cybr
Impressed the floor didn't fall out from under you
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The place was actually surprisingly stable. All of the floors were made of concrete and felt really solid.
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Such a strange place to have a skatepark lol
There's an abandonment with one in my area but its just a big metal building/barn thing that someone made a few ramps under used to be a lumber company or something like that
Prohobo in training.
Best thread on UER | |
The place looks like a bloodbath
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