Abandoned Places

Abandoned Farmhouse

2008-10-12T16:44:11Z

A friend and I found an abandoned farmhouse on a map I received when I joined a trail association recently. We went to explore.

This photo pretty accurately summarizes the strangeness that was yesterday afternoon.

Originally, Aaron stopped by so he could give me money and we could go get ice cream. I don't think Aaron's been to the apartment since I joined the trail association. He's one of the most outdoors-y friends I have (the one that worked as a park ranger in Colorado this past summer, and the one who does the crazy extreme skiing/rock climbing/surfing, etc), and I wanted to show him the maps of the extensive trails. I figured he'd be able to fully appreciate them. There are plenty of properties, obstacles, and buildings outlined on the maps, but one in particular got our attention. On one of the last pages, farthest away from where I keep my horse, was a little X, marked "abandoned farmhouse". Now how could we resist that? To make matters more intriguing, some of the other more interesting things were nearby, on the same map. The trail took off from a straight line, labeled "pipeline", and looped around a body of water, simply called, "LAKE". But by far the most intriguing part of the map was a shapeless section called 'air dark'... complete with quotations.

"Juliette, what is 'air dark'?" I called to my roommate.
"Never heard of it."

And so, over ice cream at Cream King, we decided we had to go explore. We'd see how abandoned this farmhouse really was, check out the lake for its swimming prospects, and try to figure out what the hell this mysterious 'air dark' really was.

We stopped back at the apartment to grab the map, and off we went, in search of a place to park. We passed a "No Outlet" sign as we turned onto North Hill Rd. and briefly contemplated parking at the graveyard. Along the side of the street, we ran into a woman walking, and decided to stop and see if there was a place to park. Turns out she was just in the area while her daughter took an art class, and it was her car we'd spotted at the graveyard. She was very friendly, but of little help, so we thanked her for stopping, and went on our way. When we suddenly found ourselves driving on gravel, we wondered if we had gone right off the end of the street and onto the trails. So we ditched my car (literally, we put it in a ditch) and went off on foot.

We picked a path along the map, and made our way up the pipeline, and then into some corn fields.

Before long, we arrived at the abandoned farmhouse:

Ok, ok! Just kidding. That's just the old chicken coop.

A little ways further down the path, we spotted this building:

"Wow."
"Awesome."

The building was huge, and clearly unstable. I think parts of it were actually being held up by the surrounding thorn bushes.

"Should we go inside?" Aaron asked.
"Well... duh!"

We picked our way through the surrounding brush and started exploring the old building. Aaron scaled one of the walls and started making his way up and down the rafters.

"Hey, I want a picture of me on the stairs!" I called up to him.
"Stairs?"
"Yeah," I pointed. "The staircase to the second floor."
"O, what the hell!"
"I just assumed you liked climbing..."

Aaron looks awestruck as we enter the building.

Then promptly begins climbing.

At this point, I looked for something to grab onto, to steady my balance. As I checked a beam by giving it a sharp tug, the whole building shook.
"Uhh, Dom, I think I got the shot. Get down!"

As we were exploring the ruins, I suddenly heard Aaron cursing from across the loft.

"You ok?"
"I just gashed my hand on a rusty nail. Tetanus here I come!"

And yes, that is a bone next to his hand.

Deciding we'd tempted fate enough with that particular building, we left the skeleton house and tried to find a different trail to take. As we rounded a bend, I nearly jumped out of my skin. A hunter, complete with camo and compound bow, came down the path heading the other way.

He saw me jump and laughed, "Yeah. You scared me too," just as his buddy emerged from the corn field behind him. We chatted briefly, and discussed whether it would be safe for us to continue along the trails.

Since the hunters were heading down the trail we'd originally planned to take, we turned back towards what we though had been the abandoned farmhouse. Good thing we did! Turns out what we'd been exploring was actually just the barn.

This was the abandoned farmhouse:

We'd almost missed it!

This time, Aaron went first. The floor, or what remained of it, was littered with rubble. Suddenly, Aaron stopped, looked down, and declared, "O shit, this drops down to a basement!"

We tried momentarily to press on, but decided it really was a long way down. Besides, the floor was caving as we stood. We approached the house from the outside, and I snapped some pictures while Aaron took a call, standing in one of the window frames.

"Dude, I'm kind of in the middle of something. No... No. No, actually I'm exploring an abandoned building. No. With a girl. Yes. Dom. What do you mean you don't know who Dom is?"

From there, we had a hard time finding the trail. In fact, I'm pretty sure we strayed off of the path entirely as we meandered around the corn fields, which seemed to go on forever. We joked about the fact that this was how most horror movies started, and wondered what would happen if we got lost and our cell phones died as the sun set.

We even started noticing strange things... like this peculiar square cloud:

We finally found our way to what looked like an intersection in the trail, and we pulled out the map to decipher which way we had to go to reach the lake. We must have stood there for ten minutes, trying to decide which way to go, when we suddenly heard a gruff throat clearing from somewhere overhead. (god?)

Turns out there was a hunter in a stand in one of the trees. He was less than thrilled to see us.
"No. Go back the way you came. There are people hunting down here."

Oops.

We high tailed it out of there, and decided the safest way to go (without getting lost) would be to head back up the pipeline and take a more straight forward trail.

It was a long walk, but we eventually found our way to the lake. We were disappointed to find that it wasn't clean enough to meet our standards. I would certainly never swim in it. Additionally, it appears to be a common hang out for the local teens... as evidenced by the countless beer cans in a fire pit by some abandoned chairs. We struck a pose before deciding that we might as well try to find the mysterious 'air dark' before... well... dark.

The next section of trail was beautiful, and didn't seem to match any of the landscapes we'd been passing thus far. The trees in this part of the forest seemed to be further along in their fall colors, and the fading light played with the shadows on the path. Mysterious hills rose to either side, and we had to cross a creek before the path started winding back and forth at crazy angles.

We emerged at the top of the hill, alongside 'air dark'. I could tell you about it, but it's better if you don't know.

Just kidding. According to the map, we were right on the path next to the mystery area, but we couldn't see anything. Just a big, open field. We did find another abandoned building on the far side of the field. This one had creepier vibes than the last few, and we didn't stay long because we could hear gun shots nearby, and deer were fleeing for their lives further down the path.

This last building wasn't on the map, and I wasn't sure we'd taken the right route. Just to be sure we didn't miss something by mere inches, I climbed a tree to take a look around. Nothing. Just lots of tall grass. We were disappointed, and torn about which way to go, but it was getting dark, and the sight of a deer leg on the path reminded us that it was high time to head back. Deciding not to push our luck, we retraced our steps and hiked all the way back to my car.

This is my first post here. If it's too wordy, let me know and I'll cut it down to just pics.

Abandoned school in Zelenogorsk

2008-10-12T14:47:10Z

Allens Acres - The Hamptons, Long Island, New York

2008-10-12T14:21:14Z

This place just recently closed about maybe a year or so ago. It was a motel that was right down the block from the Hampton beaches.

r.

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six from London

2008-10-12T13:21:12Z

Gents toilets, Stamford Hill, Hackney, East London.

Currie House, a late-1930s built block of council (government) flats on the Aberfeldy Estate in Poplar, East London. The ground floor is still in use as a makeshift community mosque, and a handful of households are still in the building - the strain on public housing in Tower Hamlets is so severe that it can take two or three years to get a block of flats emptied and their constituent households moved elsewhere. In the case of this building it has been even longer - more like four at the time this photo was taken.

Two of the reinforcing steels which hold in the toxic spoil tip forming the only 'hill' in this part of East London - the Beckton Alps. The name comes from the artificial ski slope that existed here in the 1990s. The developers packed up and left around the turn of the millennium, and since then the spot has fallen into disrepair, but it has served to become a hangout for groups wanting to chill out to a view, rendez-vous with a significant other or just reflect in peace.

More derelict local authority flats on Victoria Way in Charlton, SE London. These ones had only just been emptied out - the flat in the top left was still in occupation, complete with the additional security arrangements that are a necessity when you're the last home in occupation in a place like this.

Victoria Way, again. The top floor flat is the last flat in occupation in this block. The habit of hanging England flags out of windows is quite common away from inner London.

The remaining 50% of the gargantuan Lintons block in Barking, East London. In the early 1990s the local authority threw all of the money available at this building in an attempt to make it more habitable, a mission which turned it from a grey and black dump into a multicoloured dump with a weird dome on top and a porter's desk. A superficial job at best, ignoring the more pressing issues e.g. rotting windows and damp. These schemes tend to be done with a view to adding another 30-40 years to the life of a building, but in this case it was 11 before the council was moving people out with a view to knocking the place down.

abandonedplaces @ 2008-10-12T11:29:00

2008-10-12T00:29:21Z

Kozakovka, Orel, Russia..

2008-10-11T08:55:13Z

Казаковка..

(-(-_(-_-(О_о)-_-)_-)-)

Maine!

2008-10-10T03:10:37Z

Heeey everyone.
I looove this community. It's one of my favorites. Sadly, I have never contributed to it...but that's because I don't know where to look!
This seems to be a community that stretches globally, but I am still hoping that out of the millions of places to find a site...there might be one in Maine?
Seems I'm just not looking in the right place?
I'm located in the Portland area.
U.S.
Anyone?
Thanks! Keep doing what you do.
*Facepalm.*
I just remembered I did contribute here in July. Oh. Now I'm proud. ^_^
But that was in Maryland! XD
Byebye lovelies!

Abandoned Amusement Park

2008-10-09T17:12:53Z

Hey! Second time posting here.

Last July-August I went to Berlin, Germany to visit some friends.

For years I've always wanted to check out this abandoned amusement park that lies pretty much right in the city.

Luckily for me one of my friends had just been around the place and knew exactly where to go so one beautiful summer day we went there to take some photos.

We didn't really spend that much time inside when we managed to get in though, my friends started to get nervous and wanted to bail before being caught by security.

So I didn't get the most varied photos but I decided to post a couple of them anyway.

Enjoy!

The first photo I took of the place. Taken outside through a fence. We kept being followed by this car all the while taking photos of the place from outside. We're guessing it was security just waiting to catch us going in. We went all around to the other side when we eventually decided to go in.

Information booths I'm guessing. The most interesting thing about these was all the flyers on the floor with times for acts or concerts. They must have been laying there on the floor since the place closed down over 10 years ago. A picture of those flyers is posted later on in this post.

And here's that flyer. Over 10 years it's been there. I think that's pretty cool.

And an overgrown entrance to the place. Now we're finally inside the amusement park. We were so damn scared of getting caught. Sneaking around like we were avoiding snipers or something.

Ah, the overgrown roads with some kind of train-track. Took a couple of photos of this but this was the only photo where you could actually se the track. When we walked further into the forest you came to point where you couldn't even see the asphalted road anymore. Just vegetation everywhere. Damn beautiful for a fan of post-apocalyptic imagery like myself.

And the classic roller-coaster. It wouldn't be an amusement park without one of these. When we found this I was pretty happy and didn't mind too much that my friends wanted to go out. I was pretty limited in the angle to take photos of it so most of my pictures look pretty much the same.

I wanted to take a look at the building there but my friends had grown increasingly nervous and the place was pretty much in the open.

So this was where we decided to go back outside.

It was a damn cool place. And it's comforting to know the place have been there abandoned for over 10 years so I probably still have time to check it out again.

Btw, later that day we met some people one of my friends knew in berlin. It turned out they had been to the amusement park as well that very same day and been caught by security and thrown out.

Maybe it was a good thing I had careful friends with me. :)

elements of the Labyrinth

2008-10-09T14:49:11Z

Briefly Off Topic

2008-10-09T07:20:47Z

Sorry to take the spot light briefly off the abandoned buildings.

Has anyone here been getting random friend-adds from all Russian journals? I've had several. None of them answer my request to know why I've been added. I've also noticed that, until I hid my list of friends, the same 3 or 4 people on my friends list were also added (one of which hasn't used her journal since 2007).

I'm not sure if this is the community they are getting me from but suspect that might be the case, I'd noticed someone else requested to be unfriended and was a member of this comm.   While I don't mind getting to know new people, I do mind random friending if I can't understand their entries. I'm concerned that they are mass-adding people, hoping to be added back so they can get email addresses for spam.

Anyone else notice this happening??

(Back to the buildings.  Sorry, don't have any shots to share right now)

EDIT, thanks <lj user="nympholept">: They are bots, and Livejournal Abuse are currently investigating and suspending them.

It's very important that you do not friend them, and you should report them to Livejournal Abuse. While innocent people do friend you from time to time, these seem to be a different kettle of fish. It isn't known if they are collecting personal info from those who naively friend back without checking, if they are just trying to gather as many friends as they can for the heck of it or if they have encoded malware or spyware in their entries/links/etc.

There's more information here: http://nympholept.livejournal.com/tag/russian+bots
Please spread the word to anyone else who may have been added.

abandonedplaces @ 2008-10-08T23:18:00

2008-10-09T04:20:49Z

friends anyone?

abandonedplaces @ 2008-10-08T17:52:00

2008-10-08T22:53:27Z

"Darul Aman Palace, in Kabul, Afghanistan. First built in the 1920s by King Amanullah Khan, the palace has been destroyed (by fire and warfare) and rebuilt many times. Its re-reconstruction is in the planning and fundraising stage right now."

via elibom_suxel

Count Keller`s ruined manor. Russia

2008-10-08T18:59:29Z

Count Keller

for more info see wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedor_Keller

Old Boats

2008-10-08T13:09:22Z

Old Boats

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Запах пустоты.

2008-10-08T07:23:57Z

Пыль фабрик пахнет пустотой,
Машинным маслом и влажным цементом
Размокшей бумагой и гарью
Пахнет хаосом и разрушением.

Под катом больше размером.

Royal Derwent Hospital

2008-10-08T05:27:28Z

Hey
I'm interested in Abandoned building especially mental asylums. I have been exploring Royal derwent Hospital now for about a year. Please
Check out my video of a known haunted abandonded asylum. This video explores Ward G and Frescati located at Royal Derwent Hospital/Willow Court Tasmania, Australia.
If you like to see more video's and pics of Royal Derwent please visit my Live Journal Website!

Abandoned motel on Route 22 (near Cadiz, OH)

2008-10-06T23:49:37Z

I went poking around an abandoned motel that's just east of Cadiz, Ohio on Route 22.

And there are a few more in this Flickr set

Abandoned... something.

2008-10-06T02:08:09Z

This is near a pretty neat-o covered bridge in Wakefield, Quebec. I have no idea what this building was used for, but it looked cool all boarded up.

abandonedplaces @ 2008-10-05T13:38:00

2008-10-05T20:48:34Z

A friend of mine expressed to me an interest in "haunted house hunting" about a week ago.. she found a few places off a website and one of the places I was actually familiar with, so we decided to group up with some friends for safety and drive out there in the middle of the night. We live in a town in the desert and driving less than 10 minutes in any direction puts you smack dab in the middle of nowhere.. so it was very creepy. And very dark. Armed with flashlights and a couple of fearless men, however, we figured we'd be okay lest we encountered any angry transients or coyotes.

Pile of debris outside the building.

This building is rumored to be several things.. on the website my friend found, it was listed as an abandoned church. I've heard that it was a lodge. Whatever it was, it had very neat architecture.

An empty shell of a TV

It could seem likely that it was a church judging by the windows. Lodges in our area tend to be squat, boxy buildings with tiny windows.

A few of us were wondering how the hell they got a boat in here.. and why on earth would they put it there.

Shroom!

Modeling some graffiti.. I couldn't get all the graffiti in the shot but it said "huge vagina"

Tires.. and the boat.

More strange graffiti.

Back outside there was much debris scattered around.. including children's shoes.

Now this was awesome! Skull graffiti on a bit of concrete.

...There was even porn..!

Anywho, that's all!

Abandoned glass plant

2008-10-05T19:47:45Z

Abandoned glass plant

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To be continued...

Abandoned Places – Lost Alabama (Jul 08)

2008-10-04T13:34:15Z

One of the last places I visited on my July wander was a forelorn roadside gas station in the middle of nowhere. Time stood still here.

abandonedplaces @ 2008-10-03T23:40:00

2008-10-04T03:41:12Z

I posted quite a while ago about an abandoned tobacco mill, which has since caught fire and is in the process of being demolished. I'm back today with pictures of more tobacco related buildings. I'm pretty sure both of these are warehouses, though one may have been used as a processing plant of sorts as well.

These are both located in downtown Greenville, North Carolina and are easily accessible. I'm going to add in what little info I could find about the buildings because I, for one, like to know the history of places I find if at all possible.

Gorman Warehouse circa 1996, from here
Designed to provide maximum floor space for marketing tobacco, the one-story 380’ by 150’ Gorman Warehouse is made of brick-faced tile and fills the western half of a city block bounded by Eleventh, Twelfth, Greene, and Washington Streets. The building is mottled in appearance where weathered red brick is intermittently exposed through white paint. Long walls dominate each facade. Segmental-arched windows have been filled with brick on the north and west facades, and rectangular windows have been filled with block on the east facade. Existing fenestration is minimal. There are two doors that serve an office on the north facade, symmetrical vehicular entrances at either side of the north and south facades, and six loading docks spaced irregularly along the west facade. On the interior, floors are concrete, and steel trusses support a shallow-pitched double-gable roof punctuated by 156 skylights. Gable ends on the north and south facades are concealed by raised parapets. Single tobacco leaves, angled decoratively at both ends of the parapet on the south facade, are the only painted ornaments on the building. A long narrow brick wing, original to the building, adjoins the east facade, and its exposed wall is divided by a grid of simple pilasters. A Sanborn map with paste-over updates to 1958 reveals that a large receiving warehouse (not in the district), thought to have been constructed about 1942, once filled the remainder of the block east of the present structure.

J. N. Gorman came to Greenville in 1896, and was a partner in several successive tobacco-related ventures including the Gorman, Campbell Company, the Gentry and Gorman Sales Warehouse, and the J. N. Gorman and Sons Sales Warehouse before, constructing this building as Gorman’s New Tobacco Sales Warehouse in 1926. Gorman operated another tobacco sales warehouse in Metter, Georgia, and in 1929, was killed in an automobile accident while traveling there to attend a stockholders’ convention.7 Subsequently the Greenville warehouse was operated by Gorman’s sons, R. W., T. M., and E. C. Gorman, until 1936, then by O. L. Joyner, Jr., Matt Long, and Jack Moye until 1942, then by O. L. Joyner, Jr., and Gus Forbes as the Victory Warehouse until 1975, and then by Larry and William Hudson and partners as Hudson’s Warehouse until recently. Now called the 531 Planters’ Warehouse and leased by the Hudson family to James Mills who continues to hold tobacco sales there, the building is the sole structure in the historic district that is used for its original purpose.

I guess I should note that this is a tobacco leaf, not a lemon (which I thought it was at first glance)

all from here
In 1914, shortly after the dissolution of the American Tobacco Trust, the Export Leaf Tobacco Company located a purchasing office and processing plant in Greenville.4 The large tobacco exporter, then headquartered in Richmond, VA, purchased scrap and common leaf in Eastern Belt markets, redried it, and shipped it to China. The company’s initial Greenville facility, a large brick prizery and cooperage, is pictured on a 1916 Sanborn map as covering the western half of a city block bounded by Tenth, Eleventh, Greene, and Pitt Streets. As business grew, the company expanded its Greenville facility, in 1928, purchasing and remodeling the adjoining ca. 1923 Southern States Tobacco Warehouse to increase redrying capacity, in 1932, adding more redrying space, and in 1938, constructing the northeast section of the building fronting on Tenth Streets5. In 1974, the H. A. Haynie Company purchased the Export Leaf Factory and has used it since to house a polyester processing plant.6 Its current use has little impact, and the building is perhaps the best preserved of all the tobacco buildings that remain in Greenville.

When the 1938 addition was completed the Export Leaf Factory was, as it is presently, a gigantic 282’ by 226’ brick structure of slow-burn construction that covers an entire city block. Within the building, there are eight major divisions separated by brick firewalls and metal doors. Thick exterior walls of red brick, laid in 6:1 common bond, rise to a multi-level parapet to protect a shallow, many-gabled roof dotted with skylights. Long exterior walls are divided into a series of regular rhythmic bays by pilasters ornamented with rectangular limestone insets and caps. Except where there are pedestrian entrances or loading docks, each bay contains two segmental-arched openings fitted with a rectangular three-over-three double-hung window, or on the south facade, two rectangular openings, each with a large eight-over-twelve double hung window. Though the building is generally uniform in appearance, each facade differs slightly. On the east, there are eighteen bays, including a center one recessed for two loading docks. On the north, there are thirteen bays that include the entrance to a small office at the northeast corner of the building. On the west, there are fifteen bays that adjoin a long railroad platform that runs the length of the facade facing the CSX tracks. On the south, there are eleven bays adjacent to a rectangular utility wing that contains a cylindrical 20,000-gallon metal water tank serving an interior sprinkler system and a tall yellow brick smokestack with black tile decoration on its cap erected by "M. W. Kellogg and Co. Chimney Builders, New York" that once vented smoke from a coal furnace used to heat the leaf dryers.

There's still a few more tobacco mills in the area that I'd like to photograph, hopefully the weather stays this nice.

Fort Tanjong Katong 2006

2008-10-04T02:52:10Z

" In 2002, the fort was “rediscovered” by a local who lived opposite the park who noticed a difference in the colour of grass, showing the outline of a structure underneath. Excavations of the fort in 2004 and 2005 revealed portions of the moat, fortification wall, drawbridge structure and bastions. "

- extract from : http://www.southeastasianarchaeology.com/2007/07/12/a-rare-photograph-of-fort-tanjong-katong/

This piece of news intrigued me as I am a history freak. Whats more, it is on open public area, Katong Park. Therefore, I decided to make a trip down and take a look for myself. I was fascinated by the condition of the bastions and fortification that had been excavated. There are many small glass pieces that were from soda bottles fixed onto the top of the fortification walls.

Below is the album contains photographs taken at the site.

http://good-times.webshots.com/album/551585153GJYzhF?vhost=good-times

Oldies but Goodies!!

2008-10-03T07:14:10Z

We are finished... ^_^

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Reminds of a vendor kiosk. Hlebnikovo village near Moscow.

2008-10-02T21:13:50Z