Urban Exploring

Oh, October! How I love you. You are my favorite month of the year. The leaves change, there is a chill in the air, the fair comes, and it is socially acceptable to dress up as whatever you want for a day! Contentment:-) Being that October contains Halloween, I find it necessary to frighten myself in some way or another in the spirit of the holiday. I love haunted trails/houses, a good zombie movie, or something a little more realistic.. like exploring a forbidden place!
If you are not familiar with the concept of "urban exploration", let me educate you! According to Wikipedia, "Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities." Now, to me this is a little bit of an incomplete definition. It is the art of finding, and exploring places that society has long abandoned or forgotten. These places are rare, but not as rare as you might think. This little hobby of mine started in college, when we would track down homes or places thought to be haunted and go to them at night to scare ourselves silly. (Disclaimer: I don't believe in "hauntings", but I do fear real people who may be hiding out in abandoned places...luckily we never came across any) But, with 5-10 other people with you, it always felt safe enough. It's been a while since I have been to any places in the dark, but I still enjoy these relics from the past during the daylight hours when you can see and photograph them! Abandoned houses are easy enough to find, but it is like Christmas to me when I get to go to someplace bigger (and creepier!). Such an occasion presented itself last weekend while I was out of town. A friend of mine had gone to this location one night, and wanted to go back during the day to photograph it, and of course I was game! It was AWESOME. Dangerously, freaky, awesome. You can't really tell it from the photos, but it was about 5:30 in the afternoon and window light was the only light source, and most of the place was pitch black. I lit a lot of these with a flashlight. Luckily we didn't run in to any people, though many times I swear I heard footsteps, but evidence that people frequented the place was everywhere (graffiti, beer cans, destruction). But I have rambled too long, I know you want pictures! Without further run-on sentences...the fruit of my exploration:

We entered through the basement and came into the kitchen..



The doors on the right were huge freezers/refrigerators.


Cafeteria line.

Upstairs hallway.


Patient rooms


Stairwell

Viewing nursery, complete with bullet-shattered glass..




My favorite part was this office. The furniture had been left and was completely ruined.


This is probably my favorite, because it just looks like it hadn't moved since the place closed down.

Lobby. This room was the worst off of what I saw. The ceiling was completely down on the floor and it was leaking really bad and puddled with water.

The sign on the glass door said "Beware of Dog". We saw other evidence that an animal (most likely a dog) had been in there. Luckily, we did not see him!


Let me just say that trespassing is illegal, and you should always ask permission to enter private property. There is very real danger in exploring any abandoned place..weak structure, mold, asbestos, people. However, if you still want to do some urban exploring, just be sure to let me know so I can come too! And lastly, the motto of urban exploring is, "take only pictures, leave only footprints".