Abandon buldings, Ghost Towns and the like?

[animeotaku99]

I was wondering if anyone here has ever "explored" any abandoned buildings, ghost towns are old industrial buildings. I've always thought it would be fun to go into one and take some photos and stuff like that. Im not a huge believer in paranormal but it's interesting.
I know someone that got in trouble for breaking into an abandoned building though as it is trespassing.
anyone have any creepy buildigns in theior town though? have you been in them?

[Sinister Wave]

3 friends and I have been going to the cemetary every night this week and looking around to see if we can find anything. No luck yet, and I doubt we actually will find anything, but I think it would be really interesting to actually witness something paranormal.
There's also a very old hotel a few towns away. I forgot the name, but there have been ghost busters there before who claim to have had paranormal activity in a few of the rooms. A friend and I will be spending the night there some time this summer.

[Leader Desslock]

I was wondering if anyone here has ever "explored" any abandoned buildings, ghost towns are old industrial buildings.
Over 60 of them. I'm not exaggerating. At one time I had 'em plotted out on a map. I retired after 60 because it was just getting to be too easy.

Im not a huge believer in paranormal but it's interesting.
I only had one experience I can't fully explain, but it wasn't any big deal.

I know someone that got in trouble for breaking into an abandoned building though as it is trespassing.
And most likely Breaking And Entering. If you so much as move a box that's in your way to enter through an unlocked door, that's B&E. If you can walk in without touching anything, it's trespassing.

Ah, my impressionable college days...

[tofuman]

Their used to be a bunch of abandoned houses in the canyon ware I live but they've all been removed. I just went through them to look for snakes.

[MaliceDR]

If you want to enjoy abandoned property, go to Baltimore. There are so many abandoned warehouses and busted up buildings there.

[Gannon]

I only had one experience I can't fully explain, but it wasn't any big deal.


:) Explain.

[animeotaku99]

If you want to enjoy abandoned property, go to Baltimore. There are so many abandoned warehouses and busted up buildings there.

I'd prefer areas with lower crime, I dotn want to have to shot soemcrack head sleeping in his urine just to get some creep pics

[Leader Desslock]

:) Explain.
It would take too long; I will sum up.

There was a cold spot in the cellar of an abandoned house near the Maine coast. This house locally known as a site for "strange" activity. I could go into a whole lot of detail, but I'll simply say that I've been in a lot of basements in a lot of houses (abandoned and occupied) in a lot of places in Maine, during all seasons of the year; the conditions in that basement didn't make sense to me. It was like stepping into a walk-in refrigerator, which didn't match the environment of the house, nor the climate at that time of year, nor the land on which the house was located - nothing. I couldn't quite get my head around it.

Kinda odd, but that's about it.

The further odd thing about the house was that there was a lock on the cellar door. The lock prevented access to the main house from the cellar. This wouldn't be too unusual, except that there wasn't another entrance to the cellar. So... why'd they need a lock on the cellar door? Most people in rural Maine don't lock their exterior doors half the time; they certainly wouldn't install a good exterior lock on an inside door to an area from which there was no external access, since there's no way anyone could break in from that direction.

As I said, kinda odd. I'd love to call the Ghost Hunters about the place, because given the lame crap that normally scares them, this house would be like the gates of Hell or something.

[Bernard_Monsha]

I used to tour around looking for ghost towns the best I've been too is Linnsville which was abandoned after the Commanche sacked it in 1840. The only supernatrural experience I had was a light that turned itself back on after I would get up and turn it off. It happend several times so in my opnion ghost are annoying.

[Sauron]

The further odd thing about the house was that there was a lock on the cellar door. The lock prevented access to the main house from the cellar. This wouldn't be too unusual, except that there wasn't another entrance to the cellar. So... why'd they need a lock on the cellar door? Most people in rural Maine don't lock their exterior doors half the time; they certainly wouldn't install a good exterior lock on an inside door to an area from which there was no external access, since there's no way anyone could break in from that direction.

As I said, kinda odd. I'd love to call the Ghost Hunters about the place, because given the lame crap that normally scares them, this house would be like the gates of Hell or something.

I remember watching a show about that house but I thought it was Ghost Hunters. Could have been a Discovery or Travel channel show about Haunted Houses.

[MonkeyBoy0314]

I don't get to do this sort of thing very often anymore, but whenever I get asked to join an exploration group through a graveyard or abandoned house, I jump right on it!

[Sendo Takeshi]

Ever since we had to put Scooby to sleep, me and the gang broke up. Freddy is a stockbroker down in Jacksonville, Daphne became a porn star(be on the lookout for her new video courtesy of Vivid Entertainment), and Velma went lesbian.

I had to sell the Mystery Machine to pay last month's rent. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. We did meet a lot of celebrities during our escapades. Don Knotts, Batman and Robin, The Harlem Globetrotters, and the Three Stooges. Yeah, I miss those days.

I can still hear Scooby's yelps and hollers every now and again. Since then, I've retired from the ghost chasing.









In all seriousness though, I've never explored anything abandoned. Crackheads tend to occupy those and since I don't like crack, I just keep it moving.

[{NG}Fidel]

Im not wrong in thinking its Velma right?
Or am I just remembering wrong?
As for supernatural experiences = None.
Ghost towns....None either sorry guys.

[Undrave]

Well I visited the Ghost Town of Val Jalbert who was abandonned after the mill shut down...but it'S pretty much a big tourist trap so there's nothing really supernatural going on.

I visited a building earlier in the year that used to be a prison and apparantly one of the cell is haunted, according to a ghost hunter that went there.

Beside that... I've lived in building over 100 years old without much of an odd creak and went around places at night that were the site of big battles...

Heck I currently live a stone throw away from the site of the first settlement in town where half of the setler died of scurvy during the first winter...

NOTHING. Nada...not a single paranormal event :/

I can't really think of any abandonned building I could visit either.

[Mort]

Last fall I spent most of it going though old mining camps in the UP. It involved some cave diving and maping out areas for the EPA to come look at for clean up. it was a lot of fun. In some of the caves once you went down a few levels it could get spooky but nothing strange ever happened.

[CrossboneGundam]

Last fall I spent most of it going though old mining camps in the UP. It involved some cave diving and maping out areas for the EPA to come look at for clean up. it was a lot of fun. In some of the caves once you went down a few levels it could get spooky but nothing strange ever happened.

Are we supposed to know what "the UP" is?

Anyway, I've been to a ghost town once, nothing special.

[Vaikyuko]

Never really been in anything abandoned/ghost town/etc. I did have a bizarre case where a TV turned on twice after I turned it off, but that was a few years ago and I've long suspected (since it was before he moved out) that it was just my brother teasing me with the remote (we had two at the time).

[Leader Desslock]

Are we supposed to know what "the UP" is?
"Upper Peninsula" (of Michigan)?

[Suiko Eiji]

"Upper Peninsula" (of Michigan)?

That's what I know it as and can't think of anything else, but then again, whenever I hear it, it's usually from relatives or friends from Michigan.

I've never done it much but there was one place - an abandoned hosiptal - some friends and I went to a couple times. A lot of the equipment was still there and all, so it was like those mad scientist horror movies. No real ghost reports or anything like that from me, but just an incredibly creepy atmosphere.

Honestly, I've gotten creepier feelings from a friend's house his parents bought. It used to be a very small retirement home, so it had something like 9 bedrooms and a couple very large living/sitting rooms. During the day, everything was cool but at night the creaking and "amount of silence"* was very, very creepy. The only other place I can think of that was creepier than the "Biohazzard Mansion" (what we nicknamed this house after staying a few nights there) was Buchenwald Concentration Camp.


*"Amount of Silence" - can't think of the right word, if there even is a word for the concept, but having the number of people in a place that is indirectly proportional to the amount of space in the same building when all is quiet except for sounds of creaking or "settling". The kind of thing that would make your mind play tricks on you.

[tenshi_a]

I've explored a building site at night, which I guess is the same but opposite. It was the skeleton of a building. But only because nobody had put its flesh on yet.

Most of the houses and other buildings I've lived in were very old. My parents' house is about 150. It has huge thick walls and is usually quite cold, even in the middle of summer. The college I lived in while attending university was late-Victorian. The flat I'm living in now... no idea. But terraced housing for miners in the North of England? About the same age...

The unbuilt building was creepier than buildings where I'm sure deaths must have occured due to how old they are.

[Mort]

"Upper Peninsula" (of Michigan)?

Thats it, I am just use to everyone knowing what I mean when a say UP that I never right it out.

[D the Hunter]

...scurvy...

lol, why that word makes me laugh everytime I read it, I don't know, thats my paranormal experience. ^_^

[Suiko Eiji]

I've explored a building site at night, which I guess is the same but opposite. It was the skeleton of a building. But only because nobody had put its flesh on yet.

Most of the houses and other buildings I've lived in were very old. My parents' house is about 150. It has huge thick walls and is usually quite cold, even in the middle of summer. The college I lived in while attending university was late-Victorian. The flat I'm living in now... no idea. But terraced housing for miners in the North of England? About the same age...

The unbuilt building was creepier than buildings where I'm sure deaths must have occured due to how old they are.

That's because you cheated and live in Europe - where the history comes from. :lol:

In America, we try and restore "old buildings" to what they looked like in their glory, over 50 years ago (how's that possible? no one was alive then?!)

Okay, I'm done ripping off Eddie Izzard...

[Leader Desslock]

I've never done it much but there was one place - an abandoned hosiptal
That sounds cool! Ah, I'd have enjoyed that. Some of my more memorable excursions were to:
- An abandoned mental asylum (I'm not making that up)
- An abandoned train roundhouse
- Two abandoned churches
- An abandoned restaurant (almost got caught up in a drug bust there, too)
- An abandoned factory

The funny thing about the second abandoned church is that I later met the people who bought it and restored it into a house. I didn't know that at first, but they showed me pictures of their house, and the conversation went sort of like this:

Me: The layout loks kind of like a church.
Them: Good eye! It was a Church! We bought it and renovated it after it'd been abandoned."
Me: And where... um... WAS this church?
Them: Oh, in the middle of nowhere, south of Newport.
Me: In Dixmont?
Them: Yes! How'd you know? Have you been by it?
Me: Lucky guess. -_-;
Them: Oh, you'll have to stop by, so we can show you the place!
Me: (low voice) That's not necessary, I've already seen it...
Them: Excuse me?
Me: Oh, I mean in the PICTURES! They're so well done. Beautiful house.

when all is quiet except for sounds of creaking or "settling". The kind of thing that would make your mind play tricks on you.
That reminds me of the time my friends and I were sneaking into an abandoned house in mid-winter. This was Maine, so at 1:00am, it was probably 30 degrees below. We picked a particularly cold night to go in, because the houses nearby had a lot of dogs; on a bitter cold night, they'd be inside.

So we walk up on the crusted snow behind the house, trying to be quiet. We check the windows, they look problematic, so I figure I'll pick the lock on the side door. My friends station themselves to keep warm and look out. I step on the top step to examine the lock more carefully, then...

...up until that point, it had been absolutely silent. A perfectly clear, artic cold Maine winter night. Not a breath of wind. There was a tiny amount of creaking in the tree branches and the tinkling sound of frozen wood continuing to settle. The moment I put my foot on the top step, it settled with the sound of a shotgun blast. POW!! It echoed in every direction for several seconds. One of my friends thought I'd actually been shot. Scared the bejesus out of me.

In light of the massive failure of my stealth abilities that evening, we opted to high tail it and wait for a warm, FOGGY night to try again. One with less ice, and possibly a light rain for sound cover.

So yeah, I know what you mean by deafening, almost tangible levels of silence. I also know what it's like to accidently shatter that silence completely. :lol:

[Bernard_Monsha]

Burgler Desslock.

I think we should get together and start a paranormal study group and see if we can get money from Sci Fi or Travel Channel. We will have to have Zuggy along as our expert. We would also need someone to pretend they are possesed.

[Leader Desslock]

^ Damned straight. I used to be a pretty good one, too. I still pick locks, but now it's more of a hobby than an occupational skill.

[animeotaku99]

What was the Mental asylum like? I don't thik we have anything like that around here which would be cool to explore.
also I have the problem of not being able to break the law... I am working my way into our police department and I don't want any record with me.

[Leader Desslock]

What was the Mental asylum like?
Pretty dull. It was a disused building on the far backside of an active facility, so it'd been cleaned out years before. There was some water damage, and we avoided exploring areas of the floor which wouldn't support weight.

The only interesting feature we found was (for want of a better term), the "rubber room". These were two cells, side by side, about 8' wide and deep. Each had reinforced walls (which once sported cushioning), and a very heavy door that could only be opened from the outside.


The abandoned asylum was nowhere near as creepy as another house we explored. The house had an upstairs room. The room had childlike scrawls on all the walls, from ceiling to floor. The door to the room locked, and on the outside of the door handle, there was a board securely attached with hemp rope. On the outside of the room, both sides of the door casing had heavy scuff marks (going through the paint) at the level of the door handle.

My friends were at a loss to explain this, until I pointed out that the door was likely shut, then locked, then braced by turning the attached board sideways to hold the door shut from the outside. The most likely explanation? The family had a mentally retarded child who presumably grew into a mentally retarded adult (hence the childlike scrawlings near the ceiling). They kept him shut up in this room, either for his own safety, the safety of others, or just plain shame. The house had long since been abandoned, and things were different in the Maine countryside back then.

That was a bit more creepy, I think.

[Soluzar]

I have two experiences to relate here. The first has an element of the unexplained, the second has an element of the macabre. I'm sure they are both relatively boring when compared to Desslock's experiences, but I shall tell you my stories at great length, and you shall be the judge.

~~~

Once upon a time, when Soluzar was nought but a wee Biscuit, his family decided to invest their life savings into a business venture. Unfortunately for Soluzar's father, one of the partners was a crook who ran off to parts unknown with everyone's money, leaving everyone else lucky to escape with the shirts on their backs. The idea was sound in principle though.

The plan was to renovate an old and disused hospital into a private healthcare facility for the elderly. The plan has since succeeded with a new group of investors, but this story is about the time when my family moved to the site in order to oversee the renovations. There were, at that time, several than enough buildings already complete, and my father was going to be the on-site manager.

There were also two other families living on the site at the time, as part of the staff who would help bring this project to completion. Each had a child, of about my age. One boy, one girl. You can easily imagine that the three of us were warned not to explore in quite stern terms, and you can equally easily imagine that we disregarded this warning on a daily basis.

The place was quite simply huge, and full of rooms that nobody even really knew about, much less used for anything. Hell, there were whole buildings that nobody used. The property was seemingly without end, and the construction workers, carpenters, decorators and other workmen simply had to tackle the job one building at a time.

We found no end of dangerous and stupid things to do, between the abandoned buildings and the building sites. I remember that once I lost both of my shoes to the thick sucking mud on one of the building sites, which was quite difficult to explain. :lol:

We used to climb on ancient, tall shelves, we used to crawl through holes in dangerously unstable walls, and climb through broken windows. Sometimes we would investigate the strange, broken machines that were left lying around. It was a storybook childhood, I assure you. However there was one thing that, at the time, we were unable to explain.

There was an old furnace in one of the sub-basements... it hadn't been used in decades, any more than the rest of the place had. Normally there was no light, other than the flashlight that we carried with us. It was among our favourite places to explore... most especially after the time we saw what appeared to be a flickering light, with no apparent source, which seemed to move as we watched.

It wasn't our flashlight. We were all together, so it wasn't a prank. It appeared at random several times, but not always. I'm sure that if I saw it as an adult, I would come up with any number of rational explanations for it, but back then... it seemed like it could only be a ghost.

~~~

My other story is much less nostalgic, since it happened relatively recently. Within the last five years, I would say. A friend of mine moved into an old house, next to a funeral home. When I say an old house, I mean that it is probably one of the older houses in the city, easily over a hundred years old. Probably much more. It seemed to have a story to tell.

Not long after he and a friend of his moved in, he decided to survey his new home, as you do. The one part of the house that he was not yet familiar with was the cellar. Old houses in England tend to always have a cellar, originally intended for the storage of food, and coal.

This cellar was more interesting than most. It was divided into three distinct rooms. One room took up about a quarter of the space, and was unremarkable. The second room was a little bigger, and was most likely the coal storage area during the days when every home burned coal. The third room was separated from the other two by a sturdy barred iron gate, designed to be fitted with padlocks.

Inside, it had a stone table, in the centre of the room, perhaps a little below waist height. The table had grooves cut into it, and was a little smaller than a single bed. The walls had two sets of shackles mounted at approximately the right heights for arm and leg restraints. The ceiling had pointed hooks mounted on chains.

What do you suppose the use of this room might have been?

[animeotaku99]

^that sounds awesome, great stories thanks for telling them

[Animematt55]

Soluzar wins...
Did you at least take pictures?

[Leader Desslock]

The third room was separated from the other two by a sturdy barred iron gate, designed to be fitted with padlocks.

Inside, it had a stone table, in the centre of the room, perhaps a little below waist height. The table had grooves cut into it, and was a little smaller than a single bed. The walls had two sets of shackles mounted at approximately the right heights for arm and leg restraints. The ceiling had pointed hooks mounted on chains.

What do you suppose the use of this room might have been?
Some kinky blighter had a home dungeon, maybe?

Other than that, I don't think I want to guess what it was for. What did the grooves on the table look like?

Soluzar wins...
Completely. That first story sounds hella cool, and makes me wish I was a child so I could explore it with them.

The only stories I've got left are funny ones, if we want to keep this going.

[Undrave]

We're gonna need a ghost hunter rpg :p

[Animematt55]

What did the grooves on the table look like?



What I think is, they were fairly shallow grooves leading towards the edges. My guess is for blood to drain off the table
morbid...

[DazzleKitty]

Probaby doesn't count, but we bought an old barn that had been abandoned. It had apparently been a place for prostitutes and gambling at one point. There were lots of interesting things in there....an old tv, lots of sci-fi books, horse items, formaldehyde....and yes, a petrified dead cat.
There was also a little farmhouse next to it, with a broken freezer full of rotten squid burger. Yeah....

It was a creepy place.

My friends often visit old abandoned factories, because there are a lot in our town. I may go with them next time.


Inside, it had a stone table, in the centre of the room, perhaps a little below waist height. The table had grooves cut into it, and was a little smaller than a single bed. The walls had two sets of shackles mounted at approximately the right heights for arm and leg restraints. The ceiling had pointed hooks mounted on chains.

Heh, sounds like a playground for fetishes.

[Tom Servo]

There was a cold spot in the cellar of an abandoned house near the Maine coast. This house locally known as a site for "strange" activity. I could go into a whole lot of detail, but I'll simply say that I've been in a lot of basements in a lot of houses (abandoned and occupied) in a lot of places in Maine, during all seasons of the year; the conditions in that basement didn't make sense to me. It was like stepping into a walk-in refrigerator, which didn't match the environment of the house, nor the climate at that time of year, nor the land on which the house was located - nothing. I couldn't quite get my head around it.
How near the coast? There's an article I read yonks ago about the strange effects a atmosphere laden with salt and the other ingredients in seawater can produce, one which was extreme cooling which some... it was either Edwardian or Victorian designers took advantage of in their fridge designs, their fridges were a large hollow in the earth lined with bricks, the whole thing overall the shape of a egg - and there was something about a layer of salt on the outside and the salt from the artic ice they shipped in on the inside in conjunction with solar radiation that gave them much cooler temperatures than would have been otherwise, it had something to do with charge density... -

I just wish I could recall more of it.

Used to always be getting up to mischief in places where I shouldn't have been during skool daze - there's loads of WWII fortifications still here that we would mess around in, along with a small airport (which I assume was also built during the war) which had wrecked planes along one side of the land which were being dismantled which we had fun amongst. We also made our way into the old masonic centre before it was sold off or demolished (not sure which as I haven't been past there since) there's still pictures of it online here http://www.southendmasonic.co.uk/gallery.php very pretty inside, but all the regalia we wanted to "look over" had been already moved.

Can't think of any strange experiences at the time, had some weird stuff happen around me when I visited sacred sites like stonehedge, avebury, and the like tho'.

[Soluzar]

Some kinky blighter had a home dungeon, maybe?
I hope that's what it was, I really, really do. Other than that, I just can't guess, and don't want to. I've seen it myself, and even when you're prepared for it it looks pretty darn weird.

Other than that, I don't think I want to guess what it was for. What did the grooves on the table look like?
There were four grooves, deep enough to just about fit your finger into, running horizontally across the table. Not equidistant, but two pairs of two, at the ends.

[Leader Desslock]

How near the coast?
Not as close to the coast as several other places I've been that didn't exhibit anything like this effect. Not close enough to smell the ocean. Some of the other places we explored had an ocean view, in fact. I never observed anything like this anywhere else.

I could fill a long post (and I did once) with my detailed observations of the site, but it really didn't make any sense. There was brickwork but no salt and no ice. I've been in cold cellars made of brick and stone, I've been in wet limestone and talus caves in all seasons, and caves with year-round ice. This wasn't like those.

I'm aware of the effects of evaporative cooling (those cloth-sided canteens are made that way for a reason), but this seemed to be the reverse. The cellar was otherwise dry (a dry, elevated lot on a hillside with good drainage, no evidence of leaks in the basement), but the low temperature was causing water to condense on every surface. So much water was condensing, it was dripping. You could see your breath in the cellar, it was that cold.

This was mid-July or early August, and Maine had been in the middle of a heat wave for the better part of a fortnight. It was around 90 degrees outside (to the point where I had to take my jacket off) and the inside of the house was quite warm and dry.

I didn't panic or get freaked out (as my friend did). I just looked around patiently trying to find an explanation for the conditions in the basement, and came up completely empty. I don't even have a theory or a guess.

[Tom Servo]

I wouldn't imagine there would have been ice and salt in that basement with ye - the fridge I made mention of was only a example of some folk taking advantage of a natural effect.

If the surrounding earth or the brickwork itself was salt-rich along with being near the coast then that be the same conditions as the temperature experiment I'm talking 'bout 'ere.

That ye say that it was blazing outside ties into what I remember reading in the article again about there needing to be prolonged and intense solar radiation - there was a electrical component to it. Do salt crystals have piezoelectric qualities when heated up?

What ye report sounds more dramatic than the results these scientists achieved tho' - maybe it be unrelated. You might want to look into Viktor Schauberger's work as his machines, which are reproductions of what you can find in any living environment, always produce lower temperature gradients due to the way they operate with implosion (cooling) rather than explosion (heating).

Ask any new agey folk and they will say any point where 'leylines' cross is a cooling implosive vortex - but what you say doesn't sound like that again if it was a one off effect.

[CrossboneGundam]

I hope that's what it was, I really, really do. Other than that, I just can't guess, and don't want to. I've seen it myself, and even when you're prepared for it it looks pretty darn weird.


There were four grooves, deep enough to just about fit your finger into, running horizontally across the table. Not equidistant, but two pairs of two, at the ends.

Well, clearly, it was meant for butchering humans.

[sasami-riyo]

o.O **Plays eerie music** This is no ordinary thread...this is, the Twilight thread...

This definitely brings out the kid in me...

Yeah, in North Dakota we used to go explore the old, abandoned potato bins and wheat factories, and we'd find doors locked, and stuff like that. Of course we'd find ways to open them though. After all, what are locked doors for? There were a lot of creepy things that we'd find in them.

[Animematt55]

o.O **Plays eerie music** This is no ordinary thread...this is, the Twilight thread...

This definitely brings out the kid in me...

Yeah, in North Dakota we used to go explore the old, abandoned potato bins and wheat factories, and we'd find doors locked, and stuff like that. Of course we'd find ways to open them though. After all, what are locked doors for? There were a lot of creepy things that we'd find in them.

Wow, i am from ND... What cities did you poke around in?

[sasami-riyo]

uhm...i grew up in like the grandforks and grafton areas (like in the eastern part of the state i guess...) but we moved up here to alaska when i was in 5th grade. i miss it once in a while...and there aren't any vikings fans up here...but yeah, it was some of the best days ever (sometimes).

North Dakota has good potatoes though...I miss those the most...**nostalgic rush**

[/filler]