Why are people fascinated by abandoned buildings and towns and so forth?
- Thread starter Jayson1
- Start date
Within a few hours' drive from my location, there are a couple sites like this that have been converted to parks. They feel kind of eerie to wander around in.
Kor
When I was growing up, abandoned places were everywhere to be explored. The mid eighties, and my home villiage suffered the closure of its pit, and despite the warnings, we couldn’t stay away.
There was a huge marshalling yard where the trucks would have been stored, and for a long while, a little yellow shunting locomotive remained in the yard for us to play on. There were also four huge flood light towers that we dared each other to climb, but never got above a few foot. We did get to the top eventually though, after they’d been felled. The pit site was a massive complex of buildings and equipment and we stayed away from the head gear, and the shafts has been capped, but the admin buildings and shower block was accessible, thanks to the local vandals.
At the opposite end of the villiage was the old abattoir, though that had been filled in and overgrown long before I got to explore it’s macabre remains. There was an unnatural mound of grassy earth, surrounded by trees. But when you climbed to the top, you could look in to the roofless interior. Inside the various rooms were evidence of squatting, charred stones marked where fires had been lit, and the place was littered with rusty tin cans and weather worn beer bottles.
The old farm, right in the middle of the new housing estates had crumbling barns and stables, and a huge weed ridden orchard where a single scraggly old horse munched at the grasses.
The swimming baths too were accessible for a little while before they tore it down. Drained swimming pools are a weird thing to look at, filled with detritus and the occasional plastic chair. And it’s bizarre, that even when you’re trespassing in a deserted condemned building, breaking the law, risking physical harm and a massive bollocking, exploring the female changing room still felt comparatively naughty.
The abandoned railways through and around the villiage still had a lot of railway remnants at the time too. Ballast here and there, and the odd rails. Felled signal masts rotting in the under growth. Often the route would come to an end at an abrupt brick cliff, where the deck of the bridge had been removed. Over bridges were filled in, and we used to run across the parapet, pretending it was still a bridge, and jump down on to ‘tracks’ below.
Huge fun. Wish I’d had a camera when i nine.
There was a huge marshalling yard where the trucks would have been stored, and for a long while, a little yellow shunting locomotive remained in the yard for us to play on. There were also four huge flood light towers that we dared each other to climb, but never got above a few foot. We did get to the top eventually though, after they’d been felled. The pit site was a massive complex of buildings and equipment and we stayed away from the head gear, and the shafts has been capped, but the admin buildings and shower block was accessible, thanks to the local vandals.
At the opposite end of the villiage was the old abattoir, though that had been filled in and overgrown long before I got to explore it’s macabre remains. There was an unnatural mound of grassy earth, surrounded by trees. But when you climbed to the top, you could look in to the roofless interior. Inside the various rooms were evidence of squatting, charred stones marked where fires had been lit, and the place was littered with rusty tin cans and weather worn beer bottles.
The old farm, right in the middle of the new housing estates had crumbling barns and stables, and a huge weed ridden orchard where a single scraggly old horse munched at the grasses.
The swimming baths too were accessible for a little while before they tore it down. Drained swimming pools are a weird thing to look at, filled with detritus and the occasional plastic chair. And it’s bizarre, that even when you’re trespassing in a deserted condemned building, breaking the law, risking physical harm and a massive bollocking, exploring the female changing room still felt comparatively naughty.
The abandoned railways through and around the villiage still had a lot of railway remnants at the time too. Ballast here and there, and the odd rails. Felled signal masts rotting in the under growth. Often the route would come to an end at an abrupt brick cliff, where the deck of the bridge had been removed. Over bridges were filled in, and we used to run across the parapet, pretending it was still a bridge, and jump down on to ‘tracks’ below.
Huge fun. Wish I’d had a camera when i nine.
Yeah, malls seem to be really struggling, some more than others. The mall in our center core has been really struggling since the closure of Eaton's, and has never really been able to recover since. That one was one big epic blow. Once you lose your anchor store, you lose a lot of traffic. Businesses keep leaving and it's a shadow of its former self. It's sort of like a vicious cycle; stores close because they aren't able to attract enough foot traffic, and the mall doesn't have enough foot traffic because it it can't attract stores. A side effect of this has been increasing crime in the area as it's become very rundown. And because of the crime, less people want to visit. There's an independent theatre that opened up in the mall a few years ago with recliner seats, but I don't think it's doing terribly well as everytime I'm there, I'm shocked at how little attendance it gets and wonder how long they can survive in that state. And all the comments I keep hearing from around the city point to the area being crime ridden and not wanting to take their kids there.
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