Where did everyone go?

I have always had a deep interest in abandoned places. I am not sure where this stems from, but it is something that has been with me since I was a small child. I think that I like to look at places like this and imagine what they were like when they were still inhabited.

Growing up in my grandmothers house, I found interest in our attic. This used to be a room for my uncles when they were growing up. There were still Jefferson Airplane posters on the walls, and reel to reel tapes up there. It also happened to be a catch all for junk over the years. There was a stack of 78 rpm glass records up there that were interesting to look at, though I did not know the artists that recorded them. A nine year old boy growing up in the 80's would not have knowledge of music recorded in the 1940's.

It was a treasure trove up there, although I never took anything out of there. I would just go up there when I was bored and poke through the random items that were forgotten up there for 20+ years.

A short walk away was my great grandfather's house. This was a truly amazing place to me. It was built in the later half of the 1800's and was a farm when it was built. My great grandfather was up there all alone, as my great grandmother had died before I was born. I would go up and visit him from time to time. He had really neat things like an old stereoscope. For those of you who don't know what that is, think Viewmaster. He had great old slides of scenery and famous places. Most of the rooms in that very large house had gone untouched for years. It was built to hold a family, and all of the help that it took to run a good sized farm.

On the property were several old barns and buildings. There was a collapsed silo with a small one room building attached. Inside that building was a machine, that to this day I have no idea what it did. It looked sort of like a washing machine, but that made no sense for it to be in there. There were also lots of neat bottles in there that I also do not know what they were for. I am guessing that all of this stuff had something to do with milk processing.

Up on the hill that the farm house was built, was a large stone structure in the middle of the field. It was square, about eight feet high, and fifteen feet square. It stepped in one foot, about half way up. The only entrance to this odd structure was a three foot square hole in the center of the roof, which was flat. You can imagine the ideas that a child's mind could think up as a purpose for this strange structure. Like a monolith, it jutted up from the horizon when I would stare out the back windows of my house.

Now I won't leave you in suspense of what this structure actually is. It used to have a regular roof on it, and was used as a water storage tank. There was a windmill down at the lake that would drive a pump. That pump would push the water up the hill and into the tank. From there it gravity fed to the house. It was pretty ingenious.

So this all brings me to my current interest. There are a bunch of wackos on the internet that think the same way as me!!! Can you imagine? I have found lots of great sites on abandoned asylums, ghost towns and other neat places. Some of them have pictures that are mind blowing. It is like they just all walked out and locked the doors. There are things still set up as if someone was still working there.

I am going to list a few of my favorite sites that I have found over the years. I hope you will find some interest in them as well.

www.kiddofspeed.com
I thought I would pu this one first, as we are two days away from the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. This website is done by a Russian girl that takes trips through the dead zone around Pripyat and the abandoned reactor. It is really interesting to see all of the Soviet era signs and pictures on the buildings. I just found this site the other day and really have enjoyed it.

www.mountainsanatorium.net/
This site is all about the Essex Mountain Sanitorium located in Verona, NJ. Actually, it was located there but has recently been demolished. The author of this site has some things they collected from the site before it was torn down and some good pics as well. This was one of the first sites that I found on the subject and continues to be one of my favorites. It looks creepy on the front page but is very interesting once you get into it.

www.danversstateinsaneasylum.com
A treasure in our own back yard. This is a site dedicated to the presevation of the Danvers State Insane Asylum in Danvers, MA. Danvers State Asylum had a movie filmed at it in the last few years called Session 9. I found it to be an interesting movie, worth a rental. The style of the building is called Kirkbride, named after the man who designed it. The shape of the building was supposed to promote healing. There were several built in this style, which from above looks like a giant bat. This site isn't as interesting as the previous two, but still is informational.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~asylums/mainpage.html
This page has a listing of several of the asylums in the US and their current state. It is a good launching point for finding other asylums.

http://rana--x.livejournal.com/
This is a blog from a girl named Rana-X. She has lots of great pictures of abandoned places around the US. I found this one recently and really like her pictures.

Check out these sites and see what you think. I am interested in the places, not for what they were, but why they were left the way they were.
Enjoy 'em