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Edit : thanks for all the upvotes, I’m new to Reddit and this is a great start for me.
#3
Me and my cousin went to check out a former U.S. Army Base in my hometown. First we saw a couple making out/having intimate time (not sure which one really) and tried to politely notify them that they weren't alone to which they didn't respond.
Later when it got darker, though, we kept hearing footsteps that stopped whenever we stopped to listen for them. When we started walking faster they did too, so we went full sprint and somehow ended up on the roof of that complex. When we looked into courtyard area we saw a group of younger kids emerge from a building and realized we were just scaring ourselves really.
We had a nice chat, both parties trying act as if they weren't scared shitless just a few minutes ago, and we showed them how to get onto the roof.
Oh also: There was a Burger King there and the kitchen was basically still fully intact, just no power. There were still burgers on the grill and they didn't really look much different from how they look when you eat them. I didn't eat at BK for a while after that...
If you think the Urban Explorers movement (often shortened to simply Urbex) is something new, born of the entertainment-saturated 21st century, you’re definitely mistaken. Firstly, people have always enjoyed exploring ancient abandoned buildings, houses, and dungeons. True, the original purpose of such expeditions was solely for enrichment.
For example, tomb raiding was trendy long before Lara Croft and Indiana Jones. Here’s further proof: literally all the tombs of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, both in the pyramids and underground, were plundered long before the advent of modern archaeology.
Incidentally, this is precisely why the discovery of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun at the beginning of the last century caused such a sensation in the scientific world. The fact is that this tomb has remained untouched since ancient times.
Well, this is largely because Tutankhamun, by historical standards, was a rather insignificant figure compared to other pharaohs. But now he is famous worldwide, over 3K years after leaving for the Hereafter.
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I wasn't actually creeped out until the girl i was with tried talking me into having intimate relations there.
#6
The creepiest thing is when we went back 2 years later, the box was gone.
One of the first reliably known “urban explorers” is the Frenchman Philibert Asper. In 1793, while serving as a porter at a Parisian hospital, he ventured into the catacombs beneath the city and never returned. His skeleton was discovered only eleven years ago, and was identified only by a set of keys.
Despite cynics believing that Asper’s true destination was merely the wine cellars, he is now considered a legend of sorts. About a hundred years ago, representatives of the French Dadaist art movement, aiming to combat “bourgeois” art and lifestyle, organized tours of the Paris catacombs.
The purpose of these tours was not so much to make money as to fray their nerves and create a kind of cynical parody of traditional tourism. However, the concept caught on and remains quite popular today.
#7
1: we pull up to this really old looking place. In the middle of nowhere, door is unlocked but something is blocking it. So we go around to the back and I kick the door in. First thing I do is go move the dresser in front of the front door so we can get out easier. Then take stock of the place. It's a trashed out mess. Animal droppings cover about 40% of the floor. And about 20% of what's left of the floor has caved in to the basement. So we start to look around, and at this point we put the masks on because the air is foul and dusty. We walk into what used to be a living room and we both begin to laugh for a long time. Because in the living room, smack dab in the middle, is a toilet, with a fake flower next to it, sticking out of an old coffee tin. And its facing an old dinosaur of a tv sitting on top of a 5 gallon bucket. It was such a weirdly peaceful set up. TV didnt work or anything, but it was the quaint little scene and it was funny.
2: this is the scary one. Different day, different house. Pull up and theres a small gate. But we dont even hop it, because just the look of this place is freaky af. I dont normally freak out if something looks scary but this is different. The front yard was full of garbage, stacked about 5 feet high. The house was this disgusting old orange color. But just looked freaky asf. I cant really describe it, but I promise you, just the sight of this house had me sweating. And I've seen and been in some scary houses. I take out my little mini 10 dollar drone with a gopro duck taped to it. Fly it around a bit around the house and bring it back. Return to the laptop in my car and watch the footage. House is freaky. But then I realized the garbage and old furniture in the front yard is arranged into a giant cross which was so large you could only see from above. We noped out of there real quick. As the feeling of being watched was eating away at our nerves. We got back in the car, deleted every picture we took and the gopro video and havent even gone within 10 miles of it since.
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In the 1990s, Canadian Jeff Chapman, known as “Ninjalicious,” founded what is now known as Urbex. His journal, “Infiltration,” in which Chapman chronicled his travels through Toronto’s “shadowy side,” including forays into hotels, abandoned factories, and tunnels, also became legendary.
Incidentally, it was Chapman who formulated the unspoken code of the Urban Explorers movement, the core principle of which is: “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.” After all, beyond aesthetic considerations, the various strange things you might find in abandoned places can prove dangerous.
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I looked up some info on the name that was on the signs, and found out that one of the people running had accused the other candidate of having someone pull up all her signs...but they never had any proof.
I looked up who owned the land that the house was on, and it was the other candidates brother.
Basically...I solved a nearly two decade old case of election fraud ( or whatever it was, it was a huge deal in the news back then) and couldn't tell anyone because I was a dumb kid that was trespassing.
#12
We were walking into them and I get about 3 steps from the first corner when I hear movement that couldn't have been an animal. It sounded like a person standing up or walking or something. I turned around and just walked out, so my friends followed me.
Side note: I usually carry a knife on me just to be safe, but I had forgotten it that night, so I had no way to protect myself.
For example, consider the forays into the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant exclusion zone, which became quite popular in Europe at the beginning of this century. To be honest, I visited there once myself, and I only have a couple dozen rather creepy film photographs to prove it.
There, in the abandoned houses in the villages around Chornobyl, there were many different “souvenirs,” but it’s best not to take them with you, as they could still contain traces of radioactive contamination. Even though more than a quarter-century had passed since the disaster at the time… So all that remains of these trips are photos and, of course, stories.
#13
So there's this old house in the middle of a field, near a nice town. My best friend at the time said that she had seen "weird things happen in there", and she made it sound as if it was a ghost. I was pretty surprised, she had never had interest on creepy stuff and now she was encouraging me to go with her so we could explore the house. I agreed, not because I wanted to go (it was kinda hard to get there, and I was feeling pretty lazy), but because I didn't want a 9-10 year old girl go by herself to an abandoned house. I grabbed a light and headed to the house with her.
There was tall grass, rocks and trash on our way there. I was getting nervous because if we had to run away it'd be impossible for us to get out faster than a grown person.
We finally get to the house and walk in. We find nothing but trash and dusty furniture, until my friend walks into a seemingly locked room and starts crying/screaming. I bolt down the hallway to her and find 3 to 5 unalived dogs. Like, large to medium sized dogs.
Needless to say I was so scared and shocked I peed myself. We ran away crying hard.
And that's why, kids, you always keep an eye on your children, so they don't do stupid stuff like we did.
#14
Even the owner of the joiners shop, in his 80's, had no idea as to its history ... He did say that the businesses was once also a funeral directors.
It gave me quite a shock, as I was around 8 years old. Regards. H.
#15
The stations in the east weren't operating, they had just been boarded up to stop people from using them as an escape to the west. The trains didn't stop there, they just slowed down. There was barely any lighting in the stations, most of it really was just lit up from the train. Those stations basically had been abandoned, so the architecture and everything was unchanged from WWII times. It looked really eerie and creepy. Like stepping back in time.
The development of modern civilization, especially the trend toward deindustrialization, which sometimes leaves huge factory buildings abandoned, has created a vast field for urban explorers. Simply search the internet and find something truly exciting and bone-chilling.
“I search the internet and try to make a nice list of possible locations, because when you do urban exploring, you never know if you [can] get in, get inside,” National Geographic quotes veteran urban explorer Bob Thissen. “It may already be demolished, it may be reconverted, or secured so you can’t get in.”
Every urban explorer has a wealth of stories to tell, but some of them would rather stay secret. Because, to paraphrase Forrest Gump’s mom, any abandoned object is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
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For me the creepiest or scariest moment must be when I found a little room full of candles, cellophane paper, cigarettes, needles, spoons etc.
It made me kinda KNEW I shouldn't be there.
Luckily, i was with my boyfriend so we bolted out of the place, but we weren't alone in the building.
As we were heading for the stairs, I see to my right a bunch of people in a room just sitting, (chilling i guess? thinking afterwards, that was probably what they were doing)
but after what kind of room we just saw we just ran off the stairs out of the building.
We kinda got followed with screams and yells but thank god nobody got actually near.
edit: another story:
also, in the basement of that building was one (1) room full of kids toys.
which was definitely creepy.
The basement also flooded one time, (floor to ceiling was like 4-5 meters high, literally the whole floor to ceiling was under water, it even got to the stairs to the ground/first floor)
so every toy that was in that room eventually got over the whole basement floor because of the water. it looked kinda unsettling.
I can’t call myself an avid urban explorer – after all, I’ve only dedicated a couple of years of my life to this pursuit, and only made a few dozen different forays. But reading this collection of stories, I was reminded of long-forgotten sensations, the sound of my footsteps echoing through the vaults of empty buildings, and the anticipation of something unexpected around the corner.
So now, our dear readers, please feel free to read these stories as well, and maybe share your own in the comments below this list. After all, great stories are what make our lives more interesting and exciting.
#19
As I walked up the stairs, I turned to make sure my brother made it over and when I turned back around, I almost went face first into a skeleton of a large bird hanging by a string in the stairway. It startled me but mostly I thought it was odd. When I reached the top of the stairs, I looked around the large dark empty room only to realize it wasn't empty; the floor was completely covered with small bones. We heard something downstairs so we went to the only window of the room and looked down onto the garage roof. We didn't want to go back the way we came so we jumped out the window, grabbed our rod/reels and ran off.
To this day my brother swears he looked back and saw an old woman in that window watching us run away.
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