I have read that it is natural to feel a little uneasy around abandoned buildings, as our instincts promote an awareness of potential danger: why was this place, which was once considered safe to inhabit, left vacant and to rot?
This house, putrefying untended into the blackberry ensnared, voracious ground, is but a short traipse back into the woods from my own, sunny, well-kempt home. Visiting the overgrown, trash strewn lot with my daughter, I felt a sense of unease. Then she suggested we enter. My mind said “rusty nails! wild animals! meth-head vagrants!” and farther back but perhaps more shrill: “ghosts!” Yeah, and I call myself a rationalist.
Coaxed inside to tread the carpet of broken glass, to view the dry toilet bowl encrusted with chunky filth, the water stained, bowing ceilings, the gaping, rusty appliances, bits of trash, that subtle yet overwhelming smell of decay, I never quite got over the initial uneasiness but it slackened enough that I knew I wanted to come back with my camera – and so I did.
During the second visit I relaxed further and thus noticed more but I was still a little creeped out – particularly by the fading signs of children having lived here: on the wall of a crumbling bedroom with mattress still extant, crude scrawlings of an elephant, a girl (?) with a horse, the words “Mommy is a dumbhead.”
The lighting was not good and we didn’t stay long, so I hope to get back again, preferably at more photogenic times of the day,though the thought of poking about here during dusk is not necessarily all that attractive …
Boo.
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