Kings Among Runaways

While I was in Zuccotti Park, I got an admittedly very unexpected call from one of the people I'd desperately tried messaging through the night, Yossi from Urban Odyssey, who was completely interested in spending a weekend at Kings Park! So we met in Brooklyn, waited a few hours for people we hoped might show up, and took the ride out there on the Long Island Railroad. Getting in was easier than we expected, with open doors on a building right in a state park! I felt right at home among the peeling paint, and thoroughly amazed to be in…

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Fuck It, We’ll Do It Live

Sunday was a day I honestly thought would never come, especially after the fuckery in Poughkeepsie -- my first time in a real abandoned mental asylum. Not just Rochester psych, half of which wasn't even built until the 60s, and the other building which I only saw by permission, but a real explore, a respectable location, and as an added bonus, even a working camera! Willard was actually the third asylum we tried that day, after abject failures at Rochester and Newark, and it seemed I would do anything possible to make it three in a row. I barely had…

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Scrap Pile Hospital

This was one of the few places in the Albany area I'd researched, and the only one any local explorers would help me out finding. As you might expect, it sucked. Genesee hospital was torn to shit, but this one, Seton Hospital, took it to an entirely new level. Anything of any value was missing, anything that could be smashed was, and most surfaces that would hold paint, were covered in graffiti. Making matters worse, it was a cold, rainy, February morning, an unphotogenic day for a downright ugly hospital, and I was dragging around a pounding hangover from round…

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Cabinet Position

I usually try to stay away from going back to the same place over and over again, but when a new one appears and it's this easy to get to, it inevitably happens... in the past two weeks I've been in this damn hospital four times. Ordinarily every time I explore gets its own page, but that would just get too repetitious, so here goes... TRIP 1 - January 31 I didn't think I'd even bother to go that night, one of my friends was taking his pledge class into the creepy old hospital. Now, these places don't get haunted…

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These Hollowed Halls

Nothing too exciting, but it seems like forever since I've been exploring. Just another trip to old rotten Iola, that gets just that much older and rotten-er every year... and always manages to escape the next threat of demolition Someone tore down the centerpiece of the Map Room. If I had any way to bring it home it would probably be on my wall now! It's off...

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Flying Fish Hospital

Genesee Hospital closed in 2000, and most of it was either demolished into a vacant lot, or renovated into offices, medical and otherwise. One building in between escaped either fate, and is sitting there wide open. It seems there was some effort to scrap and demolish it already, as almost all signs of being a hospital are gone, but for the time being it's still that rarity of an accessible new building right in Rochester. At some point I need to go back here during the day but it just gets dark too damn early here... This "tunnel" is on…

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