11 years ago today I almost ran into an escaping mental patient

11 years ago today, at roughly this time, I was doing my thing, exploring the empty and rotting buildings of a semi-abandoned psychiatric facility. The old buildings were in dis-use, and newer facilities had been been nearby, Many were crumbling, some were just … old. We used red headlamps so we could see and not be easily noticed by anyone passing by.

Me and my friend explored for hours and went home. Nothing unusual happened. We saw no one, heard no one, heard nothing out of the ordinary. The next day my friend calls me. “Have you seen today’s newspaper?” “No.” “read the local section.”

HOLY SHIT.

I’m bothered on several levels. 1) I could’ve run into this person and had a Michael Myers moment (In fact the new film seems very similar to what happened here) or 2) I could’ve run into security looking for this woman and I don’t think that would’ve gone well.

She was captured overnight at her boyfriends house. Not the boyfriend she tried to kill. A new boyfriend. I wonder if he knew about how she and her previous boyfriend broke up.

But wait, there’s more. This guy escaped just 4 days earlier! I literally never knew about it until today when I went looking for these stories to post this.

Me: Maybe I should rethink my hobbies.
GF: //tilts head//
Me: Nah.

video inside abandoned mines

journey into abandoned Vernon mines with Dan Lopez

Three Stooges Headstone in Edison

 

This headstone is found in Hillside Cemetery in Edison

lightroom recomendations

finally picked up Lightroom and Im learning the  ropes. Im hoping to be posting some more pictures and stories later this summer. Life gets in the way and although Ive been getting out there, I haven’t posted much because I haven’t had time to edit them properly.  Ive got quite the backlog of things to share. On the subject of Lightroom, if anyone has any good presets for urban exploration photos or landscape photos, please share them.

The Vass Homestead

Located alongside White Lake in Hardwick is the old Vass Homestead. Born Johann Wass, he emigrated to America in 1764 and changed his name to Vass. One of the first settlers in the area he ran a successful farm, and his sons established a business selling ice taken from White Lake, and mining the shells from the bottom of the lake and crushing them for use inf fertilizer and cement.

The farm house has been preserved, the other buildings on the property, not so good a shape. You can read more about the man and the property at this website.

More pictures

Jans Bungalows

I was driving along a main road in Ulster County when I saw this and had to stop. Its about 8-9 bungalowes, clearly abandoned. Wellllll…..not abandoned, not in use is the right term. There were two houses obviously lived in so I shot some pictures over the fence and then i noticed an antique store/junk shop right next door. I stopped in andf asked the owner if he knew what that was about.

Told me he was Jan and that was his place. He had ran it for 30 years and then Irene put 3 feet of water into every bungalow. Insurance didn’t cover any of it so he gave up. Thats when he decided to open th store. I bet if I had asked he would’ve let us walk around but I was satisfied with the over the fence shots. Didn’t think it was right to ask him.

Link to all the pics

Tamarack Lodge

Sitting on 400 acres, the Tamarack lodge was built inthe early 1900s as a simple boarding house and was expanded in 1927. At its peak it would have 300 rooms and the resort had all the activities one would expect from a retreat in the Borscht Belt of Ulster County, NY. The location primarily catered to jewish familes and provided popular entertainment of the day, which in the 60s meant Cream, the Who and Janis Joplin.

There was a massive fire in 1995 which effectively shuttered the resort.It remained functionmal till 2000 when the health dept closed them down. the property sat unused for a decade until another fire broke out destroying 30 buildings in 2012.

Now there is very little left. There are only 3 primary buildings left along with some sort of storage building and a half dozen bungalows at the back of the property. the main building floors are extremely unstable and the rar building has had a partial collapse of the roof.

You can see pictures of it before the fire at this site.

http://abandonedhudsonvalley.com/tamarack-lodge/

Unnamed research facility

i would love to tell the story behind this place but doing so would reveal its location. its a nice find and although there is some graffiti its pretty untouched and I wanna keep it that way. Plus its highly visible and highly illegal. All ill say is that it used to be a farm and later became a research lab.

all the Flickr pictures

abandoned NJT engines on the old DL&W rail line

The Delaware, Lackwanna and Western rail lines that services from morris county thru Sussex County and into PA were closed down years ago. the rail lines coming up from the east diverged into two lines in Landing. the line that went west into Warren County remains active, but the other line was shut down. You can walk the trail 30 miles from Landing all the way to the Paulsinkill Viaduct which crosses the Delaware. Some time in 2010 NJT pretty much abandoned 29 apparently functional engines along the line somewhere (location not disclosed). They’ve been completely sealed up, except for one train which someone pried open. Along the way to them i found an old stone rail building. its completely sealed up and unless one has a blow torch, access isn’t possible.

more details on the history of the line closer from wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware,_Lackawanna_and_Western_Railroad

All the pics on Flickr

Bats Future Looks Bleak

According to this article efforts to save the little brown bat in NJ is pretty much a lost cause. They’ve lost 95% of their population since 2009 to the white-nose syndrome. I remember visiting the Bat Hibernaculum in Morris County about 7-8 years ago and it was amazing watching them swarm in (or out)… now you wouldn’t see that, they’re just not there.