• Tagged abandoned, abandoned asylum, abandoned DC, abandoned Forest Haven asylum, abandoned schools, Forest Haven, urban exploration, urban explorers, urbex

Once upon a time, the story of Forest Haven was happy and hopeful because the state-of-the-art D.C. Training School would help developmentally and mentally handicapped children and adults learn skills to help them survive in the real world instead of being institutionalized. That was 1925; the Forest Haven facilities grew to a compound with over 22 buildings spread over 250 acres. By 1991, the story of Forest Haven was a heartbreaking horror story as hundreds of residents died of abuse and neglect before the U.S. Justice Department forced the District of Columbia institution closed. “What we have here are quiet little murders,” explained a Justice Department expert witness in a 1994 article. “They’re killed one day at a time because people don’t pay attention and then no one finds out the real cause of death.” Before everything was said and done, Forest Haven ended up being one of the worst cases of criminal institutional abuse that the U.S. has ever seen. Oh the sickeningly sad stories the walls would tell you if only they could. Now, over 20 years later, this is the abandoned Forest Haven asylum. [44 Photos]

• Tagged A Good Day to Die Hard, abandoned amusement park, abandoned ghost town, adrenaline rush, Chernobyl, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant., disaster, ghost town, nuclear power plant disaster, Pripyat, Red Forest, reverse ecotourism, Ukraine, urban exploration, urbex

The Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster happened 27 years ago on April 26, 1986. After the explosion, a radius of 18.6 miles (30 km) was setup as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. That “zone of alienation” is becoming more frequently seen in popular culture; it was seen in the 2013 film A Good Day to Die Hard, in the 2012 Chernobyl Diaries and also in the 2011 movie Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The area is featured in hundreds of documentaries and even early on in the 1998 film Godzilla as a researcher studies the mutational effects of radiation on native earthworms. It’s the nightmare setting for several video games. Although urban explorers have been coming to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for years, Ukrainian officials opened the zone for tourists with “special permission” in 2011. Whether you call it reverse eco-tourism, terror tourism, or an adrenaline rush urban exploration, it would undoubtedly be surreal to experience. Some claim it’s haunted, while others think it’s a dream setting for playing a zombie apocalypse-like paintball gun war. Thanks to those that were brave enough to take up their cameras and Geiger counters, we can take a virtual tour of the Exclusion Zone. It includes Prypiat, Prypiat amusement park, Polissya hotel, the Red Forest and more places stuck in time as everyone was evacuated with no time to pack. This is what visiting the Chernobyl disaster after almost 27 years looks like, since criteria for this photo essay included being creative commons photos taken as recently as possible with as many different radioactive areas as possible. Enjoy!
[69 Photos, 8 Videos]

• Tagged abandoned, Battleship Island, Ghost Island, Gunkanjima, hacking headquarters of a 007 villain, Hashima, Hashima Island, James Bond, lost city, Skyfall, urban exploration, urbex

This abandoned island with crumbling concrete buildings was the inspiration for the evil dude’s hacking headquarters in the latest James Bond movie Skyfall. Yes, hacking, cyberwar and an abandoned island city are all parts of ‘Skyfall. It was too dangerous here to truly film the secret lair of a 007 villain, so it was reproduced to “make everything real.” Hashima Island, also called Gunkanjima meaning Battleship Island, is Japan’s ultimate industrial ruins ghost town. The island was bought by Mitsubishi in 1890 to mine undersea coal. It was the first place that Japan built large concrete buildings up to 9 stories high, and was constructed to withstand the destructive forces of a typhoon. The island at one point had a population of 5,259, but that did not last. 39 years after it was abandoned virtually overnight, time and nature are winning the battle. Considered creepy by some with all the trappings of home but no people, some folks started to call the abandoned island, ‘Ghost Island.’ Folks interested in history or legal urbex are pleased that portions of Hashima reopened to tourists in 2009. This is the first ‘lost city’ in modern times and with the James Bond movie Skyfall, the infamous island has become even more famous. [35 Photos, 3 Videos]

• Tagged abandoned, abandoned amusement park, abandoned asylum, abandoned hospital, abandoned manor house, abandoned prison, abandoned sanitorium, abandoned theme park, adrenaline junkies, adrenaline rush, Andre Govia, art, creepy, creepy dolls, Europe, feature, Halloween, haunted, haunted house, holiday, scary, spooky, urban exploration, urban explorers, urbex, urbexing photography

Urbex guru Andre Govia has an uncanny ability to take the most amazingly beautiful photos of creepy abandoned places. If you like abandoned, creepy, spooky, scary or haunted, then you could disappear for hours into Andre’s photostream. He’s a master of capturing hauntingly beautiful shots of abandoned mansions, hospitals, asylums, industrial complexes, hotels and about anything else you can imagine that might be abandoned across Europe. Andre Govia is on an urbex European madness tour; the fear factor is off the charts and some of the photos could scare the snot out of you. He’s been urbexing all over the globe and in 22 different countries. He and his adrenaline junkie buddies have Fright Night down to a fine art, exploring places caught in a time-warp, locations where history is frozen in time, and capturing ghosts of the past. Interesting at any time, it’s downright spooky to view his artistic photos around Halloween. Be ready to take a trip through some of the creepy, haunted locations. Andre granted Love These Pics an interview and offers tips for urban explorers and secrets to get the killer shots. His photos offer something for everyone, from elegant and hauntingly beautiful, to a scare factor that is the stuff of nightmares. Meet Andre Govia. We love these pics! [47 Photos, 1 Video]

• Tagged abandoned, abandoned Emge Food Processing Plant, abandoned Indiana, abandoned slaughterhouse, adrenaline rush, decay, demolition, Emge Foods, Fort Branch, urban exploration, urbex, urbex Emge

Emge Foods Plant in Fort Branch, Indiana, is listed as “Emge Foods Plant: Tourists’ most wanted hotspots on Google Maps …” on Wikimapia. I was looking for urban decay, but discovered a previously burned and partially demolished Emge Food Processing Plant where an adventure included a little climbing and even a bit of caving . . . urban exploration is after-all a type of ‘extreme sport‘ and adrenaline rush. On Memorial Day, when it seemed most unlikely anyone would pay double-time for a security guard, a trip for an urbex adventure sounded fun. Once I got there, come to find out, it’s in the midst of being demolished. Just the same, I’d made the trip so little things like ‘no trespassing,’ security cameras and danger zone weren’t going to stop me. I spent the next three hours inside the place, armed with my camera, probably the very last urban explorer to go inside. I’ve done a lot of adrenaline rush adventures and urban explorations, but nothing abandoned, burned, flooded, and a pile of wreckage being demolished. It caught fire yet again a few short days after this trip. It smelled terrible in spots, old burned asbestos, and then stagnate flooded areas down below. Fairly treacherous. Good times. Had fun and wanted to share the abandoned slaughterhouse tour. [72 Photos]

• Tagged abandoned, adrenaline rush, architecture, art, bizarre, film location, ghost hunts, haunted, paranormal, paranormal phenomena, people, phenomenon, senior citizens, urban exploration, urbex

How do you tell grandma or grandpa that you love them? Certainly not by putting them in a formerly abandoned and haunted hospital! Facepalm, you’ve got to be kidding me? That is just so wrong in so many different ways! The six-story Linda Vista Community Hospital, which has been abandoned since 1991, is an infamous Hollywood favorite for filming super scary movies. It also has a notorious reputation for all kinds of paranormal phenomena. After some serious renovations, the supposedly haunted hospital will be revamped into about 100 single-bedroom ‘affordable housing’ apartments — Linda Vista Senior Apartments. Do you still dispute it’s haunted after viewing the 70 photos and 5 paranormal investigation videos as ‘proof’? Even skeptics, would you want your grandma to live anywhere within the top 5 floors of these future senior living apartments? About 42% of the U.S. population admits to believing in ghosts and the decaying and creepy hospital is a hotspot for urban explorers, paranormal investigators and the curious in Los Angeles. And then there’s all those animal sacrifices and allegedly satanic rituals which leave some people asking does the devil live inside Linda Vista Hospital?

While HDR sparked epic complaints on the illegal Six Flags tour, it is an art that we especially appreciate when it comes to enhancing extremely eerie, abandoned places . . . especially ‘haunted hospitals.’ If you’d rather see an abandoned place without HDR, here is Nara Dreamland, a derelict knock-off Disneyland in Japan. Otherwise, photographers, paranormal investigators and urban explorers take us on an urbex tour of this creepy ‘haunted’ hospital. Welcome to Linda Vista, future housing for grandpa and grandma. [70 photos and 5 paranormal investigation videos]

• Tagged abandoned, abandoned amusement park, abandoned theme park, adrenaline rush, architecture, art, defunct amusement park, haikyo, Japan, Nara Dreamland, ruins, transportation, urban exploration, urban explorers, urbex

In Japan, an amusement park ripping off Disneyland and Coney Island opened in 1961. By 2006, the theme park closed, it was all but a ghost town. The fun part exists due to Nara Dreamland being left abandoned but not demolished. Enter urban explorers armed with cameras and exploring the Japanese ruins, or haikyo. They took all the danger and adrenaline rush to bring us on an illegal tour via their awesome captures. Yes there is security. Yes it is illegal. Yes it is an abandoned amusement park. We love these pics! [65 Photos]

• Tagged abandoned, abandoned military, abandoned NSA listening post, abandoned spy station, architecture, Berlin, bizarre, Devil's Mountain, Germany, NSA, Teufelsberg, urban exploration

Once upon a time, or during the Cold War, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) built a man-made mountain of rubble over the top of an underground Nazi technical college in Berlin. This massive hill was called Devil’s Mountain, or Teufelsberg in German. It was on Devil’s Mountain where the NSA built one of the largest and highly classified Listening Stations in the world to eavesdrop and spy, intercepting Soviet, East German and other countries’ communications. This NSA Listening Station of Radar Domes on “The Hill,” was rumored to be a part of the global ECHELON intelligence gathering network. Other rumors include tunnels beneath the spy complex and yet others suggesting that by 1954, 1,200 calls could be recorded simultaneously, filling up more than 50,000 reel tapes, so that hundreds of tape recorders were installed, the better to hear and record you with my dears. The station continued to operate until the fall of East Germany and the Berlin Wall. Yet after the station was closed, abandoned, and the equipment removed, the derelict buildings and radar domes still remained. This was too much temptation to urban explorers, especially since the elevation of Teufelsberg is 377 feet, and the former NSA Listening Station is over 262 feet high, offering the best views overlooking Berlin. Here’s a urban exploration look at Devil’s Mountain; the once highly classified, now highly vandalized NSA radar domes at Teufelsberg. On this trail of spies during this armchair tour of abandoned NSA listening station in Berlin, remember a little intelligence motto: In God we trust; all others we monitor. [44 photos]

• Tagged abandoned, abandoned amusement park, abandoned New Orleans, Big Easy, defunct amusement park, disaster, graffiti, jazzland, Katrina, New Orleans, photos, pics, pictures, places, Six Flags New Orleans, travel, urban exploration

Like little kids, we all experience a happy rush, a delighted thrill, when going to play at an amusement park. Yet when an amusement park is abandoned and an eerie silence settles over the rusty and crusty decay, the setting seems to twist the atmosphere of enthusiastic excitement into a suffocating blanket of dread. The place takes on creepy vibes and freaks people out. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and ripped the heart of fun and the amusement out of this park. Almost six years later, Six Flags in New Orleans is unnaturally silent, no lines and no laughter. This 140-acre surreal setting has morphed into a nightmarish land of twisted dreams. It seems as if the post-apocalyptic atmosphere might be the perfect place to make a zombie movie. As if lured by a distant echo of scattered screams and the ghost of good times, urban explorers venture out of curiosity and capture the moments and crumbling scenes. They share with us in a virtual urban exploration tour of this creepy abandoned amusement park – Six Flags New Orleans. Most of these photos are very recent, as in taken during 2011, nearly six years after Hurricane Katrina tried to swallow New Orleans and Six Flags. A special thank you to the urban explorers who risked arrest, and possible zombie attack, to go in and shoot these current shots of Six Flags, and then gave us permission to use their copyright photos. This is about twice the size of a normal post here, so we hope you really enjoy this virtual urban exploration tour into the defunct amusement park Six Flags New Orleans. [75 Photos]