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Very good reading! Some great mental images. Well, I love abandoned places, too, but have always been too chicken to explore much. Or maybe just too "goody-two-shoes" to trespass? The places I have nosed around made me very nervous, and there was no reason to be-they were owned by people I knew (if distantly.)
When I was kid I got to know the farm behind us pretty well. There was the remnants of a road in the woods, you could just make it out in a couple spots, and there were trash piles along it dating from the thirties through the sixties. I found lots of great bottles back there, and let my imagination run wild about the people who lived in the old brick farmhouse. It was abandoned then-a couple times I wandered over. I could never get inside the house itself, though an old addition on the back had a wall that was failing-I could nearly squeeze in there. The basement was open, though. I found some Newsweek magazines from the 70s and a wrapper for an AMC car part. One day the owner (a farmer who lived just down the street) came up the long drive while I was there...I didn't want to run, but I sure did walk home fast! Again, I'm sure he wouldn't have cared. Funny that I didn't get spooked more-get this: the house is now restored, I know the present owner fairly well. He has researched it quite a bit. One of the oldest houses around, and it was a stopping point on the Underground Railroad!
When I was maybe 12 years old I was out riding with my Dad & one of his friends. I think they were scouting out a place to goose hunt? So they go up this driveway through a woods; to the left were the remains of what had been a large old house, nothing left but the basement. (it had been burnt) We then went in this small building to the right, probably a milk house or some such, and inside were several rolls of Scott toilet tissue that looked to be from the 40s! I didn't get them, but I did get the stack of late-40s magazines next to them-mostly Time. Then we went in this big barn; scary to me at the time because he stairs were not sturdy, but up we went. There were 2 very unusual things upstairs. One, and it still baffles me: it looked like a gallows! Maybe 16' tall or more, with a rope hanging from the highest point, and something in a noose that was ragged and looked about the size of, well, a head! My Dad & his buddy didn't seem to concerned with it. The other thing up there was a very, very long canoe! No idea how it got up there. Later we were looking through the magazines and in one there was an article on the Harvard (?) rowing team, showing the guys in a similiar boat. So, maybe one of the team was the son of the farmer? All gone now, another housing development.
Story I've related before: my great-grandparents lived in another one of the oldest houses around here, from the 1870s I think. He died in the early 60s and she died in '71, right before I was born. The house was inherited by their oldest daughter. While I have always lived near the place I never knew much about it. Finally, just prior to my great aunts death, one of my cousins bought the place. That was when I learned that all those years that house had sat, basically abandoned-and basically the way it was the day my great grandmother died. A few momentos and such had been removed, and and another relative had stored some furniture in there. But-her clothes were still in the closet, the food she had canned was still on the shelf (now ruined, of course), their 1951 RCA TV was still sitting there. It was said that my great aunt sensed her parents spirit in the house, and did not want it disturbed. And so it wasn't. I would not say I felt any eerie feeling when I finally did tour the place-it was more of a magical feeling, just an excitement of being in the middle of this time capsule.
I'll have to think of some other tales to tell, when I get time.
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Bryan
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