Long story about a Motorola found on an abandoned farm

[dr.ido]

I've also got a thing for old and abandoned buildings, although I haven't been in any interesting buildings lately. I've seen some interesting things, but unfortunately I don't have pictures of most of them. It's a subject that I can ramble on about a bit, so if this gets too long and too far off topic let me know and I'll edit it down.

I spent a lot of time in the old Nubrik brickworks/quarry. I found the site sometime around 1995. At that time the production had stopped long ago and most of the production equipment had been or was in the process of being removed, but the company was still using one of the office buildings on site so vandals hadn't gotten to it yet. Wandering around the site I was amazed by the scale of some the machinery. Also the contrast between the newer (80s) machines controlled by PLCs and the much older stuff with control cabinets stuffed with masses of relays, uniselectors and even tubes.

As far as TVs the whole site was littered with many late 70s 12" B&W portables. They had been modified with video inputs, but the modification was switchable so the tuner could still be used. They had been removed from a massive "mission control" console that was in pieces in the middle of one of the buildings. I guess the employees dismantling the machinery were watching them. By the time I returned to the site later with a camera the vandals had gotten to the place and this was the condition of what remained. They had also destroyed some rare and unusual computer equipment including an original HP-150 touchscreen. The site remained abandoned until 2003 or so as the masses of asbestos and contamination on the site had scared the developers away. Eventually the housing boom pushed prices high enough that a developer took a chance, but that failed when the houses they built started sinking into the big hole that was there.



I also spent some time in the old Waverly Park stadium that is now a housing development. Being the only person in a place that once held tens of thousands of people is a strange feeling. The only intact TV I found on site was a 14" Rank Arena portable that had been modified with a video input and an NTSC decoder in one of the commentary boxes. In hindsight I should have grabbed that set. Waverly park had a Stewart Warner video scoreboard that was installed in 1979. It could display a quarter of a video frame in 16 grey (well yellow/brown) levels on a screen made from 150W incandescent light bulbs. This was controlled by a dual redundant PDP-11/04 computers with a mass of custom electronics. The video gear had been removed from the control room when it was sold at auction, but the buyer left the PDP-11. Vandals had smashed the terminals and put a couple of dents in the cabinet, but those machines were built tough. After seeing other interesting machines meet an untimely end I decided to save this one. Getting it down from the 5th floor in pieces was hard work. It's in the hands of another collector now as it was too big for me to keep.



One day while wandering around the city I found someone had left the back door of the old Melbourne power station open. I couldn't find a way into the main generator room which was probably a good this as there was supposedly pretty extensive contamination in there, but I did check out the other building that housed the offices, a medical center, class rooms, a pool hall, and an auditorium among other things. Over the years it seems that building was used by many people for purposes unknown. Candles on the stairs, paper arrows on the walls to lead the way, messages written in the dust. There were several tube PA amplifiers there, but I had no way to remove them at the time and wasn't able to get back in later. This was shortly before the redevelopment started so security was much tighter the next time I was there. I hope someone managed to save them. I made it to the roof and this ancient elevator appeared to be still alive, but there was no way I was going to try it out.

[shrinkboy]

has anybody read 'The Road', by Cormac McCarthy?

[zenithfan1]

No, but please fill us in on the book. And thanks to all who shared their stories about this stuff, it fascinates me, keep 'em comin'. Long posts are always welcome in my threads. I like the way this thread is turning out. I am going out tomorrow or the next day to take pictures.

[240sx4u]

IMO put that TV back if your getting a weird vibe, and stay out of that house as well. Just doesn't sound good to me man. Take someone with you in case you fall or something happens next time. A phone won't help if your knocked out cold.

[zenith2134]

^ That might be good advice. Hard for me to say, not having been there with you.

Talking about abandoned equipment and whatnot keeps reminding me of the decrepit radar station at Camp Hero, Montauk, NY. Tons of old radar amplifiers, modulators, antennae, and god knows what else. One entire portion of the base, which is underground, appears to have been deliberately filled with water. Very creepy considering some of the alleged 'experiments' surrounding the place in the early 1980s...

[hifinotmy]

Great Thread!! Great stories!!! Almost every time I have seen abandon houses, farms & factories I get to wondering what went on and would love to walk thru them, but never had the time or the nerve!!! Thanks all!

[70salesguy]

The biggest thing keeping me out of abandoned houses is the knowledge that I probably don't look good in an orange jumpsuit!

[zenith2134]

Private homes are one thing as far as criminality, but when it comes to abandoned government facilities, military installations and the like, you better watch yourself for sure! THAT would be a scary time for a black Crown-Vic to roll up on ya.....

[bgadow]

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.

[Arkay]

I didn't realize so many other people were also fascinated with abandoned homes and buildings. I've been exploring them since I was a kid, and have been in dozens of them.

In Paradise Valley, Arizona, there was an old "printing house" sitting in the middle of empty acreage, not even near a road, abandoned for years after it was fire-damaged. Lots of fascinating bits of printed stuff there, along with some of the old machinery, but I watched it gradually disappear to looters before it was finally razed to build something else on the property.

Here in Hong Kong during the 1980s, the pace of redevelopment was hectic. There were always old colonial-era buildings being torn down for re-development into high-rise developments. I went through every one I could, dozens of places, and picked up (rescued/salvaged) plenty of "souvenirs", including carved blackwood furniture with marble insets, old pressed glass, a solid copper-and-brass fire extinguisher from the 1920s, some nice colored-glass windows, etc...

There are also ruins going back a few hundred years, partly overgrown. Perhaps the most fascinating place is a large Banyan tree in the New Territories area, that grew right over a house that dated back a couple centuries. The brickwork of the house mostly either eroded away or perhaps was taken for recycling, but the roots and lower trunk of the tree, still grasping brick sections and single bricks in places, form an almost perfect square. You can literally walk "inside the tree" --well, inside the lattice-like web of its root/trunk structure-- as if you were walking into a room. It must have taken a couple of centuries to grow like that!

The most dangerous experiences I've had exploring the old buildings here were two staircases that collapsed while I was on them. I "rode them down" as if surfing, with only very minor injuries, but it isn't an experience I'd ever recommend. VERY dangerous! In one case, there was old chemical glassware (so it probably had traces of acids, etc...) on the ground floor below, where the stairway collapsed. One very elaborate and huge distillation flask I was keen to take as a souvenir, but unfortunately it was smashed by the collapse. I've never seen another flask quite like it, and am still curious to know what it was used for!

One other time that was scary was a place where a major section of an upstairs floor had collapsed, leaving only a strip around the outer walls, about 4 to 6 feet wide. The whole floor had been coverd with decorative Victorian or Art-deco tile work, laid over a thin cement layer, atop a wooden beam-and-board floor. My guess is that the weight of the tiles and cement on top had become too much for the aging (and probably rain-weakened, since the roof was poor) wooden flooring, leading to the collapse.

The strips along the outer walls were the only way to get to some back rooms, so I walked along that slightly-spongy-feeling strip of floor, hugging the wall as the strongest part, just waiting for it all to collapse underneath me and send me plummeting down.

Fortunately, it held and I survived to tell the tale. STUPID thing to try, but I was into exploring these places then, and had the bravado (=stupidity!) of relative youth.

One place gave me a bad feeling, and a bad cough every time I went in there. There was a gorgeous carved wooden bureau there, which I managed to take home, but for weeks afterwards --as long as I had it in the apartment-- I continued to cough, until I decided it was carrying some disease germs. It sat in storage for a few years and eventually was shipped back to the States. Seems to have lost it's cough-causing power over the years, if there ever was any such connection.

That same place had a wonderful fancy old ceiling fan with ornate metal work and beautiful carved-wood blades, with ruby cut-crystal lamp globes suspended below. Probably the most elaborate yet beautiful ceiling fan I've ever seen. It looked like something one would have seen in a circa 190X high-class Parisian salon (or perhaps bordello...) I managed to get it down and bring it home safely, too. In that same building (a high-end place with several apartments in it), just a day or two before I was first there, someone (unfortunately not me) found a large cache of mostly silver coins. Wish I'd found that! (Although I did get a smaller cache of silver coins from another place, later. A friend who was working in the demolition company found that and passed it to me. He is since deceased, so I keep it in his memory. Not really worth much monetarily, but worth something nostalgically.)

[zenithfan1]

Originally Posted by 240sx4u

IMO put that TV back if your getting a weird vibe, and stay out of that house as well. Just doesn't sound good to me man. Take someone with you in case you fall or something happens next time. A phone won't help if your knocked out cold.

Good point, as much as I want to save the set, I don't need any more bad energies around me. Not to derail the thread but I have had so many run ins with that sort of thing that it is just not cool anymore. In fact, I think I may start a thread in the off topic forums on the subject. I could post stories for days, all still very fresh in my memory. I can still see all the things that happened like it was yesterday, they made quite an impression. Believe me or not, but I don't make this stuff up. I don't have to. I'm going to bring it back and put it in the living room, it will be better off there instead of upstairs, that and I'm not carrying it back up there. You will understand when you see the pics. This will be the last time I go there. NOTHING like this has left such an impression on me since I was a kid. This will be with me for a while, it's hard to put into words the feeling I have and the sadness at that house. I do believe I was being observed there like Sandy G. said in his post earlier. I know all this stuff is crap to some people but I go with what I have experienced, call me a kook or whatever. There are things in this world beyond the physical exterior.

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by zenithfan1

Good point, as much as I want to save the set, I don't need any more bad energies around me.

Similar to this TV set?

[zenithfan1]

I know I'm nuts but this time I'm bringing my Mag light to see what's in the second half of the basement or crawl space, I really couldn't see before and I wasn't going in the dark. The first half seems to be an addition ( the kitchen ) The older part is all stone, I would date the house at around 1900. I'll take pictures down there too if something don't eat me. If I don't post anything else in a few days, come look for me. No one I know has the balls (or stupidity) to go with me to these places, that's why I've always done it alone.

It was really spooky looking out the front windows on the porch, the only ones with glass pretty much. Just looking at the cars going by thinking, what the hell is behind me??, it was like someone was hovering over my shoulder looking with me, maybe my imagination but I don't know...... I really wish one of you guys could come out there with me. Any takers????

[zenithfan1]

Originally Posted by wa2ise

Similar to this TV set?

Yep, just not a Sony

[qboneus]

Want creepy; make your skin crawl try exploring minesites!

Approximately 4915 abandoned hardrock mines exist in Montana by 'official' numbers

I only wish at the time, when I was more adventerous, I had a camera to document and share some of the 'findings'

I never took or picked-up anything that I didn't come in with though with good reason in these areas...


my great-grandfather blew 2 fingers off as a child living in red lodge Mt when he found a blasting cap laying on a rr track set by a mine and picked it up to play with it
That was 80+ years ago; imagine how unstable dynamite can become by aging and sweating in un-controlled environment for an additional 80 years or so....

some with larger cause to be concerned about 'energies' than others
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Mine_disaster
positively CREEPY atmosphere!

If you like abandoned industrial sites mines are if you are crazy enough, know what you are doing, and careful enough..
tal