10: Abandoned Cold War Shelter The Cold War between the United States and
the then Soviet Union was in full swing during the 1960s, and in 1961, President John F.
Kennedy told American citizens to take steps to prepare themselves for a potential nuclear
war.
One of the solutions to the nuclear preparedness problem?
Building fallout shelters all across the country.
Congress allocated a huge amount of money to search out locations in both public and
private buildings where fallout shelters could be built in order to shelter communities in
the event of a nuclear attack.
One of these shelters is underneath a school in Washington DC – now abandoned for decades
and as eerie as it gets.
In 2017 reporters descended on the shelter, finding what was essentially a time capsule
from the 1960s.
The shelter was designed to fit about 100 people,and was stocked with enough supplies
that they could survive underground for two weeks.
It's located in the basement of the Oyster-Adams school, one of the only examples of its kind
not destroyed or repurposed in the 1970s.
There are still survival supplies stacked against the walls, barrels of drinking water
lining the hallways, and boxes of survival food.
There are even sanitation kits, also known as portable toilets, where the survivors in
the nuclear shelter would have gone to the bathroom.
Like most of the fallout shelters of the time, the location of this abandoned space was chosen
due to its thick concrete walls, which people of the time hoped would effectively keep out
radiation.
In addition to the food and water supplies, explorers from the local paper discovered
other survival supplies strewn around the long, dark, and eerie basement shelter including
medical supplies like first aid kits and cotton swabs.
Nuclear war fears peaked in the 60s and 70s despite the 45 years that the Cold War lasted.
Perhaps the events of the world today will lead to a resurgence of these types of survival
bunkers. 9: Abandoned Hospital
There is a creepy abandoned hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, that would probably give you nightmares.
It's called the Stobhill Hospital, and it opened in 1904.
In 2009, operations at the hospital were transferred to a new, modern building – and the old
one was abandoned and left to fall into disrepair.
Originally, the hospital had 1867 beds, and 200 of those beds were reserved for psychiatric
patients.
During World War I, the grounds and its structures were converted into a pair of military hospitals
and later expanded and equipped with both a radiology department and a maternity unit.
Even though the original hospital was closed and operations moved into the new building,
nothing has been done with the former grounds.
Rather than demolition, preservation, or a rehabilitation for a new purpose, it’s now
become the target for vandals and curious urban explorers.
As recently as 2019, one of these explorers documented their journey through the decaying
building and posted the video to YouTube.
In the footage, it's clear the hospital is falling apart.
White walls with holes in them, ceiling tiles hanging loosely from the roof, debris scattered
across the floor, ancient newspapers lying on dusty desks, and doors broken off their
hinges.
Despite rumors, there are no signs of ghosts living inside the abandoned hospital, but
it's still not somewhere you would likely want to spend the night.
8: The Abandoned Sawmill Near Doncaster, England, you’ll find an
abandoned sawmill, and it's got some pretty strange residents living inside.
The place is called Askern Saw Mills, and it was recently explored by a man with a video
camera who recorded all the oddities he found in and around the property.
Other than the usual rundown industrial equipment that goes with any abandoned sawmill, he also
found abandoned cars, motorcycles, and a small host of stuffed Minion toys.
It's the Minion toys that really make this place creepy.
The smiling, googly eyed yellow monsters wouldn't have been manufactured until after the 2015
animated film.
And so, what they were doing lined up on a loading bay in an abandoned sawmill, posing
beside the burned shell of a car and a busted mini motorbike, is a complete mystery.
What we do know is that the enormous mill complex was owned by a company called Askern
Saw Mills Ltd, then later Askern Building Supplies.
It was also at one time occupied by a car repair shop and a window supplier.
It was abandoned long before the Minions movie ever came out, and has been derelict ever
since.
There was a plan to build homes on the site in 2013, but those plans have never gone forward.
7: A Stinky Corpse Flower and An Abandoned Gas Station
Here's the story of how a very large and very stinky flower wound up at an abandoned gas
station in California.
It started with the coronavirus pandemic trapping people inside their homes.
The confinement had people picking up all kinds of new hobbies, specifically indoor
gardening.
Some planted strawberry plants in the windowsill, and others went with succulents in the kitchen.
But Solomon Leyva did something a little different.
He lives in Alameda, and during the pandemic he raised and sold cacti, succulents, and
other unique plants.
During the whole COVID mess, he was busy with a rather unique plant, something called titan
arum.
It's commonly known as the corpse flower because it gives off an unbelievable odor of death
when it blooms.
What's unique about this flower is that it only blooms every few years.
And it's only for one or two days that it stays in bloom before wilting.
After Leyva’s corpse flower bloomed in May, he put it on a wagon and rolled it all the
way to a local abandoned gas station so that his neighbors could come and look at it.
The Art Deco gas station has been out of commission for 30 years.
It's almost a historic building for the city at this point, a decaying gas station sitting
right across from City Hall.
It was the perfect place for the stinkiest flower in the world to bloom.
6: Nosodak Nosodak is a ghost town in North Dakota that
was abandoned before it was ever even completed.
In 1910, a small plot of land near the border of North Dakota and South Dakota was designated
to become a town.
The thought was that a new railroad station could be built here for the Pacific Railroad
Mainline, and it would draw people to the area - and the population would boom.
The train was to run from North Dakota to Texas, but unfortunately it never got built.
As a result, neither did the city.
A few people went out there and put up what can only be described as a railroad construction
camp.
But the train line only went for 20 miles (32.1 km) before the project was abandoned
and everyone gave up.
These days, you can still see the length of track buried by the shifting earth in the
middle of nowhere.
You have to dig them up, but they’re still there.
And as for the failed town of Nosodak, there's not a single trace of it left.
In fact, because it never had a post office, it never officially existed.
In the early 1900s, if an American city didn't have a post office, it wasn't recorded.
The only signs that there was ever human activity on the site are scars in the bushes, clearings
where some temporary shelters had gone up, and a generally eerie feeling in the air.
What's your favorite American ghost town?
Let me know any experiences you have with exploring forgotten settlements in the comments
and don't forget to hit subscribe before the end of the video!
5: Riverview Hospital Riverview Hospital is an old psychiatric asylum
in Coquitlam, British Columbia.
It also happens to be the most-filmed location anywhere in Canada.
That's how creepy the abandoned hospital is - it's used in tons of productions.
The site was used in the movie Saw, and in the tv shows the X Files, Supernatural, and
even Smallville!
It was also added to the official Canadian Register of Historic Places in April of 2009.
Riverview Hospital was founded in the early 1900s to help treat illnesses of the mind,
And it continued treating psychiatric patients up until 2010.
The first building opened in 1913 and was specifically used to house the most psychotically
disturbed men in the province.
It closed in 1983 and became a local tourist attraction.
Then in the 90s, Riverview Hospital became hugely popular with urban explorers and ghost
hunters.
It helps that the hospital is also home to over 1900 trees, 80 bird species, black bears,
and wild bobcats.
It's on a huge piece of land in the middle of BC’s lush rainforest.
Even though most of the facility was abandoned, a small group of patients continued to be
treated in one of the hospital’s wings.
But in 2010, the remaining 201 residents were transferred and the building was boarded up.
While this creepy abandoned place remains incredibly popular with film crews and urban
explorers alike, be careful.
The place is under continuous surveillance and you’re likely to get arrested for trespassing
if you try to get a first-hand peek yourself.
4: The Old Coke Works The Cwm Colliery in Beddau, Wales, closed
its doors for the final time on November 6, 1986.
In just one day, it became an abandoned coal mine and the source of 800 men’s misery.
You see, the 1980s was not a great time for Britain.
Wales was facing a huge period of unemployment, with mass firings and general upheaval.
When the old coke works shut its doors, an estimated 800 men lost the ability to feed
their families.
Many of them abandoned the village and moved to the big city looking for work, while others
simply gave up and retired.
Now, the Cwm Colliery was once the backbone of the entire region.
It was an enormous mining operation that now looks more like a forgotten piece of industry
at the end of the world.
Nobody lives or works here, almost everything has become overgrown, and yet the smokestacks
and huge industrial towers are still standing.
They look over the countryside like forgotten concrete sentinels, while inside the ruined
buildings nothing stirs except wild foxes and rodents.
3: Nazi Bunkers The Atlantic Wall was Hitler's idea to keep
the Third Reich safe from western invasion.
Between 1942 and 1944, along the entire coast of Europe from Norway to the bottom of France,
Germany built a wall.
It wasn’t a traditional wall, however.
This was a wall of fortifications, bunkers and fortresses that could in theory shoot
down any enemies trying to breach it.
Over one million French workers, as well as tens of thousands of slaves, were conscripted
to help build the monstrous line of defense – and all for nothing.
When the Allies invaded Normandy in 1944, hundreds of miles of wall didn't stop them.
The small part of the Atlantic Wall overlooking the coastline of Normandy fell in just hours.
And yet all these decades later, pieces of the wall still stand.
In fact, many bunkers are still sitting on the beaches of Europe, hard reminders of the
days of Nazi occupation.
Coastal artillery stations once fitted with huge 380-millimeter Krupp guns are still standing
today, their concrete walls bleached white and all the weapons disarmed.
And yet the creepy spirit of these bunkers lingers, making them not so much glorious
relics of the past as they are haunting ghosts of a much worse time in history.
2: Nuclear Power Plant Indiana is home to an abandoned and unfinished
nuclear power plant that gives off a sense of foreboding that many find beyond creepy.
It can be found in the small town of Hanover, nestled in cozy Jefferson County.
It's a typical Midwestern town with a population of less than 5000 people.
And yet despite its small size, it's home to a lot of amazing things, such as the tallest
waterfall in Indiana, plenty of urban legends, abandoned homesteads from days long forgotten,
and the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant.
The power plant was commissioned by the Public Service Company of Indiana, now known as Duke
Energy.
It was a hugely ambitious project that would turn out to be an utter failure.
It’s one of the only nuclear plants in the world that was abandoned halfway through its
construction.
A whole lot of money was lost, and these days the locals have mostly forgotten all about
it.
In the 1970s, public opinion on nuclear power was not great.
There was a huge accident in March of 1979 at the Three Mile Island plant, which made
public opinion even worse.
But at that time, the Marble Hill plant was already under construction.
It survived protests by environmentalist groups in 1978 and 1979.
But as project costs skyrocketed and scandals swirled around the employees, things fell
apart fast.
In 1984, the project was abandoned after roughly $2.5 billion had already been sunk into it.
Transmission lines had been constructed and the reactor hardware had been purchased.
Two massive containment buildings meant to house pressurized water reactors had already
been finished, along with the two cooling tower complexes.
All of this sat in the open up until 2007 when demolition started.
There's barely anything left now to suggest a nuclear plant ever stood here, but it's
still one of the creepiest places in Indiana.
1: The Demon Mansion There is a destitute and partially destroyed
mansion in upstate New York that locals call the “Demon Mansion.”
One look at its crumbling facade and you can clearly see why.
It looks like The Amityville Horror house after 40 years of neglect.
Yet all the same, the mansion in upstate New York was recently put on the market for around
$495,000.
This is despite the fact the mansion has been abandoned for 70 years, is sitting on a secluded
piece of land on Carleton Island near the Canadian border, and is in need of about $1,000,000
of repairs.
Plus, any new owners will need to get over the chilling atmosphere, creepy hallways,
and unsettling sense that ghosts are hiding behind the walls.
As for why the mansion is in such horrible shape, let me tell you the story.
It was originally built in 1894 as a summer vacation home for a businessman by the name
of William O. Wyckoff.
So far as the legend goes, after he moved in – after just one night in the house,
he suffered a heart attack and died on the property!
The home was passed down to his son, who abandoned the place in 1927.
The Great Depression saw the family lose their fortune, and General Electric took ownership
of the property in the 1930s.
But they never did anything with it.
As time marched on, the property was forgotten.
It’s been a literal ruin ever since.
Would you purchase a home for nearly half a million dollars that needed nearly twice
that much in renovations?
Let me know in the comments and thanks for watching.
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