10.
FORGOTTEN SOVIET BASE
Lana Sator is a talented Russian photographer who has visited numerous military equipment
graveyards across the country.
She’s taken thousands of images of abandoned fighter planes, helicopters, and other vehicles
that were left behind when the Cold War ended.
Captured from a bird’s-eye view using a drone, the haunting pictures convey the shocking
amount of obsolete machinery that sits, abandoned, in open fields and hangars, crumbling from
the effects of time and weather.
One deserted Soviet base in Russia’s Far East contains at least 1,000 tanks.
A lot of the equipment at these sites was decommissioned when the Soviet Union fell
in 1991.
Most of the machines are too old and damaged to have any practical value today, and they’re
not really worth restoring either.
But they’re fascinating in their own right as relics of a bygone era defined by frenzied
competition between the United States and Russia for military superiority.
9.
MYSTERIOUS MANSION
Award-winning photographer Bryan Sansivero has made a career out of documenting abandoned
properties.
One of the most fascinating places he has explored is a 57-room mansion located just
a few miles outside New York City.
Built during the 1930s, it contains an indoor tennis court, a bowling alley, a ballroom,
two bars, and a private library.
The sprawling home was abandoned during the 1970s and has remained empty ever since.
It appears as though the owners left suddenly and in a hurry, leaving most of their furniture
and a large amount of personal belongings, including shoes, toys, books, several pianos,
rugs, televisions, stuffed animals, a carriage, and more.
In fact, it seems like they deserted the home in the middle of renovating part of it.
They even left family photos and other seemingly sentimental items behind.
Aside from some graffiti and the damage that happens when a building is neglected, the
interior remains just as the family left it.
It’s clear, based on the items inside the house, that several children grew up there,
and that the family enjoyed music and golf.
At least one of the kids attended boarding school, and it looks as though the children
may have been homeschooled at one time.
The furniture seems to date back to various time periods, indicating that the house had
one owner for a solid 40 years or so.
But who were they, and why did they suddenly leave and never return?
According to Sansivero’s research, the homeowner was a millionaire who had a habit of buying
mansions and leaving them to rot.
The man’s reasons for being a serial home deserter are a mystery.
8.
EVERGREEN CRYSTAL PALACE
Robert Plaster was an incredibly wealthy entrepreneur from Missouri who founded the energy supplier
Empire Gas and numerous other enterprises.
During the ‘90s, he had a 30,000 square foot (2,787 meters2) mansion built on a large
hill overlooking Table Rock Lake in Branson.
Known as the Evergreen Crystal Palace, the 14-bedroom home contains a 20-car garage,
a helicopter pad, multiple kitchens, housing quarters for live-in staff, a shooting range,
and other luxurious amenities that most of us can only dream of having.
Each bedroom is themed and decorated with expensive artwork from around the world.
At one point in time, Evergreen Crystal Palace was the most expensive home ever built in
Missouri.
It remained in the family after Plaster passed away in 2008, but nobody currently lives there.
In fact, the house looks like it hasn’t been used since it was built, and it definitely
hasn’t been updated much since then.
The decor, furniture, and appliances are visibly dated but in spectacular condition.
Everything looks brand new, making a walk through the mansion feel like a literal step
back in time.
The Plaster family decided to sell the home last year after the estate’s trustee had
a health scare.
Real estate agent Ken Coleman came out of retirement to sell the mansion, which is on
the market for $80 million.
He invited YouTuber and urban explorer BigBankz to the property in hopes of attracting potential
buyers.
The marketing strategy appears to be helping – the day after the influencer’s video
launched, Coleman received 68 phone calls from interested parties.
Robert Plaster was entirely self-made.
He worked hard all his life and always made it a point to give back to the community.
In honor of his giving spirit, proceeds from the sale will fund college scholarships.
7.
CREEPY HOSPITAL
Thanks to social media, people have the opportunity to see abandoned places that they’ll never
get the chance to explore firsthand, and that they most likely wouldn’t even know about
otherwise.
A 25-year-old urban explorer and TikToker named Sonny recently posted footage of a creepy
deserted hospital that he found somewhere in the U.S. and spent six hours investigating.
The facility is filled with medical equipment, beds, fully-stocked rooms, and even televisions
that still work.
In one laboratory, there’s a fridge filled with old blood samples.
There’s paperwork and computers in the offices, and operating tables are still set up as though
they’re awaiting the next patient.
Some parts of the hospital appear frozen in time, as if they’ve been left untouched
since the property was abandoned.
Others are in disarray and are damaged from neglect and vandalism.
Someone has painted the word “HELP” in bright red letters on several of the walls.
As an experienced explorer, Sonny has seen many abandoned properties.
But even he was confused by the state the hospital was left in.
It seems as though it closed in a hurry, perhaps leaving the owners with no time to get rid
of things that normally aren’t left behind when a place shuts down.
Or maybe they simply didn’t care to empty the building out.
The circumstances of the closure are just as much of a mystery as the hospital’s location,
which Sonny is keeping a secret to prevent vandals from causing anymore damage.
Would you check out this creepy hospital if given the chance?
Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already!
:)
6.
ABUNDANT LIFE BUILDING
Driving through downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, it’s almost impossible to miss the crumbling,
windowless eyesore known as the Abundant Life Building.
The seven-story structure was built in 1958 as the headquarters for a controversial televangelist
named Oral Roberts.
He named it after a Bible passage that inspired his sermons about how God wants to bless people
with prosperity – in exchange for donating money to the ministry, of course.
Roberts wanted the building to have an ultramodern, almost futuristic feel.
He felt that windows were unnecessary, and thanks to technologies like air conditioning
and fluorescent lighting, which were relatively new at the time.
As a substitute for natural light, he had the walls painted in bright colors.
The Abundant Life building housed a television studio, an auditorium, a banquet hall, and
a mail processing center for the millions of dollars in donations that the ministry
received.
But Roberts didn’t stay there for long.
Just a few years after the strange structure was built, he relocated elsewhere.
The building went through several owners after that, and has been vacant since the late 1980s.
It became even uglier in 2019, when workers removed the white marble diamonds that once
covered the facade because they kept falling off and were a safety hazard.
The property’s future is uncertain.
There are no redevelopment plans right now.
And as unattractive as the building is, some people are fighting to preserve it as a historic
structure.
5.
LEITH HARBOUR WHALING STATION
Whaling was a major industry before overhunting took a devastating toll on whale populations
throughout the world.
When populations in the northern hemisphere began to thin out, a subantarctic island and
British overseas territory called South Georgia became the world’s largest whaling center.
Many countries were involved in the immensely profitable trade, including Britain, which
built a whaling station on the island at Port Leith.
Also known as Leith Harbour, the station was built in 1909.
It was the largest of seven stations on South Georgia and contained massive whale oil tanks
measuring 30 feet (9 meters) tall and 30 feet wide.
During their downtime, the employees drank hooch and watched movies at the facility’s
cinema.
There wasn’t much else to do at the remote site, which was thousands of miles away from
where most of the workers were from.
The station operated until 1965 and has sat abandoned ever since.
Today, the property is littered with rusting tractors and other machinery, whale bones,
and tools.
The whale oil tanks and other structures are losing their battle against the harsh climate
as their contents spill out through holes and broken walls.
Mattresses, bed frames, baths, and other fixtures and furniture are scattered throughout the
site.
Pin-ups, bowls, unopened containers of yeast, and other everyday items can still be found
inside the dormitories, canteen, and other buildings.
It’s actually incredibly dangerous to visit the crumbling station, which seems like it
could collapse at any minute and is covered in asbestos.
Anyone who’s interested in exploring the property has to have a good reason for wanting
to go there, along with permission from the government.
4.
MYSTERY HOUSE IN THE WOODS
Mercadies Berger and her family decided to move to Kodak, Tennessee after the town they
were living in became too crowded for their liking.
They bought a large wooded property and began exploring.
It wasn’t long before they discovered an abandoned house hidden in the trees.
Some of the walls are missing, but the home otherwise appears as if its occupants got
up and left one day without taking anything with them.
There was even a mug left on the counter, as if someone was interrupted during their
morning coffee and never returned.
The Bergers sifted through the contents of the house in hopes of identifying its former
owners and learning more about them.
It became even more important to find whoever used to live there after Mercadies found a
picture of a toddler named Amanda Lynn.
Speaking with local station WVLT, she said that if someone in her family had lost a baby
picture, they’d want it back, so she wants to put the portrait back into the hands of
its rightful owner.
She searched for social media users named Amanda Lynn who are around the age she thinks
the little girl would be, but found no potential matches.
Mercadies posted on social media in hopes that someone would recognize the photo and
connect her to the family it belongs to, and the local news covered the story to help get
the word out.
Amanda and her father were finally identified, but there have been no updates about what
caused them to abandon the house or if they’ve gotten the picture back.
3.
HOUSE OF BACK BONES
An anonymous pair of German explorers who call themselves Urbexer-Geocaching were alarmed
to find a room filled with dog spines hanging from the ceiling while exploring an abandoned
house recently.
The home was completely trashed to begin with, and was covered in graffiti.
But the dangling back bones took the experience from disgusting to downright disturbing.
Fearing the worst, the explorers searched for clues to explain the spines.
They found a collection of dog show awards and other items indicating that a large number
of Great Danes once lived at the home.
There were also several overdue bills laying around, suggesting that the former owner ran
into money problems and perhaps fled the property when they could no longer cope with the weight
of these issues.
But this is just a guess, and nobody knows for sure if financial struggles had anything
to do with why so many dogs appear to have died at the home.
The pair tried to search for the owner, but they had no luck.
Commenters speculated about why the spines were hanging from the ceiling, with one suggesting
that the room functioned as a space for hanging meat to age.
Why do you think the house had a room full of back bones?
Let us know in the comments below!
2.
SUTYAGIN HOUSE
In 1992, an entrepreneur named Nikolai Petrovich Sutyagin began construction on what was supposed
to be a two-story wooden home in the Russian city of Arkhangelsk.
But he was inspired by traditional Japanese and Norwegian architecture and continued to
build until he was satisfied with how the house looked.
When he was finally done, the structure had grown to be 13 stories tall.
Standing at 144 feet (44 meters), it was believed to be the world’s tallest wooden house,
even surpassing Russia’s tallest church.
It took Sutyagin and his family more than 15 years to build the towering structure,
which turned out to look nothing like a traditional Japanese or Norwegian home.
They didn’t get to enjoy the finished product for long before Sutyagin went to prison for
several years for some racketeering charges.
While he was gone, the home fell into disrepair.
It was condemned as a fire hazard in 2008 out of a fear that if it were set ablaze,
it would fall over and the flames would spread to nearby homes, which are also mostly made
out of wood.
The city ordered for the strange structure to be demolished.
It was mostly dismantled, leaving behind a four-story home that burned down in 2012.
1.
ROYAL SUPERFAN HOUSE
Daniel Sims is an urban explorer from England who documents his adventures on the YouTube
channel BeardedReality.
He recently shared footage of an abandoned house in West Yorkshire, England that was
filled with newspaper clippings and other documents about the royal family.
The articles date as far back as the 1920s and detail the lives of King George V, Prince
Charles and Princess Diana, and other members of the monarchy.
There’s a publication about the royal family during World War II, along with clippings
from Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981 and an article from 1935 about George V’s
silver jubilee.
The homeowner didn’t only collect coverage of major events in the royals’ lives.
They followed the family and their relationships over time and kept track of lesser-known figures,
like Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York and ex-wife of Prince Andrew.
Sims also found hundreds of decades-old National Geographic magazines, along with some rare
history books and a helmet collection.
He said that the items would probably be worth a lot “in the right hands,” but that he
never takes anything from the sites he explores, so for now, the collection remains inside
the house, where it’s not being enjoyed or appreciated by anyone.
Thanks for watching!
If you’d like to learn about more crazy abandoned places, let us know in the comments
below and be sure to subscribe.
See you next time, bye! :)