The Places You Will Go, and The People You Will Meet.

(In a formerly abandoned prison complex with three of my good friends)

"How did you get into that?" or "How do you find places like that", or "is that legal?" are often questions I hear from people when I tell them that a hobby of mine is urban exploring, or simply "urbex". Well I wanted to share my earliest memories with a few of my closest friends who I had began exploring with; how this all got started, and where I am today with the hobby.

I have to crank the time travel machine back to 2019, I had always been interested in the abandoned videos made by a certain youtuber who went by RNK All Day, he had ventured to abandoned buildings, resorts, prisons, and anything else left to rot without human inhabitants. I started to browse Instagram accounts and started to follow a few people in my local area and started to have conversations with them. I believe my first two conversations of the subject with local Pittsburgh explorers had been two accounts: @t1ffers (Tiffany) and @baseic_ (Taylor). At the time, I had no idea who they were as people but I had started to converse with them and admire their work from a far. I never imagined the impact both of these two accounts would have on my life fast forward into present day. Back to 2019, I can't remember how I first ended up going out with them, I think it was a conversation with T1ffers (Tiffany) where she had been talking about going to meet up in a rundown town with Baseic_ (Taylor) and another Instagrammer who I had not spoken with but the account was @tnrmartin (Tanner). We met up at a Walmart parking lot, quickly jamming into one car and off we went. Our first explore, and my first ever time exploring anything abandoned was an old hospital complex, now torn down in 2022, but known as Brownsville Hospital. We also explored two old banks and a hotel complex together. I fell in love with the decay and the common ground we shared in these places together. That meeting went really well and I believe it was either late August or early September of 2019. I cannot find my photos of that day, but I will forever have those memories.

My second ever explore was a wing-it kind of day. Tanner had already been to this particular place and I believe Tiffany had already been there before as well. I cannot remember if Taylor had been there or if it was also her first time going to it, but we met again at a Walmart parking lot and loaded up into one car and we were off. My second ever legitimate explore with people I had just met, was an abandoned correctional complex. At the time, naming spots was heavily frowned upon and this spot in particular was almost seen as a "holy grail" type of location amongst fellow explorers in this urban exploring community. It had very little graffiti but seemingly was "open" for exploration purposes with very little chances of people getting busted there. The prison complex sits back in the woods off of the main road. The parking for the complex had been next to a truck repair shop just after the main driveway into the complex grounds. We parked the car and walked into the woods. When Tiffany had first explored there, I believe she shared she parked her car in the woods next to a cellphone tower. We opted to park at the repair station. In front of the prison complex is an abandoned motel, which had probably been open when the prison had been in operation, but now sat in ruins. We walked through that area focused on our main trek. While walking towards the complex, we heard coming near us what sounded like a lawnmower, like a farm tractor and couldn't figure out what was going on, but we crouched down and hid in the brush. It felt to me like that tractor got within 25 yards of us where we had been crouching at. From what we could see once the tractor left the area we were in, it looked as if a man was logging the driveway. We didn't stray away from our plans that day, we could have turned around there and "abandoned" our own mission but we kept going. Luckily for us, that guy was alone that day. Once we got out of the woods, we were in the basement level of the prison powerplant, we were able to open a door in the basement and honestly we felt safe, at least I did, knowing we were inside a structure far away from that logging experience. We spent nearly all day exploring that facility, a good four or five hours I believe. One of the things that also helped, was once we came out of the power plant, we had made a sprint to the prison gate/exterior fencing, quickly crawling under the hole in the fence, and then entering the first building on the campus, once through that door, at least then, there is a sense of safety. There is basically no way anyone can see you once you are in that first building on the campus and really no way anyone can see you after you exit the first building. I was thankful that of the people I had been with that day, we stuck together, the four of us in that complex. It was overall surreal as it had been my first real abandoned exploration that had been an OG type spot.

Fast forward to present day, the prison had been in the process of being purchased by a family who have turned the spot into a Hydroponic growing operation and named it Big House Produce. The family that owns the complex had invited the urbex community to their complex to photograph it in a free roam type deal. Currently, the family is in a court battle to retain control of the complex as their landlord had threatened to raise their rent to include some of the royalties the family makes off of the mostly abandoned prison in which they have had paranormal shows and other travel shows into the complex. We will see what happens.

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At the end of 2019, Tiffany and I had been exploring a middle school together. When we got into the spot, we had gotten to a particular area of the school and looked out the window and saw a black mercedes benz in the parking lot and contemplated who would park their car in the parking lot of the abandoned middle school. On speculation of who could have done that, Tiffany mentioned it possibly being another Pittsburgh explorer, named Thomas who also drives a black mercedes benz, and in Tiffany's description, "looks like he is 12". Prior to going into the school, there was a kid outside who had been hanging out that I thought might had been there to explore, so I asked if he was "exploring the building" and he just kept walking, and I surmised that the kid I saw outside, could have owned the black mercedes as he also looked very young. Anyways, as we had been in one of the hallways, we had heard voices coming from a particular room, and I believe it was Tiffany who had called out to them, and then we had isolated them to a particular room with what had appeared to have a ladder in it, going to the roof. Coming down the ladder had been the driver of the mercedes benz who was in fact, Thomas. We ended up hanging out in the hallway with Thomas and his friends for about 15ish minutes before going our separate ways, but it was cool to meet someone who had been an explorer whose work I had also been following for a while, and someone I had regularly chatted with on Instagram. Thomas is a very skilled photographer and explorer, I have both had the pleasure of exploring places with him just one on one, and also in groups of people. He has amazing stories and when I first met him back in 2019, I believe he was 19 then, I had been in my mid twenties, and Tiffany, I believe was in in her thirties. We asked Thomas what made him decide to park right on the property and his reaction was "what are they going to do, tow it?".

I believe this photo was taken the same day we met Thomas, and overall it is a really cool photo of him. He can be followed at the above username on Instagram: @damned.raven

(These are just some of Thomas' photos that I enjoyed while browsing through his work, but honestly his entire profile is full of worthy photos for this blog piece. I am thankful I have been able to interact with him since 2019.)

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In 2020, I had taken a road trip to another part of the country to explore. I had been religiously exploring every weekend after the prison explore with Taylor, Tanner, and Tiffany. We had named ourselves the AT&T&T gang, my first name being AJ. Tiffany and I had met Tanner at an abandoned asylum in Maryland. This asylum had been a children's hospital for disabled children and had a terrible reputation, not that any of the asylums had decent reputations, but this one definitely had the worst. The nature of the investigation that led to this particular hospital closing had deemed it "America's Deadliest Institution" according to an article written in the Washington Post. The facility itself had also been rumored to be fairly difficult to explore given its proximity to two agencies that are near the grounds. The first agency is a job corps center that sits adjacent on the right side of the campus, and behind the hospital grounds sits a behavioral health hospital. At the front of the property to go to the hospital, is a guard station and there are "security vans" that make their rounds on the main road into the complex and patrol the outside of the complex that are supposed to ward of trespassers into the closed hospital grounds. There had been a few places where would-be explorers could park to get into this complex, the first is at a restaurant, the second is a storage locker facility, and the third, which is what we did was a newly built housing development. We parked the car, and I can still remember Tanner saying "Okay I guess it is time to face this head on". None of us had been to this location before. Tiffany is not a huge hospital explorer, but went because it had been on my list of places to go too, and she drove from home. We crossed the street right after a security van went by us and went into the woods to get to the complex. We spent a good amount of time exploring it and although we missed the morgue this time while looking for a swimming pool that did not exist, we did have a good time just exploring the old hospital buildings and hallways. The complex itself is beat to a pulp by vandals, mother nature, and just the general lack of being maintained for the last 20ish years that it has sat closed. We did happen to be in the administration building while we were looking for this "swimming pool" building, and did not make it into the basement of this building, but in the basement was the hospital morgue. We looked in another building for the pool, but ended up leaving and heading to our next spot that day.

Another question that I sometimes get, is if I am going to these places for the paranormal intrigue. I would answer that with yes and no, I am a believer in the paranormal and have had crazy things happen to me that I truly cannot explain or debunk in any particular way, but when I am exploring these places, I would get way too distracted if I was looking for ghosts the whole time while exploring and there is soo much to see in these places than to just focus on ghosts. I am a firm believer in "if it is meant to happen, it will" and that is in life experiences in general, but also in exploring. When we were at this hospital, there was something weird that happened here while exploring the first time. We were in the first building, the same building where the tubs are, I remember being in a corridor and although my friends had been in another part of the building, I remember hearing what sounded like a loud bang and my camera audio picked it up as well. I asked my friends if they had heard it, or if it was them, and I believe that they both said, no, but that it was creepy. It could have been just the wind, but it sounded like a heavy door shutting and I felt that we had been the only three people in that building during that time. I have only encountered the paranormal on occasion a few times while exploring in ways that I could not explain, there is a nursing home facility in New York that I definitely felt presences in, and there was a hospital that I have already written about that I also felt things looking at me. I am not exploring just for the spirits, if they want to make contact with me, they can. If not, I am exploring just to capture history.

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Another explorer who I met in similar fashion as the original gang met, by a trip to Brownsville, Pennsylvania was Ike or on instagram as @ikeboy79. Ike is Ohio born and raised and would often drive from his home about an hour and a half away from us to come and explore with us in the city. The group then frequently became Ike, Thomas, Taylor, Tiffany, and I; as by this point, Tanner had moved back to his hometown in eastern Pennsylvania. We started going to places with Isaac both in Pennsylvania and in Ohio. Quite a few times we had gone to Ohio to explore and meet up with Ike. A couple of those memories in particular have been a mansion and a gorgeous church that had been vacant.

(Church was a Byzantine Catholic Church and the mansion is full of tiled rooms like this bathroom)

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On two occasions, we had been close to being caught while exploring as a group while Ike was in attendance with us and that is the risk that always is a big one when exploring abandoned places, is getting caught. At the end of the day, it is trespassing but for the most part as a lot of explorers will say, "it's only trespassing, if you get caught". In two instances both in Pennsylvania, we ran that risk. One of the instances was probably a bit too confident on all of our parts which was something I will never do again and neither will any of the rest of us, we learned the lesson that day: never park on property. It was an interesting day, we had met up in another town in Pittsburgh and I watched the street as Ike and Thomas explored a school building in a bustling community where people are always out and about. After their successful explore of that building, we got into separate cars and drove to an abandoned school location. We parked our cars behind the building on property and entered. The building had the power still running so everything was on, the lights, the exit signs, and probably the fifteen or so hundred cameras (oops). I had gotten a bad feeling when we were in the auditorium that caused me to go outside to my car and drive off the property, and just three minutes had gone by when I noticed three police cars drive onto the school property while Thomas and Ike were still inside taking photos. I can still remember them running out the front doors and hopping in my car as we drove away thinking we would just go back for their cars at a later time. It ended up being a scramble and Ike ended up staying over at my parent's house that evening because of the whole mess. We ended up having to speak to the school district's police department on the phone the following day essentially giving up our stories and what not, but still to this day, none of us ever received a fine for that experience, my friends' cars were all towed and they had to pay the fee to release their car from the tow yard, but we never got a fine for the experience.

The second experience I have had that almost resulted in us getting caught was a time that Thomas, Ike, and I explored an abandoned hospital together. The facility having been closed only about a year prior to us and many other groups exploring it had a sister facility down the street from her, under basically the same name, just a newer faciilty. This hospital in particular, had a nurses school attached to it. I had never been inside the nurses school but from what I had heard it was a cool building with a lot of things left behind. We only were able to explore the basement and the first floor of the hospital before Ike had looked outside of a window near the entrance and said that he saw a police car out front of the building. We quickly scrambled, eventually locking ourselves in an exam room inside the emergency department of the facility. Thomas was calm and collected, I was an anxious mess, and Ike was sitting underneath a table. We had joked after the experience that had someone knocked on the door, Ike may have hit his head on the table. After about what seemed like two hours of just sitting and waiting, Thomas had gone out into the hallways to check to see if anyone was in the building. He came back and we began our exit. As we had opened the door to freedom on the outside, we did make a loud crashing noise as a sign that had been placed back on top of the door, had fallen down when we shut the door to the building.

The saving grace of that day was that there were doors into the emergency department when one entered where we did, but those doors were locked. Whoever it was who entered the building to search for us, had to walk the same way we did to get to that particular part of the building, which was a much longer trip around and that was definitely what prevented us on that explore from being caught. Still to this day, I am unsure who that was.

(Photos one and two are from the hospital, I took the first photo, Ike took the second to show a scene of despair of what happens when someone falls out of their wheelchair, and to complete the gallery, that was a photo I took of Ike at the prison with Taylor on the exam table covered by a biohazard bag for a cool shot)

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Getting back to the photography though, as an explorer: Ike has grown over the years and has done some amazing things with his camera. I always joke when I see some of Ike's photos as some of these places he explores, you can almost lick off the floors, that is how clean they are and people need to stop telling Ike that they are moving because he shows up a day later with his camera. It has been really cool to know him on a personal level and to see him here and there. We keep saying that we are going to take a trip together to New York or New Jersey or something, but that just hasn't come to fruition yet. One of my favorite things about Ike is that no matter how large of an audience he receives, he's still an incredibly humble and great guy to be around. Here are some examples of his individual work taken from his Instagram, with his permission of course.

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There has been another person in my urbex journey who has made an impact and the way we met was by complete chance. Thomas and I had been exploring an abandoned school together and we had heard voices in the auditorium, when we came in, there were two guys taking photos of the place and we started talking, and within minutes of talking, we asked who they were, and the one guy had been a guy I knew at the time as Tommygster who later changed his username on Instagram to @moldy_lungs. This was a guy I had long looked up to in the exploring community and it was like staring at my idol for a second. I was star struck to say the least. We ended our day cruising around with him and his friend from the east coast trying different spots. I have gone out to the east to explore with him once before and he gave me a tour of a bucket list explore of mine and even captured a stellar photo of me in one of the production "tunnels" at this factory. We continue to stay in contact through Xbox chats and continue to remain friends.

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I realize at this point that I still hadn't gotten to what the hobby and the people I have met mean to me. The people to begin with have become life long friends that I am excited to see every time, we can explore together. Some of the best moments of my life have come while exploring places and cities with them. Tiffany, although she moved far away from us, is still an incredible friend, an amazing photographer, and someone I am really thankful to have met.

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Another person who I had grown close to with exploring was Tanner, I learned recently that his Instagram profile had been hacked, so he was no longer sharing his work, although I am still going to share some of his work that I had found that capture his photography skills. Tanner is a really cool guy as well and someone who enjoyed taking photos and of places and then writing their histories on his Facebook page for every place he visited. I hope to get to explore with Tanner again soon on the east coast.

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One of the final people who I have grown close too in the urbex community has been Taylor, she was one of the first people who I had begun messaging to hangout and explore with in the urban exploring community on Instagram who I had really wanted to meet, and over time and exploring, she became one of the most photogenic of the group often posing for photos in Taylor-esque poses that fit her character perfectly. I have always equated Taylor to the ever happy wild-child of our group but the one person that really defines us as a crew. Thank you Taylor for often getting us out of trouble with nosey neighbors and for being you.

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In conclusion, the hobby for me has been life changing, and as I have learned in my travels is that everyone you meet is for a reason, and these people are my people.

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We are on Instagram: @tnrmartin, @t1ffers, @ikeboy79, @moldy_lungs, @damned.raven, and @ghostly_urbex412, Taylor is off of Instagram with no telling when she will return.