10 Creepiest Abandoned Morgues on Earth Image: rustysphotography The morgue, well-known as somewhere dead bodies are stored, is a depressing place – a place where murder victims, unidentified corpses, and the victims of unexplained disease end up. Image: Don Kiddick No one wants to visit morgues at the best of times, but perhaps the ultimate in creepiness are morgues that still remain long after their time – abandoned, with nothing left but decaying interiors and the ghosts of the deceased people who passed through them. Image: Andre Joosse 10. Mortuarium Schoonselhof, Antwerp, Belgium “Exploring the morgue and autopsy room gave us a bit of a morbid feeling,” says the photographer who took these pictures.
84 pictures of dead malls Aug 23, 2012 For those of a certain age, the mall used to be the vibrant hub of retail. Quite literally you could get everything under one roof. But with one in five malls failing, it may herald the end of the mall. Main image photo credit: Kyle Tate Other image sources: Flickr & DeadMalls.com New York City's Hidden Subway Station Deep in the belly of New York’s subway system, a beautiful untouched station resides that has been forgotten for years with only a limited few knowing of its existence. Stunning decoration with tall tiled arches, brass fixtures and skylights run across the entire curve of the station, almost a miniature imitation of Grand Central Station… But it sounds like something straight out of Harry Potter, right? It was opened in 1904, with the hope of making it the crowning glory of the New York subway system in elegant architecture and a place for commemorative plaques to honour the work that had resulted in such a successful underground mass transit system. It was to be the original southern terminus of the first ‘Manhattan Main Line’; however the station was closed and boarded up in 1945. The reason for its closure was that newer longer cars were required to match the demand of passengers that passed through the system.
Ghosts of Shopping Past Landscaping overgrows, walls develop mildew, ceilings cave in—a building can be shut down, but that doesn’t make it go away. Brian Ulrich’s photographs of closed-down malls and big-box retail stores reveal the potential ghost towns lying inside successful shopping complexes all across America. Photographer Brian Ulrich lives and works in Chicago. His work has been shown in Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Photography; Galerie f5.6 in Munich, among others. He is a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, and his book Is This Place Great or What was published by Aperture in 2011. Why closed-down stores? The idea went back to 2005 when I drove weekly past a large closed supermarket on the North Side of Chicago. At the end of 2007 with many rumblings of recession, I thought of those pictures and began the project in earnest in May of 2008. Where in America are these empty stores?
A Ghost City Stepnogorsk Ghost-cities are the places abandoned due to various reasons – economic decline, wars, natural or anthropogenic catastrophies. This city stands in the range of the ghost ones. This is Stepnogorsk and this post is devoted to it. It is not far from Zaporizhzhya but here are nearly no people or cars. So post-apocalyptic… You won’t need much time to see how the city lives … A mine 7 km away from the city. Grossinger's, Former Borscht Belt Resort, Sits Abandoned In Liberty, New York (PHOTOS) Grossinger's Resort in the town of Liberty in New York's Catskills was famous back in its heyday. The resort was part of the so-called "Borscht Belt," where primarily Jewish families from New York City vacationed starting in the 1920s. Grossinger's gained increasing fame in 1952, when it became the first resort to use artificial snow for its ski-fanatic patrons. By the time of the founder's daughter's death in 1972, the property included 35 buildings on 1,200 acres. Grossinger's, like many of its fellow Borscht Belt resorts, was closed in 1986 and to this day sits abandoned next to a still working golf-course. When we went to check it out on a recent weekend, we were sufficiently freaked out by the former resort's eeriness. Finding the resort is surprisingly easy, despite some reports we had seen. Herewith, some photos of the former resort.
Krampnitz: Potsdam's Abandoned Nazi and Soviet Military Complex 8 Amazing Abandoned Mega Structures World's biggest mall (China) The New South China Mall in Guangdong Province opened in 2005. With 5 million square feet of shopping area, the mall can accommodate 2,350 stores, making it the largest shopping center in the world in terms of leasable space -- more than twice the size of the Mall of America, the biggest shopping center in the United States. The only problem is that the mall is virtually deserted. Centro Financiero Confinanzas (Venezuela) To those unaware of its history, the Centro Financiero Confinanzas looks like any other unfinished skyscraper. Construction started on the tower in 1990, yet the death of Brillembourg in 1993, as well as the Venezuelan banking crisis one year later, meant that construction ground to a halt. Sci Fi Structures (Yugoslavia) The Ryugyong (North Korea) During the mid-1980s, North Korea wanted to change its image by building something massive, something that would be world-renowned. Sanzhi Pod House (Taiwan) Hashima Island (Japan)
Anywhere but Here: Ponte Tower When was the last time you felt like complaining to your landlord? It seems there’s always something disgruntling about where we live (I’m currently annoyed with the workmen in the building who keep blanketing my mobylette in dust), but then you read about a place like the Ponte Tower and suddenly, wherever you’re shacked up doesn’t seem so bad… (c) Flickr Welcome to the Ponte Tower, the 54-storey-high concrete tube that has soared over the skyline of Johannesburg since 1975. Also known as the Ponte City apartments, it’s hard to believe this brutalist design by Manfred Hermer was once one of the most coveted addresses in the city. In the midst of the South African Apartheid, Ponte City was emblematic of the country’s dehumanising system of racial segregation. (c) Flickr user Judo10 After the fall of the Apartheid however, things got even worse at the tower. Images by Mikhael Subotzky In this stunning video by Phillip Bloom, we meet some of today’s residents (both black and white)…
Nazi Olympic Village Remains Abandoned 76 Years Later (PHOTOS) The London Olympics begin in just under a month and city officials already have a detailed plan for what will become of the new stadiums and villages post-Games. This stress on responsible development has been a hallmark of the modern games, but wasn't always the prevailing mindset. On the western edge of Berlin sits the remains of the 1936 Olympic site, where Jesse Owens won four gold medals to the chagrin of noted race theorist, maniac and dictator Adolf Hitler. Though it was once the pride of Germany, the site has since fallen into disrepair. One man is trying to save this piece of his country's fraught Olympic past from the historical scrapheap. Sven Voege plans to rent out some of the former Village sites as exhibition spaces. "It is a shame," says Voege. These images, showing what remains of the 1936 Olympic site, including Jesse Owens' room, make a strong argument not only for planning ahead London-style, but for confronting the past in service of the future.
Haunting, Abandoned Island In New York City (PHOTOS) Walter Benjamin once described progress as "one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage" as the past is quickly erased by new ideas and infrastructure. But there are a few rare spots in New York City where you can glimpse the past freely. Like the long-abandoned Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island. Riverside Hospital, the name of the facility on the island throughout its various incarnations, treated everything from smallpox and leprosy to venereal disease and heroin addiction; after the Second World War, it housed soldiers who were studying under the GI bill. Check out the mysterious abandoned island below: Photos courtesy of Ian Ference Launch the fullpage Big Shots slideshow >> Rate This Photo
Abandoned Asylums Of New England Photographed In New Book (PHOTOS) There will always be something fascinating about abandoned buildings -- how their crumbling edifices and withering artifacts seem like eerie time capsules. Photographer John Gray captures this perfectly in a new book "Abandoned Asylums of New England," which also gives a history of the region's "temples of control, treatment, and rehabilitation of individuals with disabling conditions" by the Museum of disABILITY History. "I started photographing Danvers State Hospital in 2000 out of pure curiosity because it was close to my residence," Gray told The Huffington Post via e-mail. "Soon after, I discovered many other abandoned institutions all over, so it kind of grew from that point on. Check out Gray's amazing photos below, and click here to learn more about the buildings. In the mood for more abandoned sights? All photos and captions courtesy of John Gray Photography.
12 Creepiest Abandoned Prisons on Earth Around the world there are many abandoned prisons, once cages for people – some criminals, some political prisoners. Many disused prisons have been left to rot and decay, while a few have been demolished. No longer places for the incarcerated, many of these derelict landscapes are now the realms of urban explorers who document the abandonment and degradation of the former correctional institutions in pictures. These weren't just places that incarcerated people, either; men were killed there as well, whether by hanging or the electric chair – not to mention in outbreaks of violence. The crumbling walls of these buildings are steeped in history. 12. This prison farm in Atlanta was opened in 1945 for those poor souls who were arrested and served time for ordinance and traffic offences. 11. Abandoned in 1970 when a new jail was built, this prison was also known as the Old Newark Jail and is to be found in New Jersey. 10. Carcel de Carabanchel was closed in 1998. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.