It was only this summer that I happened upon the term “Urban Exploration”, though I have been aware of the phenomenon as a somewhat unusual pastime before. It sort of came to me in the form of a radio documentary on the subject. I realize that what we are doing can hardly be described as such, as this place currently has an owner who has not abandoned it and we even had an appointment with him. This was hardly exploration of anything, except of the mind. I wanted to see who I would be in this sort of place. I expected I would be scared shitless to be frank. After my first trip to this place I had played with the idea that I would be unafraid and unfazed by the undeniable inherent creepiness of an old, decaying hospital. I quickly dismissed this idea though, reminding myself not to get all high on my little victory of last time. “I know myself better than that” I thought.
Back on the subject of Urban Exploration (UE), the documentary (which you can download from P3.no) thrilled me immensely. I have been a sucker for photography ever since I was a little kid and knew nothing about it, but lately it has gotten a bit old. When I first got my beloved Canon D40 4 years ago, I took a lot of pictures. A lot of nice ones even, but mostly they were quite plain. It was pictures of sunny days and flowers, the stuff the general public love to see depicted in great quantities. My style soon got darker. I would take sunshine photos too, but the ones that pleased me the most was and still is the darker ones. Now days I mostly take my camera out for rain, fog and storms. When I first heard this documentary I could easily relay to the idea that decay and imperfection can be some of the most exciting and beautiful things you will ever see. I believed it so much that the depictions of Detroit in said documentary moved me to tears. I might be a bit touchy feely, but at least I won’t lie about it. These things can be surprising and shocking and disturbing in a way that is quite mentally stimulating. It makes funny things happened in my head. There need always be some disturbance in your life or you will surely be bored out of your mind. I once hear that the human brain is so nicely suitable for problem solving, that if you don’t present it with any, it will happily make them for you.
Once we arrive at the Sanatorium our car is nearing the boiling point. The fan is working furiously to cool the overheated engine long after we’ve stopped it, similar to the time when my late Hyundai Getz was leaking coolant. We are driving my parents’ Citroen Berlingo, which used to be a descent car before someone messed up the engine and which they have now forced on me to spare the Ford Focus another go at the messed up road. After having a look under the hood to assess the state of things, we decide there is nothing we can do to help it out of its misery (this car is a bloody mess) and finally take off to locate our guide.
A little while later we enter the basement of the building. After the sunlight outside, the basement appears almost pitch black. Ahead of me I can still see the contours of the guy we are trying to keep up with. Being surefooted and all, I manage pretty good, but I keep peaking over my shoulder for my friend Janne as I am worried she will fall behind. The guy ahead of me says he will show us where not to go and where not to photograph and then we can have a look around on our own and take pictures, and this worries me even more. This is, as expected, quite scary, at least for a little while, and I hadn’t expected that we would be alone in here. The seemingly extremely relaxed nature of our guide soon wears off on me to my great surprise and when we enter the higher levels of the building it shows a softer side as the sun enters trough the big windows and breaks the ice. I have been in places that have unsettled me deeply for no apparent reason and places that have felt strangely soothing. This place belongs in the last category. It actually felt unbelievably calm and quiet in there. I don’t know why. By the time we are left on our own, after having promised to stay out of the buildings soft spots quite literally, my nerves has settled in the corner after having to give way to my curiosity, which is a force to be reckoned with. After having been made to check out one of the soft parts of the floor, I was excited enough by the feeling of it that I still can’t help but giggle stupidly every time I remember it, though I expect it is quite exaggerated in my head by now… I can almost feel the whole house wiggle though I’m sure it didn’t. I could now see that this would be worthwhile, even if I had freaked out and had a panic attack (which has been known to happened though it has been years) in which case I might have gone through the floor. This experience was looking to be very bright and colorful in my mind, and not something I would be without if I could help it. We trothed around cheerfully and just a bit astonished by the look of it all.
The feeling is like that of the apocalypse. This massive structure that was once invested a lot of money and work into, is now crumbling in slow motion all around us. Not even something as vast and strong as this can hold up forever on its own. People often say that things don’t last, but do they truly understand the gravity of it or is it just another fashionable thing to say? Some would say this is ugly, but there is something undeniably true, raw and real here. No one planted the mold and the moss. No one pealed the paint. Decay is the truest story to be told because nobody has bothered to cover it up. Still we are here to marvel at it because it is nothing but the undeniable truth. Outside, a few stories down, more people have arrived. More people come to see, to take it all in. As I’m looking down at them from a third (?) floor window I remember standing down there, staring in amazement a week earlier. This is so surreal. A woman spots me I think. Wonder if she thinks I’m a ghost?
I guess people come for various reasons, but quite a few of us come here to find new stuff, to dig something out of the undiscovered corners of our minds. To see something that isn’t there. Not in the house anyway, and not in us probably, but somewhere in the interaction between the two. I had decided in advance that I would do so, just not in such thought trough terms. These things always come to me in retrospect, when I’m curled up in the soft sofa by the open window in the cozy room that I rent in an old mansion. Inspired by the bright pink paper bag of candy from Sweden and my massive Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary on the table, I put it all into glossy words in an attempt to be very poetic about it. I used to think I should be able to come up with this shit on the fly, but it always comes after.
As we reach the attic we are getting a bit worried about the floor, as it was said to get increasingly bad further up. Out of old habit, I’m a little unsettled by the looks of the long corridor, but it loses its grip almost at once when I set foot inside it. We walk slowly, carefully assessing the state of the woodwork under our feet as we go along. Now we just look through the doors and instead of entering the rooms. Suddenly, I feel a light, cold breeze. We’re all thinking it aren’t we? GHOSTS! But strangely, somehow this was only a lazy afterthought to the more rational “gjennomtrekk” (a quick Google-search turned out the word “turnover” for this expression, but it basically means wind that goes through something, like when you open two window and you have a wind tunnel on your hands). I almost jump in astonishment as I don’t recognize this cold rationality. It might be a call for action (or institutionalization) that I analyze my own thoughts like foreign objects, but this was unbearably peculiar. This should be scary… it really should! I mention this to Janne, and she agrees. Either we have actually taken on the personality of the guy who left us on the second floor an hour earlier and who seemed largely unafraid of anything this building has to offer, or there are something severely calming stuck in the walls… or it’s just nothing, absolutely nothing. No scary things come to mind.
I wanted to see new stuff when I looked through the over 300 pictures I had taken. At first it was a bit of a struggle. Then things started happening, slowly but surely. Little twinkling stars of ideas started to appear. Little sparks that soon started to catch on. I will not be so bold as to say that my pix are great, but to me they are stuff that I have not seen before, which is good. When I start to inspect them and work on them, so much movement and life appear in dead things. There are no ghosts in them though; I don’t even bother looking for them.
All the
pictures below has been edited quite heavily.
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