Abandoned buildings — United States
Abandoned buildings — United States. 5 places in the catalogue, each with coordinates, the story behind it and a danger level from white to black.
The Moundsville Penitentiary
A Gothic prison in use from 1876 to 1995, once listed among the ten most violent correctional facilities in the United States. Ninety-four men were executed here and some thirty-six more died in prison violence, including a riot in 1986. The Sugar Shack basement and the dark isolation cells have their own reputation. The building stands across the road from an Adena burial mound, which added another layer to the story.
The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
One of the largest hand-cut stone buildings in North America, built in West Virginia for two hundred and fifty patients. By the 1950s it held around two and a half thousand, in unheated wards, under a lobotomy programme applied here unusually widely. The hospital closed in 1994. Night tours run through it now, and most of the accounts concern the fourth floor, where the most severe cases were kept.
Eastern State Penitentiary
A Philadelphia prison that pioneered total solitary confinement in the 19th century. Closed in 1971 and left in ruins, its vaulted cellblocks are counted among the most reputedly haunted places in the United States.
Centralia
A Pennsylvania town with a coal seam burning beneath it since 1962. Residents were relocated, the roads cracked open, and smoke has risen from the fissures for decades — the fire could burn for centuries more.
Bodie
A California gold-rush town that peaked near 10,000 residents and emptied by the early 20th century. It is kept in a state of "arrested decay" — houses still hold the belongings their owners walked away from.