HOME |
RSS | 
Kyle Merriman recently visited Nara Dreamland, the abandoned Disneyland knockoff theme park in Nara, Japan that was built in 1961 and closed in 2006. He found it to be fairly intact, except for the fact that there are no people there and the weeds have grown everywhere. See the state of the park in a gallery of 56 photographs. Link
Previously at Neatorama: Nara Dreamland, an Alternate Universe Disneyland
Photo: Hisagi [Wikipedia]
The coal-mining colony of Hashima Island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, is called the Battleship Island because of its high seawalls (doesn’t the photo above look like a battleship?). When oil replaced coal in the 1960s, Hashima fell into disuse and was abandoned, thus earning it another well-deserved nickname: The Ghost Island.
Dark Roasted Blend has a fascinating article about the island ruin:
Hashima is, for many ruin fans, the rotting and collapsing grail, the benchmark all other crumbling structures are measured against – and seeing pictures of the place it’s easy to see why. Not only is Hashima frighteningly preserved in some places, as if the residents had just stepped out as few minutes before, but it is also, contrarily, spectacularly falling down. Beyond its current awe-inspiring state of decay, the island’s dramatic isolation and its bizarre history make it the ruin of ruins.
Considering the small population of the continent, Antarctica has a lot of abandoned settlements. In such extremely low temperatures, it is much easier to leave structures and possessions behind than to take them with you when you leave. Harsh conditions also preserve what is left, since bacteria and mold that break down materials elsewhere on earth can’t survive in Antarctica. Camps and settlements abandoned 100 years ago still sit, appearing just as they did when they were in use. The hut shown was left by Sir Ernest Shackleton in 1909. See and read about ten of these places at WebUrbanist. Link
(Image credit: Noah Stryker)
The largest shopping mall in the world is no longer the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. The South China Mall near Guangzhou, China is twice as big! This is not a success story; there are only about a dozen stores open in the giant facility. However, because the mall is considered “too big to fail”, it is kept open with a staff working every day. The series POV tells the story in a 13 minute video. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
We don’t know why abandoned places are so creepy, but they are. Here are 20 abandoned places in Europe that are a little too creepy for us to handle.
This was once the largest hemp and rope factory in Europe, dating back to 1840. A state-of-the-art water system facilitated steam- and water-powered machines through a labyrinth of tunnels that carried water throughout the complex. It was closed just over a decade ago…
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by yugosakimi.
Ever wonder what happens if a conjoined twin perishes while still attached to their sibling? In much the same way, Camilo Jose Vergaga explores the results of having one half of a building deserted while the other half remains inhabited.
In some cases, one half has undergone radical renovations and looks entirely different than its mate. In other cases, the old one has been cut from the new, leaving a lopsided half on its own. Sometimes the impacts cut deep as one half rots and and is filled with squatters while the other is maintained.
More than your typical urban decay images of abandoned places, this juxtaposition of occupied and unoccupied shows the stark before-and-after contrast – the then as well as the now, side by side in a way rarely seen.
In poor neighborhoods, when someone is taken to the hospital or otherwise leaves their home the neighbors and police tend not to watch out for the place in order to prevent problems. As the population of Camden continues to decrease these mismatched pairs only grow in number.
Abandonments can be amazing to visit, but are all the more fascinating when they are located on the edges of the known world. One of the things that sets antarctic abandonments apart from other abandoned towns and cities is the fact that the remoteness of their location keeps them preserved like few places in populated regions ever are – providing a frozen-in-time (forgive the pun) picture of what life was like when their inhabitants left or perished in the cold.
Does Antarctica have the most ghosts of any continent? On a per capita basis, the answer is yes. While the South Pole and environs doesn’t have a permanent population, there are on average 2,500 people living there during the year — approximately 4000 in summer and 1000 incredibly hardy ones in winter (source). While no complete necrologies exists for the Antarctic, at least 268 people have died there since humanity first decided it was a good place to visit. So if the ghosts divvie the work evenly, each one only has to haunt 9.68992 inhabitants.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Urbanist.
Photographer Kevin Bauman took exquisite photographs of 100 abandoned houses in Detroit, Michigan. He has managed to turn the economic crisis, in form of crumbling houses in various stages of disrepair, into an artwork.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by algonkin.
The tunnel under Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn was New York’s first subway tunnel. It was built in 1844, then abandoned in the late 1850s. For over a hundred years, the tunnel seemed to be only a rumor, until an teenage urban Indiana Jones named Bob Diamond decided to unearth the tunnel once and for all. Link
Photo: IanVisits [Flickr]
Inspired by a scene of abandoned London in the zombie horror flick 28 Days Later, Ian Mansfield of IanVisits blog decided to bike down to London early Christmas morning and snap a few photos. This one above is of Piccadilly Circus, in London’s West End, completely devoid of humans.
Link | More at Ian’s Flickr photoset
While the South Pole and environs doesn’t have a permanent population, there are on average 2,500 people living there during the year — approximately 4000 in summer and 1000 incredibly hardy ones in winter (source). While no complete necrologies exists for the Antarctic, at least 268 people have died there since humanity first decided it was a good place to visit. So if the ghosts divvie the work evenly, each one only has to haunt 9.68992 inhabitants.
| FEATURED ITEMS FROM THE NEATOSHOP | |
 |
Mustache Bottle Opener |
 |
My Cryptozoological Family - Family Car Stickers |
 |
Zombie Hand Bottle Opener |
View more: New Items &
Best Sellers |
|
