Freaktography’s Top Ten Most Shocking Finds in Abandoned Places
Recently my friend and fellow explorer Bob from Exploring the Unbeaten Path posted an excellent set of ten photos titled: “Our most dangerous adventures”
I highly recommend you check it out below at the link and follow his work, this is a level of exploring and infiltration that I have barely had a taste of
Now, while I, in no way can top that post and the experiences of Bob and his crew, it did inspire me to think up another idea along the same lines.
I thought I should share my top ten most shocking discoveries in abandoned places. Over the years between myself and the many other great explorers in Ontario, we have found and uncovered some truly shocking things.
To me, exploring an abandoned house should be treated like a sort of archaeological dig site, take your time, explore, navigate, open drawers, closets, look around to see what kind of strange things might be hidden in these long forgotten homes and properties.
Putting this list together and capping it at 10 was a hard task, but some things hold much more shock value than others, so for this compilation I have tried to keep it to the ten best and most shocking discoveries.
Let’s get on with the list
Freaktography's Top Ten Most Shocking Finds in Abandoned Places
In March of 2014, in a story literally told around the world, I found nearly $7,000 in cash hidden behind a mattress in an abandoned house.
There are many theories about this and skeptics, but however that money ended up getting there, I found it and along with my friend Ground State Photography, we returned it to its rightful owner.
Watch the video here
While exploring an abandoned house in Ontario Canada in 2019 I looked inside a closet in a very messy bedroom. The first thing I saw were two gun barrels in the corner of the closet.
They turned out to be a shotgun and a rifle, after taking some photos of them I hid the weapons in a less conspicuous place to ensure they didn’t land in the wrong hands
See the video here
In 2019 I was contacted by a fellow I went to high school with. He asked me if I would like to explore an abandoned building where a man was found dead and his body stain can still be seen.
When I arrived to the location I found it right away, surrounded by dried up maggots and white decomp stains lays the perfect form of a human body. The person had showed me a photo of the body before it was removed and then another photo of the stain right after they took the body away.
In his photos, the stain is much more clear and defined, but this image here still tells a very sad story of a homeless man, who has still to this day not been identified.
This is a very sad story of a woman who lived alone and had problems with hoarding.
Originally found by Abandoned Urbex Canada, he learned from the local funeral home that after the woman passed, the family took her remains and dropped them on the floor in a hallway in her home.
There was no mass, no funeral and no burial, for whatever reason the family put her back in her messy home.
When I explored this home, I found some photos of the woman and some trinkets and I placed her on a display case, surrounded by some of her things
See the video here
File this under the most disgusting thing I have ever seen or smelled.
Inside the basement of the now demolished St Catharines General Hospital, inside a fridge in the autopsy room sat several bags and specimen jars filled with various human specimens.
When the hospital closed and the local health authority was tasked with cleaning up, someone forgot to check the fridge. Soon, the power would be cut and these specimens would sit for years at room temperature or worse, until we came along, opened the fridge and discovered these terrible smelling bags.
Here is the video
A very sad and shocking discovery inside a former funeral home in Southern Ontario.
While still owned by a local funeral home, this building had sat vacant for years before being discovered by Urban Explorers. Inside there were several caskets, unclaimed cremains, mortuary make up, embalming machines and more
However the most surprising find to me was in this small white childs casket that was sitting upstairs in amongst other caskets in what looked to be a display and show room
See the video here
In the fall of 2019 I explored an old abandoned farmhouse that was still very full of old items and relics. With all windows and doors wide open, the home was free to roam and for elements and animals to come and go.
Strangely however, in the kitchen as soon as I entered the home I spotted a rifle and a shotgun, leaning against the wall, behind a table.
As I did with the other guns found that year, I photographed them and hid them somewhere where they would hopefully not be found and placed into the wrong hands.
The photos of these abandoned guns really got people worked up when I posted them as people (Americans) could simply not accept that someone would leave guns abandoned.
This is not a story of something shocking I found, but more a story of something shocking that happened.
In this old abandoned house, I was wandering around with my camera filming the interior of the home.
As I walked up the stairs I realized that they were probably too weak to support me, so I turned around and went back down.
As I turned around on the staircase, something very strange and unexplainable flies past my camera and makes a strange sound.
You can see that here at this video link, and make up your own mind about what you think it was
Now this one I don’t know what to believe. It was found inside a safe, with a yellow envelope taped to the safe, warning anyone who enters that there is an “MK1 Hand Grenade Bomb inside the safe, this is not a joke”
Someone who handled the grenade suggested that it was a dummy grenade and the explosives had been removed.
I don’t know enough about explosives and grenades to be able to tell that, and I surely was not going to pick it up and inspect it.
Saving my personal favourite shocking discovery for last, this is the home where I found not just one but TWO sets of medals from world war two, belonging to two brothers who both served. One brother was in the air force and one was in the Army.
Also found with these medals were several Nazi souvenirs and other wartime things such as patches, buttons, photos and money from all over Europe.
My attempts to contact the family to return these items were met with hostility and paranoia as the family thought I was harassing them and trying to scam them.
So, I gave the medals to a friend who has a very vast war memorabilia collection in his home, they are on permanent loan to his collection until the day that the family realizes the sentimental value and historic significance of these items
You can watch the video here