super secret squatter

    okay lets talk about a more recent and more positive/funny encounter! this past september mia and I decided to explore the first skyscraper to ever be built in toledo, the nasby building. it was a multipurpose high class office building built in 1895. it eventually shut down by the late 1990's because of its extreme need for super expensive structural repairs, weather damage and just a low demand for office spaces in toledo by that time. oh and turns out according to the research I'm doing right now to write this its packed full of abestos! i'm sure that'll have no adverse effect in like 30 years... by 2000 the city had claimed ownership of the building and after that it was boarded up and left to rot. 

    so this building in itself is intimidating. for starters its in the middle of downtown toledo which means we have to park my car 2 blocks away at a gas station and walk down the street in plain view at like 11pm on a weekday. but on top of that once we reach the building we have to run around the side of it, into an alley, up a fence and then up a fire escape into a broken window. and more than that we knew already that we had to be super careful once we actually got inside to not disturb whoever could potentially be inside and to not step on rotting floor or fall off a bad staircase or something stupid. 

    so we made it to the back of the building and adrenaline is already pumping hard for both of us. we stop before going up the fire escape to listen for footsteps or voices and we spotted another potential entrance that didn't involve doing a pullup onto a rusted out fire escape that hasn't been inspected in 30 years so we decide its worth checking out. in front of this potential new entrance is a few stairs and a small cement landing surrounded by metal handrails. at the top of the landing is a piece of plywood leaned against the building covering an open door. we slide the plywood out of the way and look in and its a maze of fallen air ducts, wires, ceiling, trash and random furniture covering the entire room to the point we cant even figure out where would be best to walk.
    

were still standing on the cement platform debating which entrance to take and mia is shining her flashlight into the room looking for a path and I'm standing facing the corner of the building and alley just kinda looking around at the trash and random items scattered behind the building when I catch movement at the corner of the building. I didn't have my flashlight on so I was looking into the dark but I could instantly tell it was another person. my immediate thought was "oh great its a cop" which was almost relieving compared to who I knew it could be. but of course it couldn't be that normal!

    pretty much immediately after I realized it was most definitely NOT a cop. it was a, for lack of a better word, very spindly young guy dressed in baggy sweats and a patrick star graphic tee. but what stood out more was the magical ass hand movements he was doing. he quit doing it like as soon as he saw us so I only caught it for like 10 seconds but it was literally like he was an airbender or something. so obviously based off this very brief initial impression I'm not expecting this interaction to go very well but what other option do I have to interact? I'm not rude enough to ignore him and even if I was, he's standing in front of our only real way out. to get away without interacting we'd have to go through the plywood entrance which he could easily follow us into and then were REALLY stuck. I knew that even if things went horribly wrong we had the high ground on the platform and two giant metal flashlights so from what I could tell we had the advantage regardless.

    mia is still oblivious to him so I chose to alert her by greeting him. I tried with literally every piece of my soul to sound chill and calm and said "oh... hey." but to this day mia laughs at how scared I sounded when I said it. sorry girl I'm worried were about to die?? fuck are you laughing at? as soon as I said it mia turned around and also kinda panic greeted him. he started to say hello back and then stopped himself and took a couple steps towards us and my heart sank. oh here we go, now I'm fighting a clearly unstable grown man in a 3 foot wide alley covered in broken glass and metal scrap. instead of like trying to stab us he stuck out his hand for a fucking HANDSHAKE. so obviously i shook his hand and he said "good evening m'lady". mind you so far this entire interaction has been 30 seconds max. literally what the hell is going on right now. he shook mias hand. it was pretty clear after that he was no threat. 

    I still obviously wasn't geeked to run into him but things could definetly be worse. I asked him what he was upto hoping he could give us some tips about getting in and navigating the building and he said he was heading inside to lay down for the night. I asked him if other people stayed in the building and he said other than the occasional explorer he was the only person staying there which took a huge weight off our shoulders going in. I asked if he minded if we came in and took a look around and he said we were welcome inside. he offered to help us through "his" entrance up the fire escape but we declined. he told us to go through the plywood door, straight through the room, into the stairs and straight up so we could have rooftop access. he was nice enough to offer to prop the wood back up after us to keep us more concealed. what a sweetie!

      we wrapped up our conversation, gave him a bottled water and slimjim and away into the second floor he went. we've learned by now to carry nonperishable things with us to offer to the people we might run into. its an easy way to show compassion for their situation but it also helps take the spectical off them. its hard running into someone living in an abandoned building and saying "oh yea I'm just here to snap a few pictures and look around" and not feel like a douche. but in more tense situations it can act as a sort of peace offering. hey man I'm not here to bug you, I'm just here to see the building heres some trail mix please don't lunge at me kinda thing. 

 we stepped inside and didn't stop much to look around on the first floor. it was cinder walls, checker tile floor topped with mounds of rubble, trash and mismatch furniture scattered everywhere. it was walking into a fallout map irl. we made it to the stairs which were somehow still in good condition other than the paint peeling off the walls but hey, its been 25 years. the strairs themselves were cement with bulky wood and metal handrails which were still very sturdy. each floor was basically the same. it opens into a large cement room from the stairway and then at the front of the large cement room is two-three smaller rooms with street facing windows. the ceiling of each floor was missing all its paneling and the walls were shredded from people wire stripping the building. there were also large mounds of trash and metal in corners of the rooms as if someone had made an effort to "clean" the building. 

      the higher up in a building you go, the less stable it usually gets. you start to see more rotting or caving in floors, crumbling walls, stairs coming off the wall and things like that. for the most part we still hadn't seen any major structural damage so we felt pretty good continuing on. the higher we went the more trash we found. it got harder to go up the stairs because of all the trash blocking the path. the third floor was the first time we saw any sign of squatters. we found a small handbag full of self care items, trashbags full of women's clothing and a makeshift cot. it had clearly been left behind a long time before we found it. 

    we moved through the rest of the floors and found nothing very remarkable. the occasional bucket full of mystery liquid, crushed beer cans, poorly done graphitti or ripped up couch. at one point I flipped over something laying on a desk and a silverfish ran over the back of my hand which was a first (and hopefully LAST). 

    finally we made it to the top floor where the stairs ended and a steep metal ladder began. we went up the ladder onto a small platform with some sort of generator and a door leading onto the roof. the roof was by far the most heavily graffitied part of the building but other than that nothing was broken or out of place. it was a completely flat roof covered in gravel meaning there's nothing stopping you from falling over the edge. we sat up there taking pictures, talking and listening to music for at least an hour when we finally heard a noise from the door. from somewhere below us we could hear someone or something moving around so we decided it was time to leave before we ended up in a bad situation stuck on a roof. 

   

we hurried as fast and quiet as we could down all the flights of stairs and through the room we entered from and back into the alley. we successfully made it through the entire building without missing any rooms! on our walk back to the car mia and I were recounting our experience in the buillding when it clicked. If we'd watched the man from earlier go inside and cleared every room WHERE THE HELL WAS HE??? I'm almost 100% sure if he would've left again through the fire escape we would've heard it rattle. and he couldn't have moved to another floor without us noticing because there was only one staircase and it would've been impossible to get through it silently and every little noise echoed through the entire building. he literally went inside and vanished into thin air I cannot for the life of me imagine where he could've even possibly been hiding because the whole building is basically a cement skeleton. honestly after the rest of that encounter it wouldn't shock me to find out that he actually used his magical hand movements to like teleport himself out or something idk dude seemed powerful.

baptist church basement "sex cult"

    okay for my first story I wanted to go back to my start. one of my first ever urbexing stories (lowk before any of my photos were turing out super well so don't get your hopes up). to preface this by saying this was absolutely NOT smart in retrospect. I was freshly 18, not really into the urbexing scene and just wasn't aware of all the different risks potentially involved. the way I choose what locations to explore is much safer these days.

    for some more context I was in the middle of my senior year of highschool and by that point I'd pretty much entirely given up going to school unbeknownst to my parents. I spent my days sitting in public libaries, driving in circles and desperatley searching for something to do until it was time to go home. it was just as mind numbingly boring as it sounds but anything was less boring than sitting in a classroom. 

    so it was January 2025 and I decided on this day in particular I was going to drive to the city over, pick my best friend (mia!!) up from her highschool and then drive into the downtown area to look for a coffee shop or empty parking lot to stake out the hours before going home so our parents didn't know we'd left school. so were driving along a main road in one of the not so nice parts of the city and at the same time we spot an obviously abandoned baptist church with the front door completely wide open. perfect for two stupid, unprepared teenage girls who've been talking about getting into the exploration scene! 

    so we, with ZERO hesitation, park in the WIDE OPEN empty church parking lot already making ourselves super visible and we run around the side of the building, around the front and straight through the front door. there was a wide open machenic garage directly next to the church and the front door was facing the street so we risked any passerby in a bad mood calling the cops so we were already off to a poor start.

 once were inside were standing on a staircase landing. one door opens into the main chapple area, another door leads down into the basement, and another leads up into the second and third floor. the landing we were on and the stairs leading down were covered in dust and broken tiles but nothing looked extremely out of place for an abandoned church that had sat open for who knows how long. we stepped into the main chappel area and things took a hard left turn. it was immediately evident someone had at some point been living in the church. 

 on the floor there was a completely deflated air mattress covered in dust like it hadn't been used in months. scattered around the door on the floor and on tables was more obvious evidence someone had been squatting. jugs of water, solar powered lights, articles of clothing and other personal items. but there wasn't any signs from this alone that anyone was currently there or had been there for a long time so we continued on. 

     the ceiling over the stage area of the chappel had fallen in on itself and a large area of it was wide open to outside. there were stained glass windows lining the chappel that had somehow stayed perfectly in tact. for a baby urbexer this place seemed pretty perfect so far! we snapped a few pictures and moved to the other side of the chappel to two other open doors while we decided whether or not we should move to the other floors. 

    the first of the two doors that we entered was a small office still full of documents, office supplies, awards addressed to the church and their choir, preacher robes and more. the office wasn't in too bad of shape. the windows and walls were still in perfect condition and it was mostly undisturbed. we moved to the second door, another staircase leading both up and down, another open door leading to outside and a large room.      

    

and this is where the wheels really started to fall off. as soon as we turned the corner into the room we stopped in our tracks. the room was a fully furnished makeshift bedroom. oh great! I'm sure it cant get weirder than that right? of course it can!!! from where we were standing in the doorway we could see a fully inflated air mattress covered in pills, pill bottles, needles, cigerette boxes and butts and other miscellaneous paraphernalia and trash. surrounding the bed was various chairs and couches going wall from wall forming what seemed like some sort of viewing circle around the bed. but what stood out the most about the room was the windows lining the room. each window was covered by a painting done by who I assume was living in the room and the few that weren't were darker colored stained glass. the room was extremely dark and gave off nothing but gross vibes. 

    this was obviously something beyond your average squatter. even now, almost 2 years later, with MUCH more experience I've never seen anything even comparable. we stood frozen in the door for a solid 15 seconds before either of us move or spoke just trying to take in what we were seeing. finally we whispered up a plan to call out before walking in further. we called something like "hey is anyone here? were just taking pictures but we can get out of here if you want." keep in mind were standing feet away from the staircase so everything we call out is echoing to every floor so this is alerting everyone potentially in the building.   

      thankfully after calling out a couple times we didn't get any response. I'm not sure what we would've actually done had someone responded. two teenage girls everyone thinks is at school with no form of self defense or plan of escape. id slap tf out of my younger self if I could right now WHAT ARE YOU DOING GIRL GO TO SCHOOL. so we feel reassured enough by that alone to walk into the room and take a closer look at everything. again, a room full of drug paraphernalia and stank ass aura and were dressed in like ugg slides and flair leggings cause we were dressed for school. with NO GLOVES OR MASKS on top of that. mmmm hepatitis b yum

    the paintings in the windows (of course) weren't like flowers or kittens or something normal. it was super dark abstracts of like a nude woman being speared by a wooden cross or a nude man being whipped across his back. it looked like a childs description of hell. there were other, just as haunting paintings, stacked in the corners and stuffed in the open closet. probably 30+ paintings scattered through the room. the chairs and couches lined every wall almost wall to wall. some had pillows or throw blankets and others had burn holes, tears and stains. there was a dresser that had bottles of lube, self-care items, other random things and more paraphernalia. but what we hadn't seen from the door was the preacher gown hung above the bed. looking back at this I'm genuinely still so frightened by this whole experience like seriously what the fuck was going on 

   

there was another door in the room that opened into a fully furnished bathroom and a makeshift kitchen that we didn't pay much attention to. we were so frazzled by this point that we were more focused on looking over our shoulders than the actual exploration. we left the room and went back to the stairway we'd initially come in at and briefly debated going into the basement. we (thankfully) decided against going into the basement and decided to just leave.

    fast forward to later that night when me and mia are laying in her bed. we'd gone about our day normally after leaving the church and hadn't really mentioned it since. it popped back into my head and we decided to google the address attached to the photos we'd taken to try to figure out when and why the church was abandoned. nothing could make this story any creepier right? WRONG!

    so we find that the church was abandoned after the owners fell into debt and they lost the mortgage. alright cool, happens to the best of them I guess? I still cant really find a hard date of when it was abandoned but it had to have been sometime between 2016 and 2024. my best guess would be 2019-2021. since it being abandoned it hasn't had a real owner. the city wont take ownership which is why the blatant entrances left open weren't boarded up but no one has claimed ownership so its been left to rot. 

    but that's not sinister. I scroll beyond the little google provided blurb and see an article published by 13 ABC a little over 2 months old about the church. police had been dispatched to the church to investigate the squatters. in the bodycam footage the police enter the basement and find a bunch of mattresses, sex toys, lube, personal belongings and drug paraphernalia. upstairs in the bedroom they find pretty much exactly what me and mia did but from what we saw in the footage a ton of things had been moved around when we'd gone in meaning the squatters had returned sometime between the police and our visit and judging by the fully inflated mattress I'm guessing they were still actively using the building when we were there.

    in the footage the police say they'd been called to the church a few weeks earlier and they'd found a group of squatters bunched together in the basement and they all took of running in different directions. WHAT THE FUCKKKK. also in the footage you can hear the police describe their findings as a "sex orgy cult". you have to be joking WHAT. during the earlier call theyre reffering to in the footage arrests were made but no one was found during the call the article is actually about but the police determined the squatters were still living there at the time of the call.

    so do you remember how I said we'd been calling out things like "anyone here?!"? yea... we were potentially alerting an entire "sex cult" made up of god only knows who camping out in the basement to the prescence of two teenage girls standing right on the other side of the stairs. AND THEN WE HAD A LOOK AROUND THEIR WEIRDO SEX/ DRUG DUNGEON ROOM LIKE SHIT WAS SWEET???

    at the time it was just a kinda funny and confusing story but in retrospect things couldve ended sooo much differently than they did and we got lucky in several different ways that day. not doing your research before you go into a bando like that is always a bad idea. you never know why it was abandoned, what the police have found in there or whos home you might be walking into. we got lucky we didn't get hurt from wearing soft soled shoes on a needle and glass covered floor, that we didn't encounter anyone, run into crazy structure failure like the floor caving in or get caught by the cops. it was definitely an insane intro to the bando scene and a hard learning experience. 

 

into !!

hi everyone!! i wanted to make this post to introduce myself :)

    my name is liv and im a 19 year old girl living in the trenches of the midwest. im currently finishing a gap year between high school (the worst place on earth for a whiny teenager with no plans on making it to the future) and community college. i recently quit my healthcare job to live off my savings and play in the creek for a few months before officially becoming an adult. 

    im obsessed with all things outdoors. i spend the majority of my time visiting parks and beaches, urbexing and wandering around. over the past few years I've had more than my fair share of wild encounters with wildlife, collapsing or decrepide buildings, law enforcement, unstable squatters, incredibly friendly homeless people and so much more. lucky for me ive been documenting all of it! 

    for the last year or so ive wondered how i should go about getting my photos and stories out to the (niche) public and recently a friend recommended I start a blog to document all of my adventures. I plan to treat this page like my digital diary. everything from whining about the growing pains of being a nihilistic young adult with rampant mommy issues to heart pounding stories about urbexing encounters in a large inner city and rural small towns. 

    im super excited to start this blog and see where it goes! please be patient while I learn how to fully navigate this site and really figure out how I want to curate and theme everything :) 

me in da creek^^^