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.