Abandonment Issues: Cordova Mines Vansickle House 5

After our little family reunion at Ma Bell's house, nearing the dead end of Vansickle road, we stumbled upon this fifth abandoned house. Here lies a great example of a place with bad vibes. The house itself isn't terribly interesting, but the negative energy that overwhelmed us was as powerful as the stench. Spine tingling chills shivered up the backs of my brother and I, and we both vocalized the sense of anxiousness and discomfort that we were feeling. Ninja wanted nothing to do with it, and waited in the car.





Directly in front of the house, a pile of furniture rested amongst raccoon feces, as if the house couldn't handle the smell either, and one day just vomited its innards out the front door, over the porch and onto the lawn. Inside, a shovel, a hatchet, an axe, and some hunting gear all added to the sense of fear that had us both trapped and intrigued. Once the mind gets into a place of fear, it tends to interpret these types of objects in the most negative of contexts.





In the kitchen, as I opened the cupboards and photographed it's contents, my brother made a rookie mistake: he opened the fridge. Here's a tip, always make opening the fridge the last thing that you do before retreating hastily outside. The horrible smell intensified instantly and astronomically. He let go and turned away coughing and gasping for breath. With my face wincing and eyes squinting, I held my breath, snapped the shot, and slammed the door. Then I gave him that tip, as if he needed to hear it though. That's a mistake any half intelligent explorer would only make once.









Upstairs, as I crouched under a giant spider web to photograph the silver stools, we both froze solid for a split second, paralyzed with fear. The sound of two loud male voices were coming from directly in front of the house, on the other side of the tree line. We quickly made our way back downstairs and outside. The potential danger of exploring rural properties like this in the middle of nowhere is never lost on me. It is one thing to encounter security, police, scrappers, taggers or addicts in abandoned urban settings, but what is a derelict abandoned house in the middle of nowhere in the eyes of an explorer, may very well be Dad's house or Grandma's place in the eyes of a property owner or surviving relative. The emotional connection that someone may have to these types of locations could be far greater than that of an urban location such as a factory or hospital, and therefore the emotions could run high and drastically increase the aggression and anger in response to trespassers.







The hunting gear, the axe, the hatchet, and the shovel flashed through my mind in these brief moments. The sense of danger, that rush that I'm always after, it might just get me killed on a day like today. But as quick as the voices appeared, they were gone. Where they had gone to was as much a mystery as where they'd come from.

Back inside, even more on edge, we finished photographing the house. That eerie feeling never left us, it just kept building. Not so much as if we were being watched, but if we were to be caught here, we were in some sort of real danger. Strange how we both sensed it so strongly.











Outside, wandering the property, we located a few couches, a boat, and several outbuildings, including a chicken coup, an outhouse, and a garage containing about a dozen old cases of empties. And then we approached the trailer at the back of the property, along the tree line. It was instantly obvious to us both that this trailer was used at some point for the preliminary stages of a grow-op.

Fact: Encountering drug labs and grow-ops while trespassing can get people killed.

A fast dash back to the car ensued, where Ninja informed us that a car had pulled up behind her for about a minute, and then pulled away. She tried to text us a warning, but there is no service in this area. This vehicle was the source of the voices, we concluded. A few minutes later, we arrived at the dead end, and explored the Cordova Mines Vansickle House 6, which will also be the end of the road for this series.

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