Lush Abandonment | Rural NC
It has been a while, but I finally made my way to a new location for my Abandoned NC series (see the rest of the series in my portfolio, or on Facebook). I drove past this old house on a back road between Trenton and Kinston, North Carolina. The house is set back about 250 feet off the intersection of the main road and a dirt road. The lush growth around it made me almost overlook it, but seeing the shape of the greenery, I knew there was an awesome old building in there. I turned around and returned to shoot a few frames.
It’s always fun to speculate about these abandoned homes and who lived there. I would suspect that it was in that spot before the main road came through, and quite possibly before the dirt road too. Usually, you see these old farm houses standing in the middle of the fields that they used to tend. With fields on both sides of the road and a new growth forest to the right, it would seem that it once stood right there, in the middle of its’ fields. As society “advanced” and the road came through, the family decided to move on.
The shot: Nikon D90, Nikkor 18-105 VR lens. 2 exposures, manually blended. f/14, ISO-250, 1/125 sec. (foreground exposure) & 1/500 sec. (sky exposure).
Paranormal Activity?
This was probably the freakiest photo shoot location I’ve been to and am pretty sure I had my first paranormal encounter here. Here’s the story:
This winter, I set out with my friend Ben in Pennsylvania for an abandoned coal facility that I had shot at before. Problem was, I hadn’t been there for over two years. It was a lot freakier this time than the last. To make matters worse, it was cold and pouring down rain. We decided to venture in anyway and immediately I felt some sort of odd feeling that is hard to explain. The whole time I was shooting I felt like I was being watched. People make that statement all the time and it’s easy to roll your eyes at it, but I truly felt that. It seemed as if someone was lurking around the corner at all times.
This feeling of uneasiness lasted the entire time we shot. In the middle of shooting a set of brackets, I started to hear strange metal clanking sounds. (Now is a good time to point out that there was absolutely no wind blowing) Thinking that it was just something swaying or moving from the rain, I kept shooting. The clanking was almost rhythmic, something that a dangling pipe wouldn’t do. It would speed up and slow down, all at regular intervals. Ben and I decided that was a sign that it was time to go. I packed up my gear (at this point the noise stopped) and gathered up my tripod and umbrella. As we stepped outside, the real freak out occurred.
Outside the huge front door, there is an old truck (looked like a 1960’s model) half sunken in the dirt and junk that litters the area. The exposed radiator fan on the truck was spinning full speed, silently. A little taken aback, I walked toward it. As I took a few steps, the fan drastically slowed down and suddenly stopped. Now, being that this truck has been sitting in that spot for all this time, there is no way that rusty fan could turn so easily, right? And what’s the explanation for it’s strange deceleration?
I just wish that I hadn’t put my gear away, who knows what I could have captured if I shot that old truck. It was quite simply the strangest, most unexplainable thing I’ve experienced. Just as the uneasy feeling had swept over me as we entered the property, it disappeared as we left. As we walked back to the car excitement and wonder set in. But the entire time we walked, I couldn’t help but look behind my back…
Facebook | Twitter | Flickr | 500px | Google+
photos ©2012 Zach Frailey
