In place of the usual ramps, rails and pipes are busted wheelchairs, dusty bowling pins and gaping holes in wooden floors as skater Rob Miceli maneuvers his board through an abandoned psychiatric hospital in New York State. Miceli and fellow skater Sean Colello gained access to an unnamed facility (speculated to be the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood by Gawker) and filmed themselves using various rotting rooms of the hospital as one big skate park.

“Back in 1931 the center was thriving, but around World War 2 things started falling apart when unqualified workers took over for nurses who had to serve in the war,” Colello told Jenkem. “It wasn’t until the 1970s when they officially shut down a handful of the buildings on campus and they’ve just been rotting away ever since.”

Colello reports that most of the buildings are so boarded up they’re virtually impossible to access, but once you find a way into one, you can access all of them through a network of underground tunnel. In the eerie video, the duo can be seen making their way through the dark, wet subterranean maze to find themselves in a bowling alley, a children’s playroom and a theater.

Canada’s abandoned wonders include greying neoclassical banks in downtown Toronto, forgotten asylums, beautiful Beaux Arts hydro power stations and a ghost town so eerily well-preserved it feels like it’s still 1980. A nation this large in terms of land mass, with wide swaths of nearly unpopulated countryside, is bound to be full of interesting architecture left behind by the steady march of progress, and the Great White North certainly doesn’t disappoint.

Toronto’s Forgotten Neoclassical Banks, Ontario

A historic landmark in downtown Toronto that has been sadly neglected, the bank at 205 Yonge Street boasts a beautiful neoclassical facade that has darkened to a gloomy gray over the past century. Built in 1905, the Bank of Toronto and adjacent Canadian Bank of Commerce seem starkly out of place in all their aged gothic dilapidation, surrounded by the glittering glass of more modern buildings. Both banks have been empty for some time. The Bank of Commerce has been vacant since 1986, while the Bank of Toronto was occupied by Heritage Toronto until roughly 2001. A jazz and blues venue called the Colonial Tavern once took up the space between them, but has since been demolished, the site turned to a mini-park. Developers recently purchased the property and supposedly intend to restore the Bank of Commerce as part of a hotel project, though the fate of its neighbor is still up in the air, and none of the plans are final. Blog Toronto’s Jonathan Castellino gained access to the interior of the Bank of Toronto in 2009.

Riverview Hospital, Vancouver, British Columbia

Chances are, you’ve seen this hospital before – many times. It has appeared in dozens of movies and television shows, including The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Psych, Caprica, Fringe, Halloween: Resurrection and even the Christmas movie Elf. It didn’t close until 2012, but many of its historic buildings were already abandoned by that time, and its decline has been swift. When the hospital opened in 1913 as ‘The Hospital for the Mind,’ it housed just 350 patients, but that population grew to 4,500 by the 1950s. Like so many other large mental health facilities, Riverview lost patients rapidly during the ’60s and ’70s as the approach to simply put mentally ill people ‘away’ for life came to be seen as inhumane. The interiors, as photographed by Shoes on Wires, are certainly horror-movie-creepy, with holes in the ceilings, furniture and fixtures strewn around, and moss growing all over the place.

Toronto Power Generating System, Ontario

Have you ever seen such a beautiful power station in your life? Built in 1903, this Beaux Arts hydro-electric power station was designed by Toronto architect E.J. Lennox to power the city of Toronto. It’s located on the banks of the Niagara River just upstream from Niagara Falls. It closed in 1974 and was designated a national historic site in 1983. Despite still being filled with industrial equipment, the inside looks like a palace, the rusting remains of turbines contrasting with intricately scrolled marble trim.

An urban explorer at Opacity.us, who took these photographs, writes “The Toronto Power Station looked like a massive stone crypt in the early light, standing majestic and alone beside the raging water… once inside the main generator hall, I started setting up my gear over an unassuming metal grate in the floor. Some debris on the grate fell through the square holes as I slid my backpack closer, perhaps a rock or rusty bolt; I snapped awake when I heard the ting at the bottom of the shaft – it was extremely delayed. Could it really be that deep?”

Canada Malting Plant, Montreal, Quebec

One of the last remaining sets of industrial silos in Toronto sits on the edge of the harbor, offering urban explorers who manage to gain access and ascend to its rooftops a stunning view of the skyline (including the city’s iconic CN Tower.) Built in 1928 to store malt for the Canada Malting Company, the complex includes stark modernist concrete towers housing 15 wooden silos. It was abandoned in 1980s but protected by the city due to its historic and architectural value, and officials have considered adapting it for all sorts of interesting new uses, from a museum to a theme park. Most of the secondary buildings have been demolished, but the silos still stand. The site Abandoned EU took photos of the progression of demolition from 2007 to 2010.

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Great Blight North 7 Abandoned Wonders Of Canada

Sometimes, the setting of a film is almost more important than the plot itself, and that’s particularly true with abandoned places. Crumbling ruins of hospitals, prisons, houses, schools and other facilities seem to host echoes of past residents and events, often radiating a sense of trauma and loss. Of course, the catch – at least, in fiction and fantasy – is that these places aren’t really abandoned after all. Here are 10 (more!) abandonments, real and invented, that feature prominently in scary movies and television shows.

Abandoned Sanitorium – Death Tunnel

Death Tunnel may not be the greatest horror film ever made, but it’s the setting that’s the real star of the show. This 2005 movie about five college women locked into a Kentucky hospital where 63,000 people died from a disease known as the ‘white plague’ was filmed at the real life Waverly Hills Sanitorium in Louisville. And that part about thousands of people dying there? It’s actually true. Treated with little more than fresh air and sunlight in an era before antibiotics, the tuberculosis patients admitted to the hospital invariably ended up in the 500-foot tunnel located beneath the hospital, called a ‘body chute.’ The dead were secretly lowered into the tunnel and loaded on a train so that the remaining patients wouldn’t give up hope that they’d get out alive.

Built in 1910, Waverly Hills closed in 1961 after the advent of advanced medical care drastically reduced the number of patients coming in. Plans are underway to turn it into a hotel that will play up its ‘haunted’ history.

Abandoned Town – Silent Hill

‘Silent Hill’ is based on a real place. This seemingly fictional setting of a series of video games and a movie is based on Centralia, a borough of Pennsylvania that has been abandoned as a result of a mine fire that has burned underground since 1962. Prior to the 1980s, it had about 1,000 residents; there are just a handful left today despite the town being condemned. The blaze beneath Centralia has opened steam pits, sink holes and carbon monoxide vents. The fictional Silent Hill is located in West Virginia, and the reasons for its abandonment are far more frightening.

Abandoned House: The Abandoned

In the 2006 film The Abandoned, an adopted American film producer returns to her hometown in Russia after receiving a phone call from a notary public that she had inherited her family’s abandoned farm. When Marie arrives at the house to learn more about the family she never knew, a man tells her he received the same phone call, and that they’re twins. But once inside, the pair find that the dead residents of the house don’t really want them to leave.

Hidden Subway Tunnel Under London – Raw Meat

Released overseas as ‘Death Line’, Raw Meat is a 1973 movie set in an abandoned subway tunnel under London. Inspired by the many real-life abandoned tube stations of the area, Raw Meat envisions these creepy, darkened subterranean settings filled with a family of cannibals descended from Victorian railway workers.

Abandoned City – New York in I Am Legend

The idea of a once-bustling metropolis utterly abandoned (by humans, anyway) serves as fodder for all sorts of fiction, from books to films. The 2008 adaptation of ‘I Am Legend’ starring Will Smith is just one of many giving us a glimpse of what New York City might look like if it were allowed to fall into ruin, taken back over by the forces of nature. Smith stars as a lone survivor of an epidemic that has turned most of the population into bloodthirsty mutants.

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Abandoned On Film 15 Terrifying Desolate Movie Settings

It’s not just the morbid and macabre horror movie ambiance of abandoned psychiatric facilities that makes them so haunting and fascinating; it’s the shadows of the people who often lived their entire lives there. Toothbrushes hanging on hooks, bedding still wadded on cots, wheelchairs and patient records are stark reminders of the humanity that once existed between these walls. Photographer Jeremy Harris has documented many of the structures still standing in a series called ‘Abandoned American Asylums: The Moral Architecture of the Nineteenth Century.’

Harris has been sneaking into abandoned asylums since 2005 to take his photos. The series includes just about everything you’d expect: peeling paint, foreboding hallways and a whole lot of rusting metal. But there are also faded murals, grand theaters and bowling alleys.

In the 19th century, a large number of people – whether seriously mentally ill or not – were institutionalized against their will, often left in hospitals their entire lives without visits from family. At the time, mental illness was often thought of as a moral or spiritual failing. Circumstances improved by the 20th century, in most facilities.

Mother Jones produced a video about the photo project. You can also read more about early psychiatric hospitals and asylums at the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and see the rest of the photos at Jeremy Harris’ website.

Rusted sea forts, top-secret submarine bases, sprawling military hospital complexes and entire islands still stand as silent reminders of wars long past, from Ukraine to New York’s Hudson River. These seven monumental wonders of abandoned military architecture are steeped in history, often still littered with decommissioned aircraft and pieces of weaponry.

RAF Stenigot, England

(images via: urban spaceman)

Massive, alien-looking radar dishes litter the landscape at RAF Stenigot, a World War II-era radar station in Lincolnshire, England. Part of the Chain Home radar network, which was intended to provide long range early warning for raids, the site continued to serve for other communication purposes after the war and was decommissioned in 1980. Most of it was demolished by 1996, but four tropospheric scatter dishes still remain, along with a few other structures.

Russian Island Base in the Sea of Japan

(images via: english russia)

A small horseshoe-shaped island in the Sea of Japan that was once the setting of a war over its gold resources, Askold has been abandoned for decades. In 1892, the Headquarters of the Vladivostok Fortress created a permanent observation post there, and it became a point of tension between Russia and Japan. The island is cluttered with the remains of what little was built or left behind – the base of a long-gone pier, derelict lighthouses, rusted artillery, a power station, a command post, barracks and a handful of vehicles.

The island has never been inhabited, and is rarely visited by tourists due to the difficulty of reaching it from the mainland. Unused since World War II, much of the infrastructure has crumbled, and one part of the island is now inaccessible after the collapse of a bridge. Though it was once a place of war, Askold is now remarkably peaceful – and still, incidentally, full of gold.

Beelitz Heilstätten Military Hospital, Berlin

(images via: arcanum, studiospecialplace, 28dayslater)

This beautiful abandoned 19th century sanitarium complex located in Beelitz, just outside Berlin, was used by the Germans as a military hospital through the second World War and then occupied by the Russians for the same purpose until 1995, well after the German reunification. It was abandoned altogether in 2000. Surrounded by pine woods, the hospital complex consists of about 60 buildings including a surgery, psychiatric ward and rifle range. Its most infamous patient is none other than Adolf Hitler, who recuperated there after an injury sustained in World War I in 1916.

Some of the buildings have been painstakingly restored by a German preservation group, but most of them are left to ruin. It’s a popular destination for urban explorers in the area, but of course, not everyone goes there just to enjoy the bittersweet beauty of such an ornate decaying complex. In 2008, a photographer lured a model to the abandoned operating theater for a photo shoot, and murdered her. Its dark history also includes a period before it was abandoned when a serial killer known as The Beast of Beelitz began to terrorize local women connected to the sanatorium, strangling them with pink lingerie.

People who live in or near the restored buildings do so with caution. Local architect Michael Wetzlaugk bought and converted one of the outbuildings to live with his family, but stresses that he and his son are accomplished marshal artists with a collection of exotic weapons.

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7 Abandoned Wonders Of Military Architecture