Urban Haunts

This post has been several days in the gathering and it's central theme is a bit... scattered. But still, lots of fun stuff. And lots of links. So maybe you should go grab yourself a cup of cider or some equally seasonal brew and take your time enjoying all the visual hauntiness.

I follow this blog/website, Urban Ghosts Media, on Twitter because I love all the urban decay photos. This post was particularly yummy, with photos of assorted abandoned mansions. You really need to go see all the photos, it's hard to pick a favorite, but I'll borrow just this one, to whet your appetite:

The website has information on where and who and when etc., on each of the images.

Vanessa, of A Fanciful Twist, also put up a wonderful spooky mansion post recently. All about the house used in the movie Practical Magic, which pretty much tops my I WANT TO LIVE IN THAT HOUSE!! List. I'm embarrassed to admit how much I grieved to discover that it isn't a real house, but instead an outside shell and inside room sets. But in my heart it still exists. So, it's not an abandoned mansion in the strictest sense of the term, but it sorta kinda is. Since it's a shell, haunted by it's fans.

More photos on Vanessa's post and also here at a fan website.

I've recently stumbled upon another house that sends my heart a-thumping. Check it out here. If the sheer gothic beauty of the house isn't enough to make you love it, it's owned, and haunted by the ghost loving author Neil Gaiman. So, not abandoned, but with an owner like that it qualifies as "pre-haunted", don't you think?

Here in this area, haunted mansions are somewhat hard to find. Mansions in general are sort of "thin on the ground". Just up the road from me there's this old retirement care home which wasn't a private home, but people did live in it, and it has become progressively more spooky over the last few years now that it's been abandoned. I've walked up to the area to take photos several times. It has lovely old "bones" and a very definite haunted quality.

This beautiful old "mansion" (or as big as a house gets for this community) sits on the highest street in town and it was actually empty when I took this photo. It was for sale and between owners. I kick myself to this day for forgetting to have a look through it when I had the opportunity. It seems the perfect witch's house in many ways. The new owners, I noticed recently, seem to be making small but incremental improvements to maintain it's beauty.

Yesterday Hubby and I went out to the local pumpkin patch (post about that soon!) and on the way back in we stopped to visit another "abandoned mansion", my folks' old house up in the mountains nearby. Okay, so it's not a mansion. But it does appear abandoned. Which is sad, it's a lovely piece of property and beautiful home. It's funny, I've always thought of it as being mansion-like, but alone and empty, it seemed a lot more diminutive than I remembered.

If you're not ready to give up all this architectural loveliness, I might have to do another post on all the amazing spooky Victorian images I discovered online when trying to put this post together. But that will have to wait for another day. It's October, and it's the weekend, which means it's time for football. This weekend is not only a night, but an entire weekend full of football. Not looking forward to the packing and the driving, but it will be fun once I get going, so, off I go!

Do you have any haunted mansions in your community?