Life is a wonderful thing and no matter how scary change can be sometimes you have to remember that life is meant for experiencing new things, and getting out there and taking insane chances and risks.

Abandoned Building Quest

Ghostly and eerie are two words to describe the abandoned Vallejo California's Mariner's Island. This area is quite surreal to say the least. Back in    the island was used as a Military Base, and the island is split up by warehouses, closed down shops, abandoned apartments, old world homes, and modern day developments. The road going in is a one way 3 lane road and the roads going out are one way 2 lanes. The island is giant and much of it is very secluded, if something were to happen to you no one would have any clue. I ventured in and out of graffiti covered warehouses and wandered past old beat up abandoned buildings with broken windows, trashed entry ways with broken glass and remnants from old car parts and large car tires.









The first building was the underneath of an extra large abandoned warehouse that seemed to have been a tile company of some kind many years back. We snuck in through the bottom garage's rusty pull up door and were thankful to have flashlights in hand because what we saw was pure darkness. No light in sight, but only the outline of sunlight from outside on a couple of the doors and that sure didn't do much to take away from the pitch black surroundings. 








Closed Up Abandoned Building

The next building resembled a factory, and it stood 3 stories high with broken windows and what it seemed to be graffiti covered walls on the inside. This is a great area for graffiti artists and explorers alike. Anything with the abandoned feel is pretty creepy so there is no getting around that, but when you have the whole abandoned feel along with the unknown ahead of you it is a bit scary, these buildings could have easily had people living in them, no problem. I didn't get the chance to look inside this one unfortunately, because it was all locked up if someone else hadn't broken into it probably wouldn't have been very hard, but it's already been ramsacked!







The third place we went to was super strange, it was an old abandoned shopping mall and it definately gave me a creepy vibe, but only because I saw the extra large pitch black warehouse in the back. I am going to be honest on this one, as soon as I saw how dark it was and how deep it went back I chose to turn around. I was too scared of what I would find in there. If anyone needed a place to live this could be it. The parking lot for the mall was super big, I am assuming that it got a lot of clientele back in its day. This could be a great place to throw a rave or party, but people would have to park far away so as not to attract any sort of attention. 







Extra Large Safe

The next building had an awesome courtyard, when it was in use I bet it was in top notch shape. This building was more intriguing than creepy. At first I was a tad spooked, but overall I was interested. I dared to go in and I am glad I did. Inside there were old vaults that are insanely heavy, the property is owned by the government I think, but I'm not sure. This place looks like it was a bank or a place that handled a lot of money. It is gigantic inside and it has great sound proof-like walls. It felt very disaster proof to me like as if they had built it with top notch materials in case of a disaster of some sort. I definately enjoyed checking this one out.


Last was the abandoned apartment complex with probably a good 100 apartments or more. This place was scary, I mean horrifying. I couldn't stand to be there for more than a minute or two, it gave me the worst feeling ever. There were three parts to the large complex, and in the middle was a gym kind of set up, and broken glass everywhere. No one put any effort out to keep this place locked up whatsoever. There were broken windows and glass was all over the ground on the first level and second level as well. The third and fourth levels were still in tact. I could see that several doors were closed on the upper levels and could have easily had someone living in several of them still even though it had been abandoned for years. This place was terrifying, and when I fist set my eyes on the complex I then realized where people get these gruesome skin crawling ideas for horror movies. I guess you can say that I got the best for last or more like the biggest scare for last. I got a terrible feeling and insisted on leaving, my boyfriend was mad at me because he loves checking this kind of thing out, for too long to add. I finally got annoyed and sick of asking to leave so I started the somewhat long walk back to my car, and all of the sudden a beat up old car came driving in the parking lot, and I thought for sure we were dead meat! I was like, oh my freakin god we are going to get massacred, we've gotten in someone's space, they don't want us here they're going to chop us up in little pieces. So with this in mind I changed my walking to running! My boyfriend even got scared, this was the funny part, he won't admit it but it is absolutely true. Come to find out it was a guy teaching his daughter how to drive in the abandoned parking lot, it just seemed super strange due to the fact that no one was around and there were tons of places he could have done that closer in towards the freeway than where we were. Long story short, we made it out alive and I got to see a totally cinematic side of Northern California, something that I'd never really seen before, and life is about new experiences. We must push ourselves to do what we don't want to do and we must try to make every moment an awesome positve one.