Sometimes I get tired of finding new locations or I just lack inspiration. It’s at these times I like to hand the torch over to my travel companions and tell them to pick a place. I’m always happy to drive and the surprise of these adventures ticks off my ever expanding need for novelty.
On this day the choice was to go to Gay City State Park – a location in Connecticut that came up as a FaceBook suggestion to my travel companion. Let’s go!
Gay City State Park was easy enough to get to but they were taking trees down at the entrance when we drove up so we had to wait for them to move it out of the way. From there there was a really large parking lot for a park. This place was sort of huge. We followed several other people who were already out walking their dogs. They all made their way to a shut off road that goes straight into the center of the park. It had a toll booth and all. To the side there was a campground and signs were up for swimming holes, By Scouts, and various other activities. I am glad I didn’t come to this place during the summer season. It looks like it’d be flooded with children escaping the city. In this sense it was a lot like Rangeley, just bigger. What were we here to see again?
“The remnants of a ghost town.”
OK then! We took what looked like the main trail and began to hike into the woods. It was a pretty easy trail, a few mild inclines here and there but nothing too bad. Since it was gray and threatening to rain on this day the bare trees took on a bit of a foreboding appearance. When we came to a fork in the trail we just started walking down random branches of it. I have no idea how my travel companion can find his way back after doing this – I never could. One wrong turn and I’m screwed. We did eventually come across the foundation of an old house aside the trail. Ferns grew out of the walls and gave it a bit of a Secret Garden kind of feeling. Still, we’re a both a bit jaded at this point having seen quite a few ruins, we had to ask was this it? We continued to hike. Luckily it wasn’t raining yet and the temperature was perfect for a brisk walk through the leaf litter.
Eventually we made our way back to the main path which was supposed to have a ruined mill on it and sure enough it wasn’t long before we found it. I’ve seen lots of ruined and abandoned mills but this one was old! Only part of the foundation remained (after the structure burned down on three separate occasions) and it was not messing around. I’m pretty sure it’ll still be there in another 100 years! It made me wonder what it looked like when it was fresh and new and how many people worked here. I took some time wandering around taking somewhat artsy photos. It was worth the trip!
There’s rumors of a few weird terribly New England-y murders happening here back in the day when the town was thriving. Some people pay for permits to camp so they can ghost hunt at night. We did not… for we had other places to go!
We wandered back to the car to explore a second destination. There was supposed to be an abandoned missile silo from the 1950’s hidden just eight miles away. However the GPS just brought up to a random neighborhood and there was no indication there was a trail, an appropriate place to park, or anything else you might think would go with such a destination. We didn’t even bother getting out of the car. Instead we headed to our third and final destination of the day – the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry.
On the way to Holy Land USA we passed a sign reading Gillette Castle which sounded familiar. I decided if we had the time and I noticed the sign on the way back that I was going to check it out, but I didn’t tell my travel companion, instead letting this detour be a spontaneous surprise. Coming home and a mile from the exit I saw the sign again and asked him to look it up to see if it was anything worth it because I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was.
After a moment he looked down at his phone and yelled, “YEP! Worth it! Take the exit!”
I just smiled. Most people I travel with get a bit flustered with me being so unpredictable. Going to a specified destination is always fun — going to a completely random one on the fly is arguably more fun. Besides when you’ve been kicking around the road for as long as I have you start remembering things you might like to see and like a moth to flame you just end up there at random…
So far my visit to Connecticut showed me a state that more or less just felt like a huge suburban backyard for NYC. Maybe this why even people in New England seem to have an indifferent attitude towards Connecticut… it feels… different. But now I was driving through a little town it was feeling a bit more familiar. Everything here was super well kept and quaint. A little Mayberry if you will. I however was once again back to scaring the shit out of my passenger because we found ourselves in the Prius going up a 90 degree hill which was also a hairpin turn.
“TWENTY-FIVE! The speed limit is TWENTY-FIVE!”
“Yes, but if we dip below 20 this car is going to slide back down the hill and there’s a car behind us!”
“Oh my God!”
We were lucky we went before it snowed. The Prius would have never made it up, going 27 MPH or not.
I followed signs (and my travel companions phone suggestions) to the park, again not knowing what to expect. As we drove in there was a nice little paved road through the park like you’d see in a typical city set up. However, we were both caught completely off guard when we drove up to this profoundly beautiful (but dry) manmade lake/fountain overshadowed by a little hobbit bridge. So quaintly pretty! It was like being in an English countryside!
“Where do we park?”
“Just wait, there will be parking at the end I’m sure…” And indeed I was right. There was parking just behind a huge castle!
We hopped out of the car, knowing we were on a two hour time constraint before the park was closed and gated up. This place was grand! I was not expecting anything quite so massive but here was what looked like a real castle…. overlooking a serene riverside scene. To add to the Gothic flair two turkey vultures circled overhead. I immediately wanted to attend a Gothic wedding here. I didn’t even care whose. Just a big Gothic wedding.. with at least one black-clad bride. Yep. I’d be so happy to attend.
The 24-room, 14,000 square foot castle is apparently furnished and normally open to the public but has been blocked off since the Covid pandemic. We both immediately decided that we would be back to peer inside when this whole thing blows over. In the meanwhile we wandered around the outside taking photos and admiring the dragon gargoyle jutting off the side.
The castle took 5 years to build and was completed in 1919 costing a cool million dollars at the time (that’s over 15.5 million dollars today.) It was the creation of an eccentric stage actor by the name of William Gillette who retired here with his seventeen cats. He was apparently quite the character and built into his home a series of secret passageways and spy mirrors to help him make a “dramatic entrance” when entertaining guests. Unsurprisingly he died in 1937 without any heirs and left a bizarre will reading the estate was not to go to any “blithering sap-head who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded.” Somehow this resulted in the state of Connecticut buying the property in 1943 for the low-low sum of five thousand dollars. It languished in ruin until a four year eleven million dollar restoration project allowed it to reopen to the public in 2002. And boy is it worth it!
We wandered off after thoroughly checking out the outside of the castle. To the side of it was an old train platform. Apparently at one time it ran a private rail 3 miles onto the property.
“This is the kind of place we could fortify for the apocalypse.” My travel companion plotted.
“Well there is a huge root cellar, access to the river, and my God it’s peaceful up here.”
We found ourselves a trail and tried to make our way to the weird hobbit bridge with nothing but our broken sense of direction. This resulted in a delightful face-paced walk through what seemed an enchanted wood. There were lovely slate outcroppings, some nice view of the bogs, and random ruins such as disused wells smattered about. We found our way to a tunnel, perhaps part of the old train rail? We walked into it. It was super dark and cold. Had a weird feel about it but I suppose any place like that does. On the way back I’d joyfully suggest we go through it without our phone flashlights. I found this more enjoyable and less creepy!
Meanwhile the trails in the woods eventually did bring us to the fountain and bridge which made for a lovely photo opportunity and I am sure would have been far prettier in the summer when it’s full of water and not swamp mud and dead leaves.
On our way back we found an old wooden trestle that had partially collapsed and took a few photos. By now it was getting late and we had our nice little walk. It was a fun day and this was the perfect detour to add to it. When we found ourselves back to the car the turkey vulture swooped very low above us and showed its immense size. And then a stairway on the hillside caught my travel companion’s eye so up we went to check out this last little nook. Up above there were a series of picnic tables and another strange little ruin. I am not sure what it was but it was fun to poke at. Maybe it was a tower? Who knows.
When we drove out of that place we were WELL satisfied but the day wasn’t done with us yet because only a few miles down the road I found myself forking over $5 to drive the Prius onto a “historic ferry.” I’ve been on a car ferry before… in Europe…. but never in the US! And this was a hell of a ride. The expanse between the river banks was shockingly wide. And what do you know – I am still phobic of boats. I was fine until it started moving and then I wasn’t so fine. I know, it’s a ferry, chill. I calmed down but it took me a moment. I was still happy to get to the other side… feeling accomplished. Exposure therapy? Something.
ANYWAY, I’d highly recommend the castle and even the ferry ride to other explorers, travelers, and lovers of the strange and unusual.
UPDATE:
Last week we realized the castle was once again open for visitors to see the inside so of course we had to go for a repeat trek. We were not disappointed!
There weren’t many people there that day – just a few families and a tour of elderly including an 84 year old man who looked great for such an advanced age and a woman he was travelling with that had the Muppets theme song for her ringtone (how adorable is that??) ANYWAY… we parked in their super sunny parking lot, slipped on our required masks, and went inside the information center to buy tickets to the castle. They only allowed 15 people at a time in at any given point and tour guides stood in various locations to answer questions. The first was a young woman with a lot of enthusiasm for her job who delighted in showing us all how cat-proofed the castle was since it was more or less dedicated to the seventeen felines that shared Gillette’s life. Cute little froggy knickknacks were literally cemented to the fireplace so the little furry bastards couldn’t knock them off. An ornate table nearby clacked to life when it was realized it’s elaborate wooden skirt was actually built to be a cat toy. This place was awesome just for that but it got better…
The doors were all unique contraptions with complex steam punk mechanisms carved into them. The light switches matched. And if that wasn’t enough to love the wonderfully weird mind that came up with this then the description of his life here really settled it. On the balcony overlooking the first floor there were mirrors placed everywhere so he could tell who was in the house and where. If it was someone he didn’t like he’d retreat to his bedroom and pretend not to be there (and introvert’s dream!) Or if he was in the mood to be playful, which seemed to often be the case, he could lock wandering souls into the adjoining bar. The only exit was obviously a trick door – I mean at that point, why not? And watching them scratch around like rats in search of an escape probably amused him more than it should have.
Gillette grew to be an increasingly intriguing figure as we made our way through his castle. He was a stage actor in NYC whose claim to fame (and fortune) came from his performance as Sherlock Holmes. He was even cited as being the one who added the line, “It’s elementary, my dear fellow!” (which was later changed to Watson.) The castle was so far into the middle of nowhere he had to build his own train line to get there. Some of the stations still remain. And if all of that isn’t impressive enough he also wrote a popular play at the time about the Civil War and wrote a novel as well – a mystery novel with that I can only guess had intensely flowery language. If it were still being printed I would sooo have bought one from the gift shop but alas, there is only a copy in his little second floor art gallery in a little glass box. And that’s the other thing – a whole little art gallery full of paintings, books, and local history! The architecture equally as baffling as the rest of the castle. It was amazing. I love eccentric historical figures. They’re never boring. In fact with renovations still ongoing there was this odd playful feeling throughout the whole second floor. I pondered if maybe he wasn’t still lingering the halls. A copy of his most unusual will was displayed on the wall.
I’m super happy we went to this castle – twice. I will probably go again just because it’s so damn weird and beautiful. And outside the hiking trails around the property are just as quaint as can be and you can find tiny train stations and tunnels strewn about still, although the tracks are long since gone. I sort of naively hope maybe they’ll be replaced someday.
Holy Land USA, dubbed “Jesus’ Junkyard” by fellow enthusiasts is one of those places that I had heard about a lot in the past couple of years and had on my bucket list. I realize I have done painfully little in Connecticut but it’s a bit harder to get to than some of the other places in New England I have haunted on a more frequent basis. I may have continued to put this particular trip off except I mentioned it to my travel companion and how if I was going to go this year it’d have to be soon before it starts snowing. His eyes lit up and we started actual plans to go.
Holy Land USA was built in 1955 and enjoyed up to 40,000 visitors a year in its prime before being closed in 1984. The hope was to expand the site or move it elsewhere but it’s founder died in 1986 and it remained abandoned. Since then it’s been a bit of a morbid attraction to urban explorers like myself. It grew an even darker appeal in 2010 when a sixteen year old girl was raped and murdered under one of the crosses, bringing not just urban explorers to the site but paranormal investigators.
Obviously, we were going during the day just to see the ruins rather than exploit a tragedy. The last two abandoned amusement parks we went to were pretty much stand alone sites with not much around them. One had been turned into a park and one was nestled in the woods. I expected something similar with this but that just wasn’t the case. When I was maybe a mile off from my destination I found myself winding through a rough neighborhood in the middle of a proper city – Waterbury. This couldn’t be right. There couldn’t be an abandoned amusement park nestled in the hills amongst derelict homes smack dab in the middle of a city block – could it? I figured the internet and the GPS were once again conspiring to kill us. But then I drove up a hill to where it said the destination was and I’ll be damned… I was greeted with two big gates and a lot of signs all reading Holy Land. Huuuuuuuh. I guess Jesus really does love impoverished peoples.
There was no official parking lot, nor any clear place to park aside the street and no one else was here so I basically just scooted the car as far as I could off the road (which wasn’t much) and we got out. Initially visitors used to be discouraged from coming here but it’s been such a popular destination that locals gave up trying to police this and instead put up signs saying no visitors after dark. Fair enough.
We were the only ones here at this point so we headed in. The gates were purely aesthetic as the park itself was not fenced in and we were able to just waltz right in. We were greeted with a little entrance that gave three options, “Jerusalem, Holy Land, Bethlehem.” It must have been made for a shorter generation as I barely got under it without ducking. Beyond this was what looked to be a tiny ruined city reminiscent of the apocalypse. The Virgin Mary lived on here… behind bars in a cave. Morbid.
There were trails remaining around the park and through the weeds as well as a circle of pavement around the back. We made our way through reading some of the signs that had been repainted. I was particularly amused by one that said, “Jesus speaks to the women.” Ah yes, the women, I remember them well. What did he say to them? Go back to the kitchen and make me a sandwich? Maybe. There was no further explanation.
We eventually got to the top of this hill where the crosses were. I guess they’re still lit up at night. The one on it’s own read, “Our Lady of Peace” but was wrapped in barbed wire. It was a jarring juxtaposition that my travel companion noticed first while I was busy taking in the view. We were high above the neighborhood we’d driven through and I could see a large chunk of the city from this vantage point – houses, churches, a decrepit mill, the winding highway… It was very interesting! An unexpected bonus.
We walked around and found the saddest Tower of Babel ever, standing a mere few feet in height. A set of three crosses also overlooked the city. And then I found Satan! I think, anyway. He came in the form of an adorable serpent sunbathing on the pavement. I’d never seen a bright green snake like this just roaming free in New England and wondered if he wasn’t someone’s lost pet but a quick Google search revealed he was Smooth Green Snake, totally native to the area. Wasn’t expecting to see a new species today! We took a few photos and let the poor beast be…
“Everywhere we go seems to take two hours of driving and thirty minutes of messing around and then back in the car to drive two hours home.”
“Well, I mean…. we can find somewhere else to go…”
And so on the way home we did end up at a second and actually far more impressive location. The Gillette Castle.
After escaping the velociraptors in the Enchanted Forest we continued our adventuring to yet another abandoned amusement park in Rhode Island. This one was more familiar to my travel companion as he was here in the mid 1990’s before it was abandoned making happy childhood memories. Curranty it’s been transformed into a regular park. Most of the rides were taken apart and sold or thrown away but some structures still remain on the grounds, now accompanied by little plaques!
Actually the park is very pretty even without the added allure of a decaying amusement park. It sits next to the ocean and there’s a lot of open space to run around and enjoy. Upon entering we were greeted with the remains of an old gondola ride – cables and pulleys reaching for the sky, rusted in place. It was pretty dramatic.
As I walked along a fledgling screech owl flopped to the ground at my feet. I was a little stunned, didn’t know if the tiny beast was OK, and started to walk towards him when he gave me that familiar look that I am accustomed to seeing from a cat, the one that says, “I MEANT TO DO THAT! Don’t look at me!” And with that he made a very klutzy return to the air. It was an event that only took a few seconds but it delighted me.
People were fishing on the docks, several children were flying kites on the grass, and we were moseying about reading the plaques. Apparently this place was where the first presidential phone call was administered in a very public setting. The whole story was recounted on this plaque: (or not as the photo doesn’t want to upload…)
But as interesting as that history we were here to poke around the weird structures. By now we couldn’t even figure out what they were anymore. Weeds and vegetation had taken its toll and it just wasn’t obvious anymore without the help of the plaques. Still my travel companion wanted to see the caves which were reportedly a little teenage escape back in the day… hidden from the rest of the park they would take the Gondola ride up there and jump off to meet clandestinely.
So we made our way up there and there was indeed a little rocky alcove with a few caves. Clearly teenagers were still living it up in the area as there was the usual scattering of broken glass, used condoms, and F*ck Tr*mp graffiti. Ah, the passion and the angst. I goddamn love you little delinquents.
We scrambled about the rocks going deeper and deeper into the woods before deciding to head back. It was a fun little escape and this park endeared me to it. We got to see some creepy trees, the haunted house, and what remains of the swing before we left. It was a good time all around and the perfect fall day to attend such a place.
Last week’s adventures had a theme – abandoned theme parks! And we started with this one which was… an adventure. It always is.
It was another FaceBook suggestion which I have found to be a total coin toss when it comes to being worth it. I thought this was the place with the abandoned fairy village but no, that was a different Facebook suggestion which I will refind later.
In fact this place was kind of hard to find. It wasn’t really around too much civilization which you would expect of a theme park… The GPS played a few games with the street address before we finally arrived. There was a decrepit sign aside the road that led to a terrifyingly rough parking lot which had been nearly completely taken over by weeds and shrubs. The parking lot was paved but that isn’t’ saying much considering there was grass jutting out from the many cracks in it. This was like all the photos you see of current day Chernobyl, probably the sketchiest place we’ve been yet!
Things got even more creepy as we made our way towards the woods and found… a couch! Why? I have no goddamn idea but here it was, covered in spray paint, torn apart, but still in bizarrely good condition considering which suggests it hadn’t been there for long. Clearly this was where local teenagers came to drink. Been finding a lot of their secret hiding places as of late… maybe I am trying to find my own inner teen who didn’t really have much of a life back in the day, certainly less adventure than I do now.
Beyond the couch there were trails, of a sort, although there were no signs, no markers, no real suggestion that they were for people and not just overgrown deer paths. This place was supposed to have ruins scattered about but we didn’t come across much until we were fairly far down these paths. The first things looked like maybe the roof of a doghouse? And a wishing well nearby. From there we found what looked like an abandoned mini barn which some delightfully positive delinquent spray painted, “Someone loves you!” on the front of. You got to love life affirming graffiti. You, my dear tagger, have it right. Keep on shining!
The insides were of course covered and more typical of what you might expect. From here we crossed a little bridge, found some sort of open storage house decaying out here with perfectly good PVC still stacked up under them. From he we ended up wandering cluelessly onto a nearby golf course before going back into the woods from whence we came. This place was so overtaken with vegetation I felt like we were urban explorers trekking through Ingene Island trying to dodge nests of velociraptors…. and maybe a few pterodactyls.
When we came back to the parking lot I noticed trees blocked all of the Enchanted Forest’s sign except for what looked like “The END.” Fitting! And creepy! And of course when we got back to the car the one other person there had emerged from the thicket and was looking suspiciously at us. He was clearly a teenager, loitering about, maybe waiting for friends and we… were probably just a confusing sight to him with our unfamiliar baby faces.
In Part Two of last week’s Maine adventure I learned about my family history. I was told my great grandmother had spent a great deal of time (more than three years) in a sanitorium where she was being quarantined as a tuberculosis patient. It was called the Central Maine Sanitorium. It was a trying time for the family that clearly had a negative impact but beyond that I knew very little about this particular event… until by happenstance I was talking to a random person on FaceBook who mentioned an abandoned sanitorium in Fairfield Maine. Could it be the very same?
My great grandmother standing in the Central Maine Sanitorium
I did some digging. There was an epidemic of tuberculosis in Maine that resulted in a great deal of people being thrown out into the streets because their family did not want to catch this disease. This resulted in several tent cities being formed, one of which was in Fairfield Maine. At some point the problem became too big for a mere tent city and the state stepped in and built two large facilities for tuberculosis patients. The one built in Hebron was called the Western Maine Sanitorium and this was where patients who were expected to recover went. The other one built over the tent city in Fairfield was called the Central Maine Sanitorium and patients that were sent here were of only the most severe cases, basically expected to die. I guess that explains why she was there for over three years and could not receive visitors in all that time.
This photo was found in my family albums we *think* it’s of the sanitorium. If it’s not feel free to comment and tell me what it really is.
Basically what had started as a vague curiosity during a random conversation with a stranger turned into something a little more meaningful. I had to go but urban exploration isn’t really what I specialize in… though I do love it, it can be dangerous, and so I felt better dragging someone along. And so this became the one most important destination that week as I dragged an equally curious hostage behind me.
Initially I had a hard time finding this place as I once again got the wrong address and wasn’t even on the right road but once that was amended it was an easy drive down a sleepy street. It didn’t look like anyone cared about this place anymore although someone had put a For Sale sign up. I do not know if it was for this property or the neighboring acres though…
In any event a small parking lot was still there and even though two buildings that were still on the site were boarded up someone had unceremoniously de-boarded them. The structure was in perfectly fine condition for poking. There wasn’t any rotting floorboards or anything like that.
We initially started in the first floor but it was all boarded up and so dark we couldn’t see a thing. Our cell phone flashlights barely penetrated the darkness. It was… unusually dark. However light came in through all the windows upstairs and the place seemed alive. Graffiti decorated almost all the walls. A few pieces of furniture and equipment remained along with a sign requesting to keep the door closed. An elevator languished in in a pit but otherwise the structure seemed pretty intact.
There’d been whispers this place was haunted but the only odd feeling I got was when I entered what I think was the nurses’ area. Here I felt dutiful, fulfilled, like whoever was still here was still doing good work for the people. It was interesting. I wouldn’t expect to get that feeling in what essentially was a hospice. Still, it was pleasant. I suspect most of the spirits here had long enough to come to terms with their own deaths before finding their way elsewhere. I must admit though that I was a little heartsick to find a room painted in pastels… was it a nursery? A nursey in a ward devoted to consumption? Surely, babies can not generally recover from such a thing.
I took a bunch of photos with my cell phone having forgotten my camera. It’d already been a long day before we arrived. In any event this place is a photographer’s dream – so many weird angles, lighting, and decay. Just watching the paint fleck off the wall was amazing. I could see whole photo shoots done here – maybe even little horror movies.
Certainly the local teens knew about this place. I was entertained by their graffiti which distressed my travel companion. He lamented it was frustrated with too many tags dissing each other by name and using pretty profane language. C bombs and N bombs danced with lesser slurs of slut, bitch, and whore, you know, the usual sprinkling of misogyny. I couldn’t help but laugh. That’s small town life for ya… when you live somewhere that everyone knows you the only thing of value you tend to have at that age is your reputation. That’s what makes it such a delicious target for others with a chip on their shoulder. That explains the need for such fiercely negative language. It has to be the worst, although these little delinquents miss the fact that two white teenagers slinging the N bomb at each other isn’t edgy, it’s utterly meaningless. As it should be!
The graffiti wasn’t all bad though. Some had some artistic merit or humor to it. There was a very Beetlejuice-like “exit” painted on a brick wall in one of the closets. A cute plague doctor did his rounds nearby. Another room amped up the horror by scrawling “grandma’s house” on the peeling wallpaper while a little ways away another piece of art cheerfully stated, “I am a cat!”
Outside I walked around the building a little bit and came to a second much smaller building that I thought at first was a garage for ambulances or something like that. However in walking in I came across a somewhat unnerving sight – a single chair sat overlooking the door, behind it was a large furnace and what appeared to be a cast iron crematorium with space for four cadavers. You’d think I would be a little creeped out by this, especially since by this time I found myself alone, but it was such a beautiful day and I didn’t feel anything lingering HOWEVER my camera seemed to disagree. This one photo I took came out with a mysterious fog over it for no reason whatsoever.
Onto the galleries! Because I took SO MANY PICTURES!
Up first are my Black and Whites…
Abandoned Sanitoriums always look better in black and white.
