Abandoned Detroit - The City of Neglect (Documentary)

there's no place that i'd rather be than on the open road with a map on my iphone full of abandoned locations there's nothing in this world that i'd rather be doing than urban exploring and being on that open road over the past 13 years i've been able to explore and travel all across the country and see some of the best abandoned locations that america has to offer however to me there is still no place like home and home is detroit and in my opinion detroit is still by far the best city in america for urban exploring decomposing bodies of 11 infants were found any type of building that you can think of any type of location you can think of detroit had it and it was abandoned highland park police station the evidence the knives used in stabbing it was something to experience at that time 87 of them vacant schools still to this day never seen anything like it [Music] hey how you doing i need two of them uh extra large french vanilla cappuccinos which i'll express on eating to try to stress all the time you know me too well hey how y'all doing my name is bob i'm from detroit michigan and i am an urban explorer [Music] i've been exploring for about 12 13 years now started in 2008 since 2020 oh yeah about that long how i got started urban exploring is a little bit weird and a little bit strange and uh without going into too much details i was a heroin addict um and i've been clean now for about 15 years but i was a heroin addict in detroit back in about 2003 2004 and i was hanging out with this og we call it he was older than me he was more experienced and he took me to places to get high shoot heroin uh squat those types of things well he kept talking about this squat that he knew that we'd go to so we went into this abandoned building literally to go in there and shoot heroin and hang out and when we were inside of this place he began telling me about the history of this ballroom well it looked like an abandoned i don't know it looked like a cave to me it was horrible it was dank dirty dark wet but he started telling me about you know the musicians that had played there janice joplin and the who and the mc5 and ted nugent and i was a little skeptical but i went with it and then he said let's go see the stage then it's prime it was the best place in the world to play the best place in the world whatever happened in detroit in those days royal took to rock and roll music was centered on the granny block case closed so we went upstairs and there was the stage and it was there and with all of its architectural details and the dance floor and the chandeliers it's just incredible and uh i didn't really think too much about it after that i remember reading about it online they think that day or the next day about that's how i found out it was the grandy ballroom and indeed these musicians had played there muddy waters jeff beckham joe cocker butterfly cream get out of here james scott the birds platewood mack johnny hooker rod stewart musical pinnacles on a regular basis when the who came to the grandy and they were acknowledged for what they really really were kept the band from just breaking up if that grandy show had not happened they would have just gone back to england and quit uh 2008 i had been clean for a couple years um i was in detroit for something uh and i was on that side of detroit for something i was driving down grand river my mom had just given me a point-and-shoot camera and this was not a fancy camera by any means but it was a nice point-and-shoot and i was messing around with it and i drove by the grandy ballroom and it was like this feeling of of i don't know it was like reminded me of when i was in there with that og so i pulled over stopped when it was open i went in i took my point and shoot and i actually photographed the stage some of the architectural details the dance floor and it was it was amazing like i had felt the music i could feel that the energy that was still inside this place even though it had been abandoned for 20 something years um and after leaving i think i i did a little more research and then i started looking into other things around detroit uh abandoned things and i came across this blog and this blog was detroit funk and uh he had an article at that time or shortly after that really got me into urban exploring and that article was the rape of jane cooper and jane cooper was in elementary school on detroit's east side that had been left open and left unsecured by detroit public schools so scrappers thieves vandals the curious went in and started stealing things and and scrapping and vandalizing and damaging and so he had done this article the rape of jane cooper about how these people had really torn apart this beautiful once beautiful school at that time he had done a few more schools after that like there was joy middle school and uh brewer so i actually went to those locations i went to jane cooper i went to joy middle school i went to brewer and i started with the point-and-shoot i started to photograph these locations and that was my first real urban exploration although at the time i didn't really know i was urban exploring or what that was but that was definitely my first first days and first times of urban exploring so i started exploring a little bit of a few of these schools and started exploring a little more and more there wasn't very many people doing it at that time especially in detroit really all over the country but uh there was a handful of people i was really basically a loner with my girlfriend at that time and uh i feel like there was this one group they were the survival crackers and and red wagner he was the man he was really the leader and i looked up to him i looked up to all the crackers but the survival crackers were doing this before me and they were really inspirational and motivating to me so i would run into them occasionally and these guys kind of showed me the ropes a little bit and they taught me some do's and don'ts and taught me about urban exploring and the turmeric and exploring what you should do and what you shouldn't do and things like that and uh red wagner um dave paris john amish some of those video clips are are just absolutely crazy they're wild they're nuts and you'll see some of their video clips on the documentary that you should be watching some of the the footage that you see is from the survival crackers so big shout out to those guys um they really influenced me uh and brought me in under their wing and kind of showed me the ropes and the way of urban exploring they had one location at detroit house of corrections these guys like i said their videos were and their stories are are wild they one of the survival crackers went into uh it was a prison ran in prison for house of corrections went into the jail cell and the door shut behind him somehow and got locked in himself talk about anxiety panic ugh so literally the only way the only thing they could do was call the police and say we're in this abandoned prison and our friend is locked in a jail cell and we cannot get him out they got in deep trouble for that by the way great story though that's good enough that'll work johnny if he means steve my name is steve when i was exploring all these abandoned buildings i really started going hard after about the first year or two and detroit at that time like i said didn't have a lot of explorers urban explorers but what they did have was a lot of abandoned buildings and actually detroit was considered the mecca at one time because of the amount of abandoned buildings that we had detroit had so many abandoned buildings in fact detroit had any type of building that you can think of any type of location you can think of detroit had it and it was abandoned whether it was downtown skyscrapers we had a graveyard of skyscrapers downtown detroit there was an article in the free press in 2004 that was called the dirty dozen and there was like towers of neglect 12 abandoned skyscrapers no other city had that like detroit did and we had bowling alleys funeral homes strip clubs churches banks grocery stores theaters arenas stadiums anything a zoo anything you can name we had it and it was abandoned and it was something to experience at that time and still to this day i've never seen anything like it so some of those locations you will definitely see some of that throughout this documentary um and detroit has really changed a lot over the last few years um detroit definitely is not the mecca anymore for uh abandoned buildings although we obviously still have our share it's definitely not the mecca the downtown area every single one of those dirty dozen towers of neglect skyscrapers have all been renovated and restored maybe one or a couple were demolished um but they restored the most of them detroit has really gotten out of they got out of bankruptcy they were able to uh recoup losses and um really reestablish the big three in the auto industry so a lot of things populations started coming back into the city and started getting funding and a lot of these places that i mentioned the churches the schools the theaters the bowling alleys the police stations uh this they ended up getting renovated or repurposed or restored uh unfortunately some got demolished in that process but i prefer renovating and restoring because we're still able to hold on to the history that way and the culture and they try to save some of the architectural details and a lot of times they even restore the uh former buildings uh or restore the buildings to their former glory and that's always incredible too as long as i've explored it before they start doing that all right so some of these locations uh that i want to mention also are the schools in detroit detroit had over 100 abandoned schools in the city alone i think the next city was chicago with like 50. so just imagine that every neighborhood in the city of detroit had a school and it was abandoned and that is no joke literally today i think they're still like 80 70 70 or 80. um they've obviously demolished some and renovated some restored some a new push to sell abandoned schools sitting vacant for years and vulnerable to thieves it's too expensive for the detroit school district to secure them so the goal is to unload them ronnie dahl is on detroit's northwest side and ronnie what can you tell us well some of these i think are going to be pretty hard for them to sell like crossman alternative high school we've told you about the terrible condition of this school before scrappers have taken just about anything and everything out of valuable out of this building maybe its greatest asset though is its location it's not far off the lodge freeway and there are plenty of other school buildings just like this one up for grabs when the detroit public school district ran into financial trouble schools were closed year after year they said decaying bringing down neighborhoods nearby residents pleaded for something to be done that day could be today school districts are found in the business of holding under real estate we educate children at a redevelopment conference the school district is trying to offload 120 properties 87 of them vacant schools in all different conditions the district realizes the schools used to be the fabric of a community sitting vacant is adding to a neighborhood's decline and taking valuable resources from educating kids they believe developers will be able to look beyond the destruction and see opportunity every dollar that we spend whether it's patrolling a building at night or re-securing securing a board that comes out or even running the electricity that keeps where there are alarms and video cameras as there are at a number of our our vacant properties all of that takes resources that could be better used some of the stories from these schools are some of my crazier stories that uh and some of the crazier things that i've ever experienced when i first started uh exploring there was not the security measures that aren't really involved in these places that there are today and a few years ago maybe 2010-2011 the schools were one of the first places to get security measures put in by detroit public schools probably because of the article about the rape of gene cooper maybe so they actually started to put metal sheets over the windows and doors called vps then there was also little motion sensor cameras inside of the schools and when somebody would enter a school it would strip the motion sensor and record and then this little video clip would be sent to the police and no we're not talking about detroit police because detroit police don't give a [ __ ] they're going to be like whatever but detroit public schools police whole different story these police officers legit police officers probably felt like they weren't respected like regular police officers so they really had to be tough and they had to be hard asses and it took me a few times of getting my head knocked before i finally caught on i got arrested i think it was seven or eight different times by detroit public schools police alone as a matter of fact to this day 12 years 13 years in i've never even had an encounter with detroit police but i've had about a dozen with detroit public schools police so i'd go in and i'd set off this morning of course i didn't know there was a motion sensor or a camera at that time so i thought i'd be good and i kept getting cops would kept coming to these locations and busting me and finally i said how the hell do you guys know i'm in here and that's when they told me so i still didn't learn i actually would be going in and giving myself five minutes and i would run and run and gun run around taking photos as fast as you can hit certain sections of the school one day and come back next week and hit the other section so i'd do it kind of strategically uh just to get the photos well one day in particular i really learned my lesson no i didn't but i thought i did at the time i got arrested at grant elementary school grant elementary school is just a small elementary school on the east side of detroit they had the video cam videoified cameras that's what that system was called the motion sensor cameras and i knew they were in there i was pretty sure they were in there and we gave ourselves five minutes we ran in we shot it we ran out and as soon as we walked around that corner detroit public schools police were waiting for us and they were not happy of course they immediately arrested us put us in handcuffs took us to jail and we spent two days in two nights in jail so three days in jail over an abandoned school that was wide open that we didn't even break into but they charged us um they were trying to charge us with what they said breaking and entering uh so three days later they come by get us and they just release us with no charge so we get released but my car got didn't get towed but it got driven to the police detroit police uh public schools police headquarters so i'm going to get my car and they're like oh no you have to talk to the chief of detroit public schools police i'm going why not going to talk to the chief and the chief wasn't even there that day so i had to come back on another day and this was a few years back so it's a little vague but i remember this chief literally sat me down and told me bob of course he didn't call me bob he probably had another choice name for me but when are you going to learn he pulled up my rap sheet he said you've been arrested or stopped by our police officers six seven times in the past you're alone when are you gonna learn your lesson you're lucky you're still not in jail i pled my case i told him i was sorry told him i wouldn't go into another school and i didn't go into another school for about a week so of these over 100 abandoned schools one of my favorite locations and not even just so the schools locations in general one of my favorite locations of all time was cass technical high school cass tech pre-depression era eight-story school built in the cast corridor beautiful beautiful school famous people went to cass tech john delorean the gangster mayor kwame killed patrick they're like tomlin lots of different famous people so when it had three three gymnasiums two swimming pools and two auditoriums this place was huge eight stories literally everything left library had the book the science lab had all the beakers and and chemicals in an incredible location one of the crazier stories was when i first explored cass tech this would have been 2009 probably i was my girlfriend like i said at the time we um went in and we explored cass tech for a few hours we thought everything was cool back then you had to there was a piece of a door with a little window slit and somebody had broken the window the little window so you could reach in and pop the door well somebody had put a board over this after they had busted the glass so you could kind of lift the board and reach in and pop it so when i was leaving i decided to peek out and see okay is there anybody out there there's any police or whatever and when i looked out i saw a glimpse of what i thought was like a guy standing right to the right of me outside though so i shut the door uh really quick and sat there and i told my girlfriend you know there's a guy right there so i was like what i'll do is i'll take that with that little window slit and i'll push the board over and i'll peek out there that way i don't have to open the door and he won't hear it or whatever so i pushed the little board over and when i went to peek out that man was literally staring into the window so when i pushed it over there was eyes right there and this guy was there something was up with this guy he had uh he was he had a cape on he was naked and he had a cape on so it literally baffled me i i shut the the window thing and i said we got to try to get in another way out we knew there was no other way out so we just waited and then when we finally got back to the door we decided that we would just run so we opened the door and we ran and when we ran he chased us all the way home i didn't live that far i lived in the cass corridor at that time so i wasn't that far but he literally chased us and then that's when i noticed he was he was naked he did have a cape and he had a sword in his hand he was yelling superhero stuff just odd but a crazy story at that so cass tech was one of the bigger schools in detroit that was abandoned um and one of the high schools but there was actually there was mckinsey redford cass tech kettering southwestern finney cooley i mean there's eight nine abandoned high schools throughout that time and cass tech was was definitely my favorite but all the high schools were incredible because of the sheer size of the schools being that they're high schools they were large a lot of the high schools had all the amenities pools and gyms and auditoriums and some of the auditoriums were just built just magnificent architecture and details that was just mind-blowing and why they would leave these places abandoned and things like that many of them are demolished now and a couple have been renovated and repurposed but most of them are actually demolished now including cass tech which was demolished in 2010. and besides cass tech i think the other high school worth mentioning was coolly high simply because of how beautiful and huge this place was mediterranean revival two copio twin copulas on each side incredible ornate details on the exterior and interior and auditorium it's just mind-blowing unfortunately um arson fire uh destroyed that auditorium a few years ago um when the seats caught on fire it literally burned all the seats it burned to almost all the details you could still see some of the details but it definitely ruined that school once and for all and cops the detroit public schools police because they still own it they will arrest you they will go in and they will arrest you if they know you're in there so be careful if you go or to stay out so over the last 12 years or so i've had the privilege and honor to explore some of detroit's best locations really some of the best locations in the country but definitely in detroit some of those were the skyscrapers we talked about it earlier we had a in detroit we had this graveyard of skyscrapers and i felt this this energy when i would go downtown with these massive structures all around you at all different angles everywhere you look there's an abandoned skyscraper and to be in that was like something you can you can't even explain it because literally there's no other city that was like that so you never really got to experience that anywhere outside of detroit one of those in particular that's worth mentioning was the book tower which was 40 stories tall and at that time at the time it was the tallest abandoned building in the u.s climbing those stairs in the summertime was a nightmare it could before you were halfway up you were ready to go home but what made it and what pushed you was the view from the 40 stories of the city uh of the other skyscrapers just incredible view that you was unmatched really not to mention there was a radio station in there there was a sewing business there was a recording studio a museum the hair salon in the lobby was extraordinary the lobby was basically was golden and they had these brass angels that were holding up a brass clock and it kind of looked like the clock was floating and the angels were holding it up and it was just it was incredible to see that stuff and um it was by far one of my one of the best skyscrapers that detroit had another one that was just down from that not too far was the broderick tower originally named eaton tower but david broderick had bought it at some time that was built i want to say it was built around 1920 and when david broderick bought it he renamed it the david broder tower well hell if i bought a building i would name it after me too so i understood that but this building was incredible because you had actually unlike the book tower where you had a lot of different things this building was really only um dental offices in orthodontics and they had laboratories with the moldings of the teeth and the dental chairs and the dental equipment and the x-rays and everything was still inside the rider tower making it one of the great buildings to explore not to mention the roof it was uh 20 something stories and you could watch detroit tigers baseball games from the comerica park which was right across the street so you could literally go up there and watch tigers games and there's nothing like it in a beautiful place so another building worth mentioning would be the united artist building and united artist theater they were separate locations in the same building basically the united artist building was maybe 15 stories and had an old rusty bank vault in the basement which really cool and really cool to explore and photograph the united artist theater was one of the most incredible and beautiful locations and theaters in the country this place was phenomenal it literally was this uh gothic structure that looked like it was melting because of all the decay from being abandoned for all these years and there was no other theater or even location that was built like this in this gothic sense absolutely breathtaking when you would see it and literally back in those days you could climb through a window and go in or throw the door now new detroit versus old detroit now you can't even touch that building without the alarms going off and uh showing up in about 2.5 seconds if not detroit's finest that's the difference between then and now now you can't even do that building anymore one of detroit's most famous or more famous abandoned buildings michigan central station aka the train station most people know about the train station because it was so symbolic of detroit's ruins um or downturn or even the bankruptcy because you literally had this huge abandoned building that was a train station on the outskirts of downtown that was such and i guess it was kind of people thought it was an eyesore i never thought it was an eyesore i always thought it was beautiful i mean it was built in 1912. um rose at like 20 stories same architects as the grand central terminal in new york city this thing was a classic right and it sat abandoned for many many years there wasn't anything in it but it was just the the the grandiose the lobby the coffered ceilings the arches the details the columns the marbles the granite all of that stuff was actually still in there you literally could feel this energy of passengers and people coming off the train in the concourse and sitting in the lobby or the ticket window i mean all of that stuff was still there and you could clearly see where it was it's just super cool i think about a year or two ago ford motor company bought the michigan central station and they are currently renovating it and going to uh turn it into their headquarters i believe with some retail shopping and so there's some plans for it this will be mostly used for commercial space little pop-up stores some community meeting areas and things like that so we're still in the midst of programming a lot of that but we know that this really is going to be community space it's really important that this this building was important to the community and that we're giving it back to the community so it'll always be open during our normal business hours and we'll be able to bring in everybody from the community to enjoy the space had we been looking at this ten years ago you had a lot of empty buildings there you know whenever they show a picture of how bad detroit is this is the place this is the poster child that used to always drive me somebody has lived here my whole life i hated that kind of publicity for our city and for this structure what are you thinking now ford motor company executive chairman bill ford jr is doing something about that his company just bought this half a million square foot behemoth and is turning it into ford's new hub for autonomous and electric vehicle research when we started thinking about the future of transportation and autonomous driving it's very clear that that will happen first in cities and therefore we have to get experience on city streets and cityscapes is where that will all be invented the 2500 ford employees who are expected to work here will do more than transform a building they will also help revive an entire neighborhood corktown one of the oldest parts of the city and then one of the other really cool things is the graffiti there's there's some really cool stuff that we're going to look at trying to figure out how to keep uh and really tell the story um not only of its total restoration but the graffiti is a big part of the building it's a big part of detroit and how how things you know have evolved artists learn their crafts in this building so we'll have an area in the building which we're trying to figure out where the best place to have it but to to really talk about the history and it's decay you know it's growth and decay so there's some plans for it uh again the old detroit versus the new detroit don't even think about stepping foot in michigan central station they got that place alarmed cameras security out front 24 7. back in the day no problem hop a fence and then go right in the door [Music] yet another one worth mentioning mark twain public library mark twain public library was a historical building and it was it was a beautiful building but what made mark twain library so special all the books were left behind rotting away in this library and you don't really see books like that left behind in an abandoned location it literally looked like they had locked the doors and left everything as it was um they still had the uh sections and the paperbacks and the novels and everything absolutely incredible to see that i always called it uh pretty iconic because we literally had a waste of knowledge going on with mark twain library it was demolished in 2011. talked earlier a little bit about detroit having over 100 abandoned schools well we also had about a dozen almost a dozen abandoned police stations now that's something you don't hear every day back in 2010 or so there was definitely the majority of them a few of them were later abandoned throughout the years um but we had third precinct sixth precinct seventh precinct eighth precinct twelfth precinct thirteenth precinct belle isle police highland park police station and infamous 1300 bobian the detroit police headquarters downtown all of those police stations were abandoned and luckily for me i was able to explore and photograph every single one of them one of them that really stands out highland park police station highland park police station was absolutely incredible and disturbing at times because of what was left inside and you had the fire station and the courthouse also right across the street so you had a police station a fire station and a courthouse right in the same city block but highland park police station i've never seen anything like it and probably never will simply because of everything that was left and it was historic which is always a bonus the jail cells the jail cells were all old and historic and really decayed and paint peeling and they had isolation cells and they had just regular cells and then they had the benches and then you had uh let's not forget the evidence room the evidence room there was so much evidence left behind and abandoned in the evidence room from rape kits to knives used in stabbings to drugs i found marijuana and cocaine none of it good anymore of course i found um criminals files um i found old mug shots and fingerprint index cards ammunition and guns a bloody glove found on a dead guy uh stolen car radios from like the 80s and 90s and stolen license plates and just incredible stolen bikes then you had the homicide oh division let me tell you those crime scene photos they still disturb me to this day i still have nightmares from looking at those crime scene photos they were so graphic um homicide division was really cool too because you had again you had like killers mug shots on the wall uh you had like old files of murders and things like that that you could literally read through and look at and then they had all of ben atkins who was the woodward corridor serial killer uh back in 1991 they had his comparison victim uh posters down there still that had his i think he had killed uh over a handful of women they had all their names and how they were found and where they were nude or gagged and bound and drugged and just absolutely incredible that all of that stuff was still inside highland park police station um just a few years ago i actually watched this show on the id channel which is a true crime channel about this rape and murder of this woman she's now a woman her mother when she was young was raped and killed in highland park and they visit the highland park police station which was demolished in 2011. so they actually had footage of the highland park police station and she said the reason why the guy had gotten away with it for so long was because the evidence was left inside probably the rape kit was left inside the abandoned police station in highland park and then eventually destroyed when it was demolished detroit actually has four boxing rings a lot of people don't know uh there was three and then a fourth one was discovered later it's funny because i remember seeing like uh social media other exploring other explorers as urban exploring has become popular over the years uh you saw it on social media people were going to abandon boxing ring in connect new haven connecticut and philadelphia and i would remember seeing those boxing rings which were cool but i would say to myself little do they know detroit has four three or four so yeah you had um king solomon church there was a boxing ring in the basement that still still set up with the ropes and then a heavy bag in the corner which is really cool in the basement of a church too which is odd still cool though uh then you had veterans memorial rec center and river rouge right on the border river rouge in detroit which was really cool because it had the ring still set up with uh heavy bags speed bags um all sorts of pull-up bars and all sorts of different things used to train basically for boxers and then you had yamasaki building which is over there uh northland area and that was really really amazing because you had a skylight that was just let in all natural light right down onto the boxing ring that was the one that was discovered later and then the fourth one being the most notorious which was crunk gym crunk gym was absolutely classic and historic i mean it literally was historic but it was also historic because of the history of uh emanuel stewart and him training the fighters out of there uh hill mckinsey and jermaine taylor and tommy hitman hearns they all fought out of crunk and he trained over 40 championship fighters from detroit at crunk gym in this little dark wet basement emmanuel stewart a well-known american boxer trainer and commentator for hbo boxing trained 41 world champion fighters throughout his career right here at cronk gym to see that and knowing that all these fighters had trained out of there and emanuel stewart trained these guys there super cool there was also a pool and an auditorium and stuff inside and a gym inside crunk but nothing beat that boxing ring unfortunately it was destroyed by arson fire in 2016. uh mid-rise that's definitely worth talking about would be the uh historic farwell building which was another pre-depression era building built in um i believe it was capital park uh yeah capitol park in detroit and was recently renovated and reopened and so they did restore this and they restored it to its former glory including the um octagon-shaped skylight that went through all eight or nine stories of the building and it was really real it's famous uh you see a lot of people photograph it and even now that it's reopened you see people photograph it and post it it's such a cool octagon skylight and you don't see stuff like that that goes all the way up throughout the entire building from the ground to the roof with this skylight incredible stuff iron railings and details there was tiffany glass mixed in the mosaic tiles in the ceiling of the lobby the arch ceilings unmatched absolutely beautiful building another location or two worth mentioning are the funeral homes in detroit there's a few of them and they're quite they're quite crazy and this one in particular has a great story uh that would be the infamous and notorious cantrell funeral the state of michigan license and regulations went in and closed down the funeral home in 2018 because of deplorable and horrific conditions literally they were not properly storing bodies or bodily fluids um and cremated remains and all sorts of different things they were having all sorts of trouble so they shut them down so i was able to explore it and photograph it and they had left caskets and urns and there's all sorts of embalming tables and gurneys including somebody's fake prosthetic leg um but you know it was crazy because there was also baby caskets in this place i didn't think anything of it um exported a few times went on my way somebody bought cantrell funeral home and when they were renovating it to turn it into a community center the workers found mummified infant babies in the ceiling here the current owner of the building naived syed showed me where the decomposing bodies of 11 infants were found up these steps behind all of this insulation right there so yes that was in there when i actually explored it and had no idea but i do remember where the attic was and the drop ceiling was and i remember there was a foul odor coming from that area but i just assumed it was the funeral home you know i didn't know at the time of course and i didn't want to go up into the drop ceiling why would i do that now i wish i would have uh when i first started exploring there was a funeral home um on the west side uh called howell funeral home had been closed for shoot at least 20 years or so and it was actually somebody's house converted to a funeral home and it was a pretty plain explorer wasn't really much to it but when went down in the basement we found about a dozen cremated remains with death certificates and ash is still in there and everything albert blue was cremated in 2005 at the howell funeral home formerly known as the ramsey funeral home her mother was paying for the cremation she was going through financial difficulty before her mother could even finish paying the funeral home just closed down and we didn't have exposure with that now several years later her mother has passed and rebel is finding out 35 cremains were recovered at the shuttered funeral home that was the first time i had ever found actual cremated remains because this was probably 2010 2011 and it was quite disturbing we photographed it and then we ended up leaving them i went back 10 years later and they were still in that basement so i decided to do the right thing and call the authorities and get them returned back to their families which indeed did happen it's important that people then reach out to the state investigation department that is lara if they call laura they can check in with them to see if they can find out any information about whether or not their loved ones are a part of the cremated remains actually recently there was another funeral home that uh founded around detroit and lo and be a dozen cremated remains this funeral home that we just did over 100 100 over 100 cremated remains left behind so the last and final locations i want to talk about are the stadiums and arenas that detroit had troy was rare and unlike any other major u.s city or any city really in the world because we had all four major sports we had stadiums um and arenas that were abandoned you had tiger stadium where the detroit tigers played baseball you had the pontiac silver dome where the detroit lions used to play football you had joe lewis arena or detroit red wings used to play hockey and then you had the palace auburn hills where the detroit pistons used to play basketball so you had all four of these all four major league sports uh and all of them were abandoned and luckily for me i was able to explore and photograph all four of them my first one that i did was tiger stadium in 2009 it was demolished in 2010 but they started demolishing in 2009 and so that's when i made my move to go in uh went in through a hole in the fence and was able to photograph the seats and the stands and the press box and the flagpole the tiger stadium had an actual flagpole in center field that was in fair territory it's the only stadium that had that and it's still there but when we were photographing um the stands we heard somebody yell and right away i knew that it was security secured you know my girlfriend and i at the time um we actually we waited for a minute to see if it really was and it was and he started running at not running but walking fast and yelling hey hey so we booked it out the fence the same way we came in and we waited we kind of sat across the street and he came after us he came out of the fence started coming across the streets we ran around the building and then when we came back around the building he had gotten into his car and he was driving around looking for us i mean it was pretty pretty weird especially because it was wide open but we got away and didn't get in trouble and that was the most important thing so the next one that would would have been the pontiac silverdome which was where the nfl football detroit lions used to play and this was uh very iconic because it was a dome and it had a big huge white dome in a bowl setting you know with a football field down below and when i explored that in 2013 2014 it had not been closed for very long maybe a year or two and we didn't know anything about it when we had went we didn't know anybody that had done it we didn't nobody had explored it and it was me and my boy dave paris at that time we actually went there expecting to see security and there was nobody around so we literally looked at each other and we're like well let's just go for it so we hopped over the fence we found this door that was open and we went in and i remember walking through the down the corridor and out into the field and it opened up to all these seats at that time uh about half the dome was still there so they still had the dome up and then some of the pieces of the dome were on the field but just to explore an nfl stadium like that uh and be in that environment really did something for me and really really was mesmerizing being in that location and seeing it like that and the pontiac silverdome was also a great experience for me because i also grew up going to nfl games to watch the detroit lions at the silverdome as a kid and when i went in there know i i don't want to say i was the first but i definitely was one of the very one of one of the first when i went in there and i felt that energy and i could literally visualize barry sanders i mean that's why keeping your feet going and making sanders move some of those moves are the only one guy in this game that makes and you just saw that guy a lot of people a lot of explorers and non-explorers alike a lot of people just came to detroit to go to the silver dome people would literally come from all over to go to the silver dome so they could experience an abandoned major sports stadium like this a lot of them had never explored an abandoned stadium or arena or sporting venue or anything like that so this was a first for a lot of people and it was pretty relaxed and chill for the for those few years um until they finally started catching on and ticketing people they put security back on site uh security would see i don't know dozens of people going in there they started calling the police police would come in ticket people arrest them like a 500 ticket for getting caught trespassing in the silver dome but it still didn't slow people down from going they still went right up until they demolished it about a year or two ago and then we had um joe lewis arena which was where the detroit red wings played hockey joe lewis arena was a little bit of a challenge in the beginning to explore because of how guarded they had security on each side and security inside and um they had it pretty locked down for a long time one one time i uh i got a door open and i started walking in and i heard something so i left the door ajar and i came back an hour later and the door was shut and locked so i knew that people definitely were keeping a close eye on it i eventually got in to joe lewis and when i did it was another one that took me back to childhood is going to joe lewis arena as a kid and watching the red wings and steve eiserman the energy in there was like you could feel the fans and you could almost see the octopus being thrown on the ice and won several stanley cups uh at least three i believe in joe lewis arena so just the iconic location for detroit joe lewis arena was demolished this year last would have been the palace auburn hills which is where the detroit pistons play basketball the palace was a little bit interesting because we dressed up like construction workers to try to get in there and it worked for the most part dressing up like a construction worker to try to blend in because the only time that you could really go in there without being spotted by security was when they were actually working on the building so we came up with the idea to dress up like construction workers and actually go in to the palace auburn hills why they were working on it and photograph and explore it and we were able to do that without getting into trouble i swear the only reason is we had the helmet and the vest and it worked like a charm uh the pistons won a championship of the palace in 2004 uh i believe the shock did too and uh the back-to-back bad boys um won their championships in 89 and 90. so a few championships won at the palace unfortunately it was demolished this year as well where would i be if it wasn't for urban exploring honestly i have no idea it's not only become a hobby of mine but it's become a way of life for me i don't just love this i live this i feel like urban exploring has taken me all over the country and hopefully soon all over the world and to be able to travel and experience different places different cultures and different ethnicities and different cities in different regions it's really opened my mind um to ways of life and what i want to do with my life and how i want to live my life and i know that i may not be here tomorrow so i'm going to explore while i'm still alive because this is what i do and this is my passion and this is my life you

Channel: Abandoned Central

Views: 829,755

Rating: 4.8679776 out of 5

Keywords: Abandoned Detroit, detroit, documentary, abandoned places, abandoned detroit high school, abandoned places then and now, urbex stories, abandoned, abandoned historic places, detroit documentary, history documentary, urban exploration, urbex, detroit documentary 2020, urban exploration stories, frontline documentary, documentary 2020, pbs documentary, abandoned detroit the city of neglect, detroit urban exploring, abandoned and forgotten places, urban exploration scary

Id: UbTAxjZC_UE

Length: 60min 3sec (3603 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/rabbithole12]

I really enjoyed this one. Thanks