Urban Explorers: Into The Darkness

As some of you may already know, I was one of many people featured in Melody Gilbert's documentary Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness. If you enjoyed my post about my trip into the rocket engine silo in the FL everglades then you will certainly enjoy the film. My portion of it mostly focuses around my trip into the silo and a bit of other assorted geekery.

This past week it made the "New and Noteworthy" section on iTunes under documentary films, right next to Werner Herzog's Encounters At the End of the World (which was totally great too). So go on over to iTunes and check it out.

Participating in the creation of the film was a pleasure and I got to know Melody, some of her crew, and other explorers from around the country. The film itself is pretty great, it's definitely one of the most realistic and honest documentaries on the subject I've seen. I think that mostly has to do with Melody's style of allowing the subjects to tell the story themselves without introducing her own narrative to it, it's all genuine, from Slim Jim's quirkiness to the social interactions in the Parisian catacombs.

After the film was completed I got to participate in a handful of the screenings in the festival circuit which were always great. I really enjoyed doing Q+A and talking to the audience, and even met a few people I later went exploring with at the Boston Underground Film Festival screening. You can see a photo from one of the screenings above as well as a shot of myself with Melody and Charlie Gerszewski (editor for the film) at Cinequest in San Jose, where after winning the favor of the hotel bartender and having a few too many free beers, I ended up talking trash about some of the other film productions and nearly getting into a fight or two. Good times indeed.

There's no such thing as Terrorism™ in Canada.

Only in Canada could 7 young men with backpacks jump a fence simultaneously into/out of one of the tallest construction sites in the entire city in a major traffic intersection without anyone even raising an eyebrow. Had this happened in the US, there would have been some ridiculously disproportionate response most likely involving the Department of Homeland Security. It really is kind of refreshing to be in a city/country that isn't completely paralyzed by fear and obsession over safety.

After walking the perimeter we found the site largely unwatched save for a single guard hanging out in a booth around the back side of the building. Up and over the fence we went, making our way into the building and starting on our way to the top. It ended up being a pretty brutal 60 stories of stairs with no functional elevator. At the top we were rewarded with a nice view of the city skyline, cold winds, and a boom crane for some of the more daring to play around on top of. After hanging around on the roof for a while, we eventually cooled down from our climb and actually started getting cold. We packed up and made our way back down, enjoying the graffiti scrawled on the stairway walls by the construction workers that called out the management for bad judgment calls on the worksite.

Of course this would not be enough for one night, so we decided to attempt to see the one abandoned metro station the city of Toronto had to offer. We had heard from locals that the station was now impossible to access because of new security cameras that had been installed to watch the tunnels that lead to it. It wasn't the first time we'd heard this sort of thing about a location, only to discover that all it would take is a bit of effort and determination to make it happen. We didn't come to Canada to give up so easily so after waiting for the appropriate timing between trains, we booked it down the tunnel towards our destination. This would be the first time in active train tunnels for a a few in the group, but for myself and a couple of others, it was actually quite reminiscent of the NY subway system. The layout of the tracks and electrified 3rd rail is stunningly similar as are the tunnel construction methods in the part of the system we were visiting.

In fact, one might confuse the abandoned station itself for a NYC subway station if you weren't familiar with the real thing. This particular station has been used countless times in film and TV productions as a stand in for a NYC subway station. Apparently it's often cheaper and easier to secure permits for filming in this station than it is to shut down an active station in NYC. After we finished having our way with the station photographically, we all waited behind a door to the active station above, timing our exit with an incoming train so that we could get right on it and be on our way. All in all, a good nights work doing something other than being tourists.

Discovery Island

In the middle of Bay Lake, deep within the heart of the Walt Disney World property, lies Discovery Island. It is a former wildlife attraction/sanctuary that was closed in 1999 and has been left to run wild since. This is the story of my trip there quite a few years ago when I lived in FL. In the time since, I've learned a few disturbing facts about the lake and as such would not recommend that anyone attempt to re-trace our footsteps. I've heard from more than a few people that there are actually alligators that live in the lake, something I hadn't even thought of, assuming this was just some other Disney attraction. Even more alarming, I've also heard that the main reason Disney closed the adjacent water park is because of the presence of Naegleria Fowleri bacteria in the water which can infect human nervous systems and nearly always results in death.

I'd heard about the island from some Orlando locals. They told us that there were rumors that there were bunches of animals still left running wild on the island. They hadn't visited it themselves but told us that it was about 100 feet off the shore of the also abandoned River Country water park and that boat traffic was infrequent on the lake. We arrived with a plan involving an inflatable boat, 150 feet of clothesline(to pull the boat back across for other people), a large hand pump, and a few oars. After an ordeal smuggling the suspicious supplies into the Fort Wilderness campground via the Disney Shuttle buses, we finally made our way through the abandoned Water Park and got to the shore. To our dismay, we discovered that the island was in fact at least 300 feet away and that passenger ferries crossed between the island and shore every 5-10 minutes. It would make paddling across virtually impossible. We left defeated and I vowed to return and conquer the island some day.

It would be nearly a year before I returned. This time, we ditched the boat plan, it was too cumbersome, obvious, and slow. The plan this time was to swim for it. We loaded up some waterproof bags with equipment and headed out to the park.


After making our way past some old water slides, we followed a path around the shore. Disney seems to like keeping all the lights on even in their abandoned properties in order to give the impression that they are still functional. A bit eerie, but we continued anyways.


We finally made it to the shore and could see our target. We would head for a beacon of light on the shore of the island. We'd arrived late enough that the ferries had stopped running and the only thing to worry about would be occasional lake patrols by Disney security. We put our clothes into the waterproof bags and waded into the still lake water.


We swam as quickly and quietly as we could, using our waterproof bags as flotation devices. Landing on the shore I couldn't help but feel like a navy seal sneaking up on an enemy target under the cover of darkness. We quickly made our way out of sight into the trees and stashed our wet gear under some bushes.


Now, while the island docks may be lit, the interior paths on the island are far from it. We knew we wouldn't be able to use any bright lights while on the island, so with some small red colored lights, we made our way through overgrown paths. Almost immediately, we realized we were not alone on this island. We could hear all sorts of noises in the trees surrounding us. We were literally surrounded by what sounded like thousands of birds. We could hear them cawing and cooing in all directions, some sounded almost like people speaking. With every branch we stepped on that made a snap, a group of birds would be startled and take off all at once, making even more noise. It was really quite a surreal experience.


The island had certainly not been maintained in any way since closing, we had quite a bit of trouble navigating it and figuring out exactly where the paths were. One of the first things we encountered were what looked like cages as well as what I assume were veterinary facilities and storage areas.



Venturing further into the island, we came across a storage building that was filled with all sorts of left over paperwork, photos, and some preserved snakes in odd containers.



The going was pretty slow on the island due to the limited lighting, heavily overgrown paths, and disorienting animal noises. Spiderwebs also slowed our progress significantly and we eventually had to resort to constantly swinging our tripods in front of us to clear them out of the way as we walked. After a while, we came to some larger areas that looked like they might have been canopied enclosures for birds as well as some sheltered areas for visitors.


In one of these sheltered areas, we came across one of the more interesting finds of the night. I'd been poking around the space when I heard a hissing noise coming from one of the corners. Shining a light into it, we discovered 2 young vultures, still unable to fly but incredibly aggressive. Despite being not much larger than chickens, they puffed themselves up while making some ungodly hissing noises and charging at us until we left the area.


After finding the vultures, we had been there 3 hours and only covered half the island. We knew the ferries would start running again fairly early in the morning and that people would be waking up and moving around the park grounds, so we decided to turn back and get ready to make the swim back. We stopped at a dock on the way back for the mandatory group photo looking back on the mainland before packing up our cameras and swimming back across. The swim back went smoothly and we discretely made our way out of the park, only getting a few odd looks while waiting for the first bus of the day back to the parking lot as the sun came up.