Ah fernald, what a place. I’ll never forget the first time I went there when I was 17, the eerie haunted feeling the whole place had- especially in the church. The thing I REALLY will never forget is when drones started flying above us while we were walking around. I had shrugged it off as just randos flying it for fun, and we went into a building that happened to have other urbexers around our age inside. I mentioned the drones still thinking nothing of it, and these people informed us that those were POLICE DRONES. I was pretty freaked out at this point, but the group of urbexers told us that their friend who knows this place like the back of his hand was coming and would help us get out without being caught… he eventually arrives, and its this 20 something who told us he was on acid, and then he led us through the building down to this tunnel filled with mud, and told us just keep following the tunnel and when you get out RUN. Somehow that worked, and for some reason I thought it would be a great idea to go back a couple years later, but this time I wasn’t so lucky. We had explored only one building when police showed up, and we first tried to hide but then the headlights of the cruiser were directly on us, so I started running, and we somehow got away- we thought. Then down the road, the cop rolled down the window and said in the thickest boston accent “do me a fava, stay outta thaya”. I was very surprised we didn’t get in more trouble, but I think it helped that the building was right near the entrance and we were pretty clearly not there for the same reasons as some of the ‘fernald residents’ like the dude who rides around on a bike and WILL try to hit you with it, the scrappers that hold people at gunpoint, or the weird guys who seem to have a thing for butts… I have so much more to say about the crazy things I’ve heard about fernald from my friends or online, but I’ll end it there. I do feel the need to mention that this place isn’t just a ‘cool, creepy place to explore’, and horrific abuse did occur here while it was operating. I’m not a historian, so I’ll leave the explanation to them and include a link if you want to learn more (highly encourage it, learning about the history of a place is one of the key parts of what urbex is about)
Fernald History
When me and some friends first arrived and walked into the place, I thought I had somewhat wasted my time on the 2 hr drive. It was more or less empty and burned out, but the stadium seats were pretty cool. Eventually, we made our way to the top floor, and most of the group wanted to go up to the roof. I was too scared so I waited below and peaked my head up to see. One of the people we had gone with was being so stupid- hanging off of a rusty metal bar on the side of the roof and jumping up and down, and this drove most of us back down to the room below. While heading down, the same person who was jumping on the roof split off from the group and was making random noises around the building to scare us… we think. I’m still not sure if there was someone else there with us, but we just tried to stay quiet and push on. Then we got to my favorite part of the explore; the basement. It was a very weird mix of things down there, with fancy dress clothes, random decorations fit for margaritaville, old photos, a copy of the kama sutra, and a bunch of random VHS tapes with odd names. It was a dusty and never ending labyrinth down there, and I don’t think we saw more than half of the place before we HAD to leave because none of us could breath from the dust and mold. We took one of the oddly labeled VHS tapes with us to try and play it, and we took it to the player in our outdated dorm common room. I’m not sure if we were all bad at using VHS players, or if the player was broken or if the tape was broken, but no matter the case, it ended up stuck in there and unplayable. Legend has it, its still in there till this day.
This place really solidified my love of urbex. During the pandemic it was a safe haven for me, a cool place within walking distance where I could get away from my family and do whatever- I was too scared to go inside the first few times but I went back at least once a week for a while trying to build up the courage. Inside was a lot of old 80s toys, the most unsettling to me was the old Mickey Mouse pillow covered in dirt. Me and some friends were pretty dedicated to finding out who used to live here and why it was abandoned, even going to the archives of the library to find any info. The consensus was that the family didn’t pay taxes. A couple years later someone burned the whole thing down, I suspect the neighbors. Either way, it was very sad when it happened and felt like an end of an era of sorts for me.
Houses are always my favorite explores no matter what cool large building I get in. I like seeing a look into someone else’s life and the mystery of why it was left there. Anything commercial or industrial, it's probably as simple as they ran out of money and the location wasn’t good enough to sell, or something along those lines. But why would anyone abandon all their memories and possessions so suddenly? Its fun to speculate about, and research when possible. I grew up in the Wilmington area, and for as long as I can remember there’s been an abandoned house near the Mr. Ticket by the highway. This house was actually 2 right next to each other, both abandoned. One had a lot of kids' stuff from the 2000s while the other was mostly empty, aside from police tape in the basement…I was very curious what happened here, but google brought up nothing. Conveniently, my grandmother has lived in Wilmington for the last 40 years so I figured she would know something. She didn’t, and she directed me to my aunt who as a kid had a friend who lived right next door. She also didn’t, and I’ve been left to wonder since what happened in that house. Recently it was torn down to make room for condos.
This place was one of my first explorations back when I was 14. Me and my dad took a 4 hour drive down to the tip of the cape to see this abandoned airforce base that was so low security there were families walking their dogs inside the buildings. There was a large abandoned factory, barracks, and a whole neighborhood of houses. It was mostly empty inside the buildings, aside from one that had a random sign that said something like “Rock. Rap. Jazz.” and had a random name on the other side (which of course 14 year old me took). Me and my dad had spent so much time exploring the rest of the place that we didn’t get to the neighborhood, and I vowed to go back again to see it. 4 years later, I did! Me and my boyfriend had just started dating, and we made the long drive down to the cape, and…the neighborhood was completely demolished and the rest of the base was locked up like it was hiding government secrets. This was definitely a bummer but there was a random kid on a dirt bike who showed us an amazing view of the cape cod shore from a giant cliff. Very sad I never got to see the neighborhood, but this place will always be special to me because it was one of my first explorations, and because that’s still one of my favorite memories with my boyfriend.
This place was kinda the end of my urbex journey, and what inspired me to make this website as a sort of 'love letter' to all the cool places I've been. I’ll always love urbex but this was the first time I realized it's too risky for me to get caught at this point- me and my friends made a trip up to Vermont to explore this cool mall up in the green mountains. We got in through a hole in the wall that looked like someone had spent an ungodly amount of time digging through to make. I went inside briefly and got a couple photos, but then I heard sirens in the distance and wanted to dip. My friends tried to convince me it was fine, but this wasn’t my first rodeo with almost getting caught and I didn’t feel like dealing with that. I told them I’d keep watch outside, and I did- I basically just walked loops around the abandoned mall while teens in cars zoomed through the empty parking lot. And what would you know, security showed up! Thankfully, this security guard was lazy. He gave me a look and drove off to a different part of the building, but I let my friends know and they made their way to the exit. Still a very cool place even if I don’t have the coolest story to go with it.