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Beneath an Abandoned Hospital: Thoughts from Places

2012-04-24 · John · watch on YouTube · Philosophy & meaning · reflection essay

Touring a long-abandoned hospital and its steam tunnels with Ransom Riggs and Elyse Marshall, John says such places remind us of our temporariness, and suggests we explore, read and watch for the terrifying, awesome feeling of not knowing what lies in wait.

What is said

00:00:00 — Disclaimer; morning in downtown LA with Elyse Marshall and Ransom Riggs; the Blade Runner building; heading to a long-abandoned hospital used for horror films

  • ★★ John spent a morning in downtown LA with publicist Elyse Marshall and his old friend, best-selling author Ransom Riggs, who showed them the building where part of Blade Runner was filmed. — 00:00:03 · Los Angeles
  • ★★ They then went to an extremely creepy, long-abandoned hospital, now sometimes used as a horror-movie setting; John says this is the kind of place Ransom takes his friends, unsurprising to readers of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. — 00:00:12

00:00:27 — Inside the abandoned hospital: chapel, kitchen, rooms with mildew and bird dung, skeletal beds, morgue, operating-room mirror scare, records room of EKGs, boiler room

  • ★ The hospital chapel reminded John of his chaplain days; they also saw the kitchen where patients' meals were cooked. — 00:00:27
  • ★★ John describes endless hospital rooms caked with mildew and bird dung, blown-out windows, traces of squatters and graffiti; what struck him most were the skeletal remains of dozens of hospital beds. — 00:00:47
  • ★★ In the basement they found the morgue; even hard-to-scare Ransom got creeped out, while John, easily scared, nearly wet himself at a figure in an operating-room mirror that turned out to be himself. (playful) — 00:01:15
  • ★ They found the records room, full of EKGs of hearts that stopped beating decades ago, and finally the boiler room, which John calls the beautiful dead guts of the hospital. — 00:01:40

00:01:50 — John loves tunnels: the steam tunnel beneath the hospital, a flooded room and a huge empty room with a bloody bathtub

  • ★★ John says abandoned buildings scare him, but he loves tunnels: steam tunnels, storm drains, sewers. — 00:01:50
  • ★★ Skipping an unappealing sewer entrance, they explored a steam tunnel that grew colder and narrower and led to a flooded room, another tunnel and a huge empty room containing a bloody bathtub, which John hopes was a horror-movie leftover. (hedged) — 00:01:57

00:02:35 — Why explore? Such spaces remind us of our temporariness; it is nice to be a kid exploring with old friends; we explore, read and watch for the feeling of not knowing what lies in wait; sign-off

  • ★★★ Leaving, John wondered what he was doing there; he says such spaces remind us, scarily but seductively, of our own temporariness and the short life of all we build, and the tunnels' darkness made the outside world bright and alive. — 00:02:35
  • ★★★ John says it is also nice, on a Thursday morning in April, to be a kid for a while, exploring with old friends, never knowing what wonder or terror waits around the corner. — 00:02:54
  • ★★★ John suggests this is why we explore, read, watch sports, browse Tumblr and study astrophysics: whether watching horror movies or visiting their sets, we seek the terrifying, awesome, otherworldly feeling of not knowing what lies in wait. (hedged) — 00:03:08 · Tumblr

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