I wake up every morning just hoping to discover or learn at least one new thing – something that I will be able to take away, hopefully forever as a piece of my life. One successful day in particular, started during a drive into Buffalo, New York.

It has been called one of the most terrifying places in America, and though I am not one for ghost hunts and the study of the paranormal, I don’t doubt that some restless spirits haunt the eerie lands of this former amusement park.

The year was 1942 – World War II raged across Europe and the Pacific, while the United States became united in a state of panic. War planes screamed overhead as the Navy hurriedly built 17 hangars across the nation, with Tillamook Bay in Oregon being home to two of these massive structures.

You could call it a winter wonderland, though I feel that would not be doing it proper justice; it was much more than that. Constantly shifting weight from so much snow after years of neglect had weakened the glass of skylights above, causing ceilings to bust open overhead. It was as if clouds had fallen from the sky, filling this normally dark and desolate destruction with a brand new, much brighter life.

So today marks the 50th birthday of the famous UNIROYAL tire in Allen Park, Michigan. While many are busy, celebrating such a momentous occasion, I can’t help but shake some images from my head. Things that I have seen inside a former UNIROYAL factory will never quite fade from my memories. Don’t get me wrong, the company is amazing as a whole, but you will always have that one bad apple – sometimes a few.

With a current population of only 36, it’s no surprise that I was able to meet some amazing and very friendly people – people who were more than excited to share stories of the town’s past, and were incredibly inviting as well as helpful.

We were headed into Southern Kansas, seventy-five miles per hour across what seemed to be an endless stretch of flat and empty highway, eventually carrying us into a very unusual town. Uniquely intriguing could possibly be the best pair of words to describe this place. The town was like something you might imagine seeing only in movies – something that

I always do my best to truly see a place for not only what it is, but also what it once was, learning its full story. Sometimes, just as with many books, you can discover a wonderful world hidden inside these structures. So what will become of the places that life has vacated?

Apparently the parapet became weak, turning to basically sand from acidic rain, and due to heavy winds was just pushed, literally, over the edge. The sound was like a bomb going off, as a massive 20 foot section of wall came crashing to the streets.

All across the country, these former houses of worship now sit empty. As I lean back beneath the crumbling ceilings, behind altars covered in dust, all I can wonder about is the life it must have seen. How many people must have spent so many days inside, walked the aisle or were even wed here?