Winchester Mystery House (pictures I like)

Abandoned Places: Orphanages

Orphanages are not buildings I can say I'm sorry to see closed down. Despite any good intentions ever ascribed to having them or opening them or whatever, I don't think you will find one in existence that doesn't have horrible stories associated with it. Which is not to say that I think it's better to leave kids to live on the streets; I don't believe that all. I do believe that when an orphanage can be shut down because a better system has been put in place it is a good thing. So...
Mostly, this will just be a series of photos of abandoned orphanages. There are too many stories to try to recap them, and they are all too similar too choose between. Let's just say that none of the stories are good, and many of the buildings are supposed to be haunted. You can imagine the rest.

This is St. John's in Goulburn in Australia:

This is the Greek orphanage in Buyukada, Turkey. It is one of the world's largest wooden buildings:

The Philadelphia Jewish Foster Home and Orphan Asylum (orphan asylum is such a curious and ominous word, don't you think?):

Photos courtesy of  Opacity.

A Kindersanitorium (another interesting term) in Germany:

Photos courtesy of  Opacity.

Newsham Park Hospital in England. Previously Liverpool Seaman's Orphan Institution. Now abandoned:

And I don't know what this one is. Evidently, I didn't save my links or didn't put them in the correct place.

Fright Fest!

Part of taking advantage of the season passes we have to Six Flags meant going to the big Halloween thing they have: Fright Fest. In theory, I had no problem with this. I mean, it sounded kind of fun. On the other side of that, it meant taking two trips, because, the first weekend we planned to go (Fright Fest takes place during the whole month of October), my daughter got invited to a sleepover, so, although we went, we had to leave early-ish to get her back in time, and none of the scary stuff had started yet. That was kind of annoying.

But we made plans to go back just for the scary stuff the following weekend. I use the term "scary stuff" kind of loosely. Let me explain:

Six Flags had a posted warning that children under 12 should not stay after dark because the park would become too scary for them. I saw the warning the first weekend we went and had some trepidation about taking my daughter who scares relatively easily and is less than 12.

The Fright Fest attractions were divided into free attractions and additional fee attractions. So, yeah, first, you have to pay to get in the gates (unless you have a season pass), which isn't cheap, and, then, you have to pay by "ride" for more than a half-dozen different attractions. I'm assuming the paid attractions weren't cheap, because they didn't have the prices listed on any of the literature, and we chose to only do the free attractions. The paid attractions were almost exclusively listed as "very scary," but there were a couple of the free ones that were also listed as "very scary."

I have to say that if the free haunted places were a good representation of what scary is, then nothing was more scary than having some people dressed up as zombies. I don't know; maybe, I'm just jaded, but nothing struck me as scary and, other than the zombie clowns (whom my daughter thought were freaky (because clowns already start out creepy, according to her)), my daughter was barely fazed.

They did have some good shows in there, though. We saw Jim Mackenzie, a juggler and comedian. He had some sinus issues (note the nail in his nose),

probably caused by running with scissors.

He also juggled fire.

We also saw the zombie pirate and sea lion show.

So the kids had fun, and the costumes the employees wore were pretty incredible. Here are some other pictures:

Oh, and my daughter tried to feed  my son to a giant alligator.

And, for the moment, we managed to avoid