Goodbye, Nightmares Part I

Welcome to a tiny village in Western Finland. If you’ve followed this blog closely, you will recognize the place.

This is the place, where my nightmares were made. A former abattoir in a village, where I used to live between ages 3 and 4. And the building, which basically is the reason why i started urbex.

The story can be read through the previous link, but I’ll give a quick recap to lazy browsers, who want to see the pics and not click on links.

I was 16, when I returned to the village after 10 years. I had an uneasy feeling all along, but when I saw this building in the darkness, I was frozen with fear. I spent a sleepless night wondering what had happened and found childhood memories from the place. It was probably abandoned already back then.

The story goes on here, but again I’ll give you a summary. I drove to this village several times and tried to enter the place, but was too afraid of it to even reach its grounds. My mental health deteriorated really quickly back then, and I started having nightmares about this place every night. Finally my friend had enough, gave me wine and drove me here. I ran inside in the middle of the night and found complete inner peace.

The following summer I told this story to my colleague, and she told me we should go in and photograph the place. That’s how my first ever exploration started. That was 11 years and 94 successfully entered buildings ago.

I made another brief visit in 2015 and again in 2020. Things had gone from bad to worse. The roof was collapsing, the municipality started to take action against the owner. I knew that the time of this place was running out, and I decided to come back once again and walk through the building the same routes I did the first time. I wanted to document the change, which had happened and leave my silent goodbyes to a location that has been so meaningful to me.

The time for the goodbyes has come. You can see the gallery from the first visit here. I will be walking the same path and linking to old pictures, so it will be easier for you to compare. There will be around 300 photos this time, so it’s going to be a long and comprehensive journey.

Like the previous time I would start at the back. It was a pretty dense jungle already back in 2010.

But 11 years ago you could still drive a car to the back yard. Now there was just a very narrow path.

Getting closer.

At this point I was wondering if I could actually reach the back door through all the burning nettles.

There is actually an entrance to the basement somewhere there.

And here we are. This is 2021, this is 2010. Since my previous visit the door has been bolted shut, which is a marvel.

A pretty similar view here.

As the door was shut, I had to climb in through the window. But it didn’t matter. This was the most important exploration for me in more than a decade.

Welcome to the place where my nightmares were made. For one last time.