Another village, another municipality colored on my old map of Finland. And yet another interesting discovery.
This building surely has been a beauty before being covered with the ugly tiles. It surely looks larger than just an ordinary one family house, but who knows.
Even the several entrances and the loading dock looking door suggest, that this is something different than just an old apartment building.
The building had two floors above the ground and one basement. It looked to be tightly shut.
The only weak spot was where I like them least: the basement.
Soon enough I was able to find stairs to more interesting and less creepy parts of the building.
Although climbing the stairs was a bit creepy, too. They were cut in half midway.
It was pitch dark inside. I hadn’t gotten very far, when I heard someone climb the main stairs and try to get inside the house. I though that they were someone, who had seen me enter, and was trying to get me out, but they didn’t seem to have the key.
I stayed silent for as long as I could right on the other side of the main entrance. As they couldn’t get in, they left. That’s when I thought it was safe to move again.
There wasn’t a single ray of natural light inside, and some of the rooms were also pretty dark. Not very good conditions for photography.
This is the same room as in the first picture. It either looks like an apartment or some public space like community center or kindergarten.
The rather large kitchen would hint at the latter. The photo quality isn’t very good, as I again shot almost blindfolded.
Even the bathroom hints towards a public space of some sort.
The old wood stove was safe and sound in the corner.
A small ray of light.
A turquoise corridor. This one probably leads to the side door seen in the first picture.
Near the back door was a second kitchen.
This seemed to be a more modern one.
The final room downstairs behind the second kitchen. The upstairs was inaccessible. The door to the stairway was screwed shut, and the hole made in the wall between the basement stairs and the upstairs was too narrow for me to get through.
I have turned every stone to find out what this place has been. I’ve researched old maps, Googled with every possible keyword I can think of and even gone through the municipality’s decision making documents. The only thing that they revealed was, that the building was torn down in late 2022 or 2023 to ‘improve the appearance’ of the center. I even tried to gain membership to a history page of the municipality and contacted an account publishing old photos, but nothing helped. If somebody does know something about this place, please contact me. I’ll be happy to add info about the history of the building here.
The story doesn’t end quite here. When I was about to exit through the hole on the basement door, I noticed a person sitting on the concrete wall protecting the stairs leading to the door. Next to them were two or three large plastic bags full of stuff.
When the person left, I crawled out, but they had just thrown their cigarette to a place, where it wouldn’t start a fire. It was a lady in her 40’s or 50’s clearly a tramp or a homeless person. I asked if she knew anything about the place, she said she wasn’t a local. I asked, if she had been trying to get in, she said yes. I told her about the basement door.
We exchanged a few words, she even offered me a beer. I’ve always been afraid of meeting a homeless person in these places, but if it’s this scary, maybe I’ve been afraid of nothing.