Saturday, September 22, 2012

Updates on creepy and dilapidated structures of the eastern U.S.

I love it when I have developments to report on past posts! In the past few days, there has been one major and one minor update regarding "Creepy and dilapidated structures of the eastern United States, Part 1."

The big news comes unexpectedly and courtesy of the marvelous J.W. Ocker, who is the author of "The New England Grimpendium" and the soon-to-be-published "The New York Grimpendium."

Ocker also authors the OTIS (Odd Things I've Seen) blog1 and, this morning, he featured the same creepy building in Bennington, Vermont, that I had on Papergreat earlier this year.

And Ocker did a much better job of legwork (or, as he jokes, "Google search") than I did.

At the time, I was unable to determine what this building was. But Ocker discovered that it's the Walloomsac Inn and that it was built in 1771 by Captain Elijah Dewey. He uncovered some more historic details, too, and speculated on the nature of the former inn's current occupants. But, for all that, you're going to have to go read his blog post.2

A few of my previously unpublished photos of the building that we now know is the Walloomsac Inn are pictured here today.



Meanwhile, the "creepy and dilapidated structures" post back in July also featured shots of the abandoned Golden Rule department store in Belington, West Virginia. Two days ago, an anonymous commenter posted the following:
I spray painted "free manson" on there. It's hilarious to see it on the internet
Well, thank you for fessing up, Anonymous. That was quite the retro reference you made with your nicely lettered graffito — unless you meant Marilyn instead of Charles.


Footnotes
1. One of my favorite pieces by Ocker on OTIS — and I might have mentioned this before — is his June 23, 2007, post about the Monroeville Mall, which served as the filming site for George Romero's 1978 zombie masterpiece, "Dawn of the Dead."
2. You can also check out "The Walloomsac Inn: A fact sheet" from the Bennington Museum website.

2 comments:

  1. Ha! I have a postal related addition to your footnote about Monroeville Mall. A few years ago I hosted the Postcrossing "Little Mail Carriers" and one of the places I took them was Monroeville Mall, to see the Zombie Museum. There is a post on my blog about it, but more pictures at the Postcrossing blog. I am Zmrzlina (and Postmuse) on Postcrossing.

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  2. I'll actually give you some info on the reason I spraypainted "Free Manson" on the golden rule. I was actually accused by a cop of spraypainting "FAG" on a pepsi machine. (Believe it or not..I didn't) So, me being me..I went out the next night and "tagged" I guess you could say..The golden rule..I'm proud of it though, probably because I don't have a life? Yeah, that about sums it up. Maybe I should make the next one "Chris Otto Rules!" haha.

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