I have not personally set foot in the castle... yet. I did have quite an experience with it yesterday, however.
I drove up and down the stretch of Franklin between 44th and 45th three times before I even recognized the structure. It was certainly nothing more than a shadow of it's former self and I was unimpressed to say the least. Even in mid-day there were two tourists ogling the place, on tippy toes pressed against the grizzled, six foot wrought iron fence, trying in vain to get a closer look.
I pulled down the road a bit and parked my car. As I walked up, the immensity of the building overwhelmed me. It's definitely more ominous standing twenty feet in front of it than glancing at it through the thick foliage of the trees from the street. Ok, maybe I was just a teensy bit impressed, but I wasn't exactly shitting bricks.
I got a bit of video of myself acting like a moron in front of the building and decided to take some pictures (my camera and I are joined at the hip). No sooner than I snapped the first picture, my LCD screen froze and then my camera shut off. When I managed to get the camera to turn back on, my battery meter was blinking. After a few seconds, the camera shut off again.
I'm standing here, dumbfounded in the middle of the sidewalk at this point and vaguely pissed, it takes me two hours to charge the damned thing. I know that battery was fully charged, I left it in the charger all night because I had a few places I'd planned on visiting.
It got even creepier when I uploaded the video. It shuts off after 20 seconds. I got at least three minutes of myself talking about the place after I did a quick pan, but I was nowhere to be found in the video. I know you're thinking I must have accidentally pressed a button and it stopped, but the light on the front blinks red when it's recording. If the light hadn't been blinking, I would have chalked it up and started over.
In any case, I've always been excited by the idea of the paranormal. This isn't my first odd encounter, and it probably won't be the last. That camera is refurbished, God only knows why it malfunctioned, the only pic I got is above, though. I also visited the site of where one of the Torso Killer's victims was found, and Mary Ann's alleys (since nobody knows for certain which alley is which, I went to both ones I could find). I didn't get any pictures, obviously, so I'll save those (rather boring in comparison) stories for another day when I can properly revisit.
However, my pit stop yesterday inspired me to create this blog for my past visits and all future explorations.
