Windsor, Ontario for Urban Explorers

Windsor Blight, on Flickr Group Description This group is for all those photos of Windsor, Ontario that exhibit the current state of property in the city. Abandoned homes, brownfields, vacant stores, empty factories, etc. The current commercial vacancy rate in downtown Windsor is an astonishing 24%. The residential vacancy rate is the highest in the … Read more

Windsor, Ontario for Urban Explorers

Windsor Blight, on Flickr Group Description This group is for all those photos of Windsor, Ontario that exhibit the current state of property in the city. Abandoned homes, brownfields, vacant stores, empty factories, etc. The current commercial vacancy rate in downtown Windsor is an astonishing 24%. The residential vacancy rate is the highest in the … Read more

Ottawa’s Old Train Station

Bhat Boy’s exhibition, called the Old Train Station, featuring scenes from Ottawa’s original train station downtown [was] showcased at the Orange Art Gallery. “One of the things that really interested me is that the old train station was the hub of industrial Ottawa before it became a government town,” Bhat Boy said in an interview. … Read more

From Fred, the Missing Strange Traveler

The following is cut and pasted from an abandoned site, on Tripod. I would have reposted more newsletters, but I only found two.

Welcome, to The STRANGE TRAVELER

Hi. I’m Fred, the Robin Leach of haunted castles, alien landing fields, mystical monoliths and really cool bars. You have just stumbled into the only travel Website on the Internet that takes a “Twilight Zone” approach to vacation planning.

This is how it works: First, dim the lights.

Stare deeply into your computer screen.

Then imagine you are in the black-and-white world of early 1960s television, sitting in a AAA travel office filled with happy brochures on Disneyland, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.

Suddenly, you realize that the terse, thin-lipped agent marking up your TripTik is actually Rod Serling, host of “The Twilight Zone” and one of modern society’s first supernatural tour guides.

In your head, you hear his clipped, dramatically inflected words offering guidance in your search for vacation ideas that don’t center on theme parks, relatives or all-inclusive resorts:

“You’re traveling through another dimension – a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead. Your next stop …Alton, Illinois.”

Or Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Or Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Paris, Roswell, Loch Ness, the Nazca Plain, Stonehenge, Area 51, The Queen Mary or that spooky old house everyone whispered about in the neighborhood you grew up in.

The Strange Traveler thinks vacations should be more than sunscreen and lengthy discussions about where to eat dinner. Your travel tales should make jaws drop around the office water cooler, and widen the eyes of fellow parents on the T-ball sidelines.

You see, the world is filled with Strange Travel possibilities: destinations reputed to be haunted, cursed, charmed, visited by aliens, inhabited by monsters, worshiped by strange cults, or infested by vampires, faeries and zombies. Some of these places are the doorways to true mysteries. Others are heavily hyped tourist traps. Most have overnight accommodations, lots of local color, and at least one decent bar.

That’s where The Strange Traveler comes in.

This Website and its newsletter are your tour guides to bizarre, out-of-the-way destinations. This e-zine both guides readers to strange places they can visit, and advises them of the supernatural undercurrents flowing beneath traditional getaways.

Read more

Dust Bunnies

What do you know about dust bunnies? Or do you think they don’t really exist, like pixies, fairies and the Loch Ness Monster? Dust bunnies are real, I’ve seen them. I’ve swept them up and cleaned up after them. Downtown Dust Bunnies – Two sets of sisters on a mission to uncover the cause of … Read more