Urban Assault

This morning I thought "I should really find something of local interest to write about, because there are only so many posts that refer to Billie Piper's eyebrows I can compose without completely alienating everyone." Alienating! Billie Piper! Geddit? No? I don't blame you. It was very poor.

Anyway, with that premise in mind I did a quick search in Google in an attempt to find some inspiration, and found this, which, if you're interested, is followed by this. This is a hotel that never looked salubrious, but these photographs chronicling its decay into ideal horror film location are fascinating. And a little scary, because it's not very far away, and I can't get the theme from Psycho out of my head now.

I wandered around the Urban Assault site viewing photographs of various derelict buildings filled with a mixture of wanting to look over my shoulder the whole time, feeling like a child who has disobeyed a clear parental "Don't go into the woods!" order, because it's clearly illegal for people to be doing that, not to mention dangerous in a "might get killed by falling masonry or shot by someone out of Pulp Fiction" way, and being completely fascinated by the evocative strength of some of the images and the fabulous photography. I found High Royds Hospital (originally West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum when it was opened in 1888, according to the poster) particularly spine chilling; looking at those photographs gave me an uncomfortable feeling similar to that evoked by visiting Alcatraz. (Yes, really. I went somewhere interesting once). Lo and behold, the tiniest bit more research reveals that High Royds has indeed been the location for a creepy film. At least it sounds pretty creepy - I haven't seen it. And since I'm still trying to exorcise Norman Bates from my head as a result of looking at a few completely Psycho-unrelated photographs, I don't think I'll be popping to Blockbuster for it any time soon.