Abandoned places hold a fascination for many as indicated by the number of TV shows, Youtube channels, and blog posts on the subject. Especially those places untouched except worn by time and nature. These include amusement parks, vehicle graveyards, old country estates, and city buildings.
Those that venture and seek out these places are called urban explorers, nickname “creepers”, for the most part. These adventurers have a love of history and architecture and brave the dangerous conditions in satisfying that urge. Equipped with hardhats, steel-toed work boots, methane and carbon monoxide detectors they explore with the motto “Take nothing but photographs.”
So how did I come about to touch on this subject? I saw the below video of a person skiing down five stories inside of an abandoned building. And that led to a novel I read a few years ago by David Morrell called Creepers.
Creepers is the story of five urban explores looking for a building’s dying secrets, set in a run-down hotel on the Jersey shore.
Creepers is also written in real-time of which I can’t name another novel of such type. What that means is “every instant of every breath of 8 hours is dramatized. There aren’t any cuts or leaps forward, as in: Five minutes later, he reached the second floor. Those five minutes are dramatized.” The unabridged audio lasts eight hours, as long as the story would take to occur in life.
David Morrell is a wonderful writer who has touched a number of subjects in his career. If you didn’t know David Morrell’s first novel “First Blood” is what Rambo is based on.
Here is the link to the video of the skier, just over two minutes.
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