Abandoned 4th of July

Before I get into this post, if you’re in NYC, come to the special Crimestoppers Show tomorrow! Michael Kupperman and I are hosting, guests include: Adam Warrock, James Adomian, Annie Lederman, Jared Logan and Matthew Thurber.

I’m going to be doing some non-comics posts in the upcoming months because…uh…I was going to say something about working all day/night on The Infinite Wait and needing time off but then I realized that a) working on comics all the time is kind of the best job so I sound like an asshole when I say I need time off and b) I’m posting other stuff because the stuff I’m doing is rad. So here’s the first summer adventure I went on:

Instead of hanging out in New York and watching fireworks on the Hudson for 4th of July, Jen and I went upstate to celebrate America by wallowing in its dilapidation. We originally intended just to stay overnight at a cheap motel and then go hiking and swimming, but right from the start, it was weird.

We found the cheapest lodging we could find, which turned out to be the Twilight Lodge in Haines Falls. (photo from googlemaps since I forgot to get one) It’s a Bed & Breakfast, which we assumed would be full over the holiday, but turns out we were the ONLY guests. It might have been because we went up early (on the 3rd) or because everyone else knows that this B&B is where nightmares are made. I mean, c’mon, look at the paintings hanging above the beds waiting to suck our souls out through our breath while we slept:

We named the old man Harold and decided the creature on his head must be his spirit animal. The second picture is of his wife and child, who he either murdered by poisoning and/or drowning in the bathtub. Or she died in childbirth and he was so distraught that he hanged himself in the weird kitchenette in our room, which was upgraded from a single room to basically a two bedroom apartment since no one else was there. But I still made Jen sleep in the same bedroom as me on account of having the worst douchechills ever. But all creepiness aside, it was actually a pretty good lodge for the price and they made us a really nice waffle breakfast the next day.

On our way through Tannersville, we passed by a compound of abandoned buildings that turned out to be three hotels, two churches, a house and a restaurant. The only research I could pull up on the place was that after a vague economic downturn, the area was “taken over by religious groups” before being abandoned completely. But they did the kind of abandoning that wasn’t clearing everything out and locking it up, but rather leaving everything behind and not locking the doors.

I found this really creepy basement but we didn’t have a flashlight and Jen said if I went in, she’d leave me there. The best kind of exploring buddy is someone who is up for anything but also holds you back when you’re being an idiot and are about to get murdered by a thousand ghosts.

Jen in the foliage:

Me in the shrubbery:

The building above used to be a church. There wasn’t much left besides a pulpet, stage and two pianos.

Outside the church was the place where one goes to do whatever creepy nonsense The Lord has commanded of them. I imagine it involves lots of rusty crucifixes, meat hooks and lye. Or, as Paul Hornschemeier proposed, whittling.

Next we hopped the fence into the backyard of another hotel where we found a swimming pool full of frogs.

The doors to all these places were wide open and the insides were surprisingly still full of stuff that would normally have been stolen and there was no graffiti anywhere. That was an awkward sentence but I don’t want to rewrite it.