The prison grounds at Angola are very much like a ranch. Once through the gate you travel a straight road, lined with oaks across flat grass...broken in a couple of places by creeks and ditches. There are horses.
When you leave you head for the hills. Unlike coming out of the Delta at Greenwood, where the initial rise is as steep and abrupt as a roller coaster's, this road skirts the hills, turns back toward the river before making a gradual ascent. On one side you have these sheer red faces of eroding clay...on the other an incomprehensible tangle of vines, branches and brambles...briars in black wet dirt...and old houses and out buildings.
You'd never see this place in the summer. In fact I've driven by it several times and never noticed it there. It's just as well. I would never have stopped here when the ground was warm. And if there had been any flooding? I wouldn't even look in that direction.
The place is existentially creepy enough...
without our arch enemy curled up in the corner you're about to turn. I don't want to give the impression that we're always running from snakes like some kinda action movie...but, this...this, in the spring and summer, would be begging for it.
Our mold and moss are technicolor (almost a chrome yellow in person).
This must have been a very nice spread at one time (though it had to have been prone to flooding). There were several outbuilding....one of which, I'm sure, was a kitchen.
The roadside is littered with places like this. They'll all disappear here in a month or so...make a wobbly reappearance next winter...and next year and the next...until the vines finally pull them down and the ground swallows them up.
I love this post! I love America! (I've never been). You have so much to do and see.
ReplyDeleteHa.
DeleteA lot of this has to do with space...space between where we are and where we need to be (a lot of time in the car) and, the space to pick up a move. For instance, Mississippi isn't a lot smaller than England...there are only 3 million people in the whole state.
Whole areas, not just in the country but, in towns as well...are abandoned as people move to other areas (often just miles away) for one reason or another. Whole sections of a city will be almost abandoned and crossroad out in the country will become a swank village. Towns disappear or worse they don't...and decay around the few people who refuse to leave.
It's a little bit crazy really.
I find it amazing that there are so many abandoned towns in the US. Detroit is the biggest surprise. Every time I read about Ghost Towns I think of nuclear zones and especially the 'town' in The Hills have Eyes remake *shudders*
DeleteDetroit's a special(needs) case.
DeleteExcellent photographs of a fascinating location. This is actually on the Angola Prison grounds? Didn't Leadbelly spend some time here? I am a very big fan of abandoned buildings and have crept around a few myself. This is top stuff. Shame you couldn't risk going upstairs. Good tune, too.
ReplyDeleteThis is right outside the gate...but the actual lock up was probably a lot closer at one time. There was a train depot very near there. At one time the place was a series of plantations...including Angola (where the slaves there were supposed to have come from). So, there are old buildings everywhere.
DeleteI should have gone up anyway but, I knew I only had half a chance of getting my truck out of there (I should post pictures of it) and I didn't want to risk it with a broken leg. Still, that place was built sturdy.
It looks like I'll be in the Delta next week...there are whole towns there that have been nearly abandoned.
Indeed, Leadbelly was there and it was at Angola that the Lomax's first recorded him. I posted a song in the previous post...the story is Gov. Allan released him because of the song but, he was due out on good behavior anyway.
It's funny, the old prison systems in Louisiana and Mississippi (Parchman Farm) could be really cruel but, they could also be really lenient. R L Burnside killed a man...killed him dead, at the very least, second degree murder. He did next to no time 'cause he was one of a local farmer's best workers.
Fantastic photos and such evocative description, I too love abandoned buildings. I can almost hear the creaking of a door hinge from here.
ReplyDeleteEven in the middle of a sunny day it was creepy. For good reason...this had to have been a going place at one time.
DeleteI'm really curious about how long it's been there. The design is similar to Rosemont (Jefferson Davis's family home just up the road in Woodville, MS). This area, for some reason, avoided the Yankee torch (though sadly not the Yankees themselves)...there are six or seven intact plantations around St. Fancisville.
In Jackson, we only have three or four buildings that pre-date The War and they are tended with care. That's how Jackson picked up the nickname Chimneyville...funny the chimney's been stripped from this place.
Pure Blair Witch - brilliant! Especially the last picture with the yellow - just beautiful. Blues slide guitar or Tubular Bells or fractured discordant electronic backing - not sure which. Anyway, quiet and menacing.
ReplyDeleteIf you enjoy pictures of abandoned places, there's a Twitter feed called AbandonedPics which regularly posts haunting images from around the world: https://twitter.com/AbandonedPics - my favourite thing on Twitter
Nice Cuban Panopticon.
DeleteI don't know if I'll be back there...one sunken Brazilian yacht in Antarctica is enough to last me a life time....creepiest shit ever.
Actually I'm having a hard time deciding whether the sunken yacht or the cuban prison is more creepy.
DeleteJeremy Bentham was a creep.
I don't miss much from a perpetually soggy climate but I do miss the strange visuals that come from seeing how everything is just about one year away from being pulled back into the jungle.
ReplyDeleteIf this thing wasn't so sturdily built it would have been gone a long time ago.
DeleteAs it it the piers on each corner are pointing in a different direction.
Wow. I love the last paragraph to this post. Very mysterious! The photo's are amazing. I am jealous! I want to explore that odd house too. It does seem like an eerie place, and also a bit sad and lonely.
ReplyDeleteIt's really creepy to watch happen. The house I lived in as a kid was torn down a few years ago...you'd never know that there had been anything on that spot...completely gone back.
DeleteIt is sad I think...it must have been so busy around there at one time.