Urban Exploration: The Illegal Activity that is Fun for All Ages

It's 2 AM, and the police are responding to a call about a group of individuals trespassing in the old abandoned hospital on the north side of town. It is assumed these "visitors" are vandals, or maybe even thieves seeing what items of value they can find at the site. The officers find two cars parked in a very "inconspicuous" spot, and decide to wait for the drivers to emerge from the building. Spotlights explode on in an instant, and the officers are faced with a group of four college age males carrying flashlights and cameras and wearing dark clothing. The police find nothing incriminating on them, and after questioning the trespassers claim to be urban explorers.

This scene is becoming more and more common, although most will never hear of it. Urban exploration, or UE as it is referred to by enthusiasts, is an ever growing hobby, but remains very much a fringe or "underground" activity. Interestingly, this is how most explorers would rather keep it.

In our modern age, there are very few undiscovered places left on Earth for the adventurous to explore. We seem to have lost the sense of mystery and discovery that those who have come before us surely lived with. Urban explorers are rekindling that mystery by exploring the forgotten or rarely seen places of the built environment around us. Their adventures take them to abandoned buildings, forgotten subway tunnels, catacombs, storm drains, utility tunnels, or even restricted areas of active buildings. The one thing that all of these places have in common is that visiting them is, in the strictest sense, illegal. A true explorer is never turned away by a "No Trespassing" sign. An "Authorized Personnel Only" sign is even easier to foil. If stopped by someone, an explorer usually has a vague excuse already prepared: "Oh, I thought I was authorized. I spoke with the brown haired guy in the glasses." Also, pretending to be lost is used quite often.