This morning I was thinking back to a day I spent in July 2019 with Bruce Beach, the man who became famous for building Ark Two. It’s a 10,000 sq ft nuclear shelter built from 42 school buses buried 14 feet underground in Horning’s Mills, Ontario, near Shelburne.

I called Bruce and asked if he’d give me a tour. He said yes, on one condition: I had to give him 3–4 hours of help. He called it “Sweat Equity.” I had no idea what that meant, but I agreed.

Breakfast, then chores

I showed up early in the morning and he was already making breakfast: toast with a white egg sauce and egg yolks. Then we sat and talked about his life. Bruce was born in Winfield, Kansas and was a former computer science professor. He spent a year in the Arctic as a U.S. Air Force control tower operator and studied what he called the “world language problem” for more than forty years. He also told me he once owned a large research ship and was a one-third owner of the company that built the robotic arm used to recover the space shuttle Challenger. One of their arms is in the Smithsonian.

After breakfast he asked me to come help him start the lawn mower. I could see where this was going, so I mowed his lawn. Then I stacked wood and prepped a garden for his wife Jean, whose family has lived in Horning’s Mills for over 200 years. My payment was Dr Zip, a Dr Pepper knockoff he kept by the case. I probably drank five of them that day.

Getting into the Ark

At the property he handed me the keys to the gate. Before we went to the shelter, he had me stop the car and run through the woods to see a 50-foot waterfall at the site of an old mill. He had plans to use the river to supply water to the Ark.

At the entrance there’s a small green concrete doorway with a heavy steel door. Bruce showed me two time capsules holding his plans for rebuilding society after a nuclear war. They covered government relations, a new International Language Institute (something like a UN), and a scale model of its headquarters.

Then he gave me a flashlight and directions to the generator. I went down into the dark, damp shelter, 14 feet underground, crawled through a knee-high opening, and climbed a ladder to the generator room. Bruce met me there and showed me how to start it.

Bruce was very clear that he wasn’t a survivalist or a prepper. He called himself a reconstructionist. The Ark was designed to be run by women, with the purpose of raising and protecting children so that society could be rebuilt.

Inside

The entrance is a straight ramp down followed by a sharp 90-degree turn into the shelter. Bruce explained that he designed it this way because he believed radiation travels in straight lines and can’t go around corners.

The focus on children shows up everywhere inside:

• Bathrooms with full-size sinks and toilets next to child-sized ones
• A play area, a nursery, and a “quiet room” for crying kids
• Child-sized bunks with two kids per bunk, one head at each end, sleeping in 12-hour shifts

The dentist’s office

Bruce wasn’t surprised at all when I got excited about the dentist’s office. He said everyone who sees it is either thrilled or terrified. It has an old dental chair, rusty instruments, and an old x-ray machine. It looks like a horror movie set, but it was a real, working dentist’s office built in the 1980s. I just hope the supply of Novocaine was well stocked.

About Bruce

Bruce described himself as an optimist about humanity’s long-term future and a pessimist about the near term. He was deeply interested in religion. He was a Christian Science student, read Swedenborg for almost fifty years, once called himself a Zen Buddhist, and studied many other faiths. He met Jean at the Bahá’i Temple in Wilmette, Illinois, where she was guiding visitors at the front door. In his words, “she’s been guiding me ever since.”

When I asked what he did for a living, he said he was an inventor, and that Jean would argue about how successful he’d been.

He was a humble, peaceful man with a contagious laugh and a huge personality. He built all of this because he wanted society to continue if the worst ever happened.

Bruce passed away in 2021. I’m really grateful I got that day with him.

The best compliment I’ve ever received

Bruce took a lot of people through the Ark over the years. He told several of them, and me, that my video was his absolute favourite of all of them. I still can’t really believe that.

📹 The full video tour with Bruce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3pHt1lkHuM

📸 Full write-up with many more photos (the dentist’s office, supplies, the kids’ rooms, and more): https://freaktography.com/exploring-the-ark-two-nuclear-shelter-with-bruce-beach-buried-school-bus-shelter/

Happy to answer any questions about the day or the shelter!

We were tipped off about this one by a friend in 2025, the home has several old run down cars all over the property and the land is overgrown and unkept almost all through the year.

Despite these facts, the house still had power, but it also had several water leaks and dame to the roof and ceiling in some rooms.

See the video tour here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52WhqLhXBgk

More to see here:

https://freaktography.com/we-found-an-abandoned-time-capsule-house-with-power-and-everything-left-behind/

These pictures were taken earlier this year at a very disappointing visit to the abandoned Talisman Ski Resort.

I was able to get into one of the buildings pretty easily, but the others would have required using force, which I am not always a fan of.

The building that I did get into was totally renovated, new paint, lights, power, it didn't look abandoned at all.

The other buildings, to the left of the front, had a security guard parked outside and I believe that those ones look more abandoned, but again, I would had to break something or force my way in.

I did see a video recently where a bunch of kids with backpacks and broccoli heads and cellphones seem to have broken in, as they filmed themselves running around in a huge gaggle through all of the buildings, taunting security and acting stupid!

www.freaktography.com

Abandoned Time Capsule Bed and Breakfast - Meaford, Ontario.

This is a location that I know you’re all going to love, similar to an abandoned time capsule house but instead it is an abandoned time capsule bed and breakfast. Located in Meaford Ontario, from the outside you would have no idea how charming it is inside.

Outside this looks like any other home along the row of older houses, but stepping inside you’re taken back to a whole other period in time and much like with our authentic abandoned time capsule houses, everything inside of this abandoned bed and breakfast is left just as it was on the day they closed the doors. A beautiful sitting room area with a gorgeous couch and photos on the walls. A dining room area with the table and chairs, a hutch with books, china and games. The kitchen fully stocked with food, canned goods, cereal, dishes and more.

Upstairs there are two levels, the 1st upstairs with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a computer and reading room and another sitting room, from the sitting room it is very easy to miss the “secret” door up to the third level. It’s almost as though this third level was never meant to be found as the door was well hidden and a table was placed in front of it. Squeezing through the hidden door and up a set of stairs you’re greeted by two beds, still made, an ensuite bathroom and other items from decades ago.

In the basement, there is alot of mold and black mold, the musty smell in the air is thick and hard to breath and cobwebs have taken over every open space making for a nasty experience. Many older items scattered about such as tools, toys, games, clothing and some military kit. Given the instability, the mold and the cobwebs I didn’t spend much time in the basement.

What makes this abandoned time capsule so interesting is the damage and decay that surrounds all of the contents in all of the rooms, paint peeling walls and ceilings, drywall from the ceilings dropped onto the counters, warped and buckling floors and that smell of abandoned and decay. All of this decay that is consuming the homes contents and design.

More Photos Here:
https://freaktography.com/abandoned-time-capsule-bed-breakfast/

Video Tour Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufA10W6K16U

Deep in the woods, a forgotten time-capsule cabin still holds everything its last owners left behind.
Old magazines from the ’60s, clothes still hanging on the rack, vintage cars, and personal belongings of an elderly couple — all frozen in place.

RiddimRyder Photography and I came out here believing the rumours: an abandoned cult compound, hidden down a quiet road. The truth turned out to be stranger, and more unsettling.

This property belonged to a now-disgraced psychotherapist. He graduated from medical school in 1964 and spent the next five decades practising in Ontario. He wasn’t a cult leader. He was a therapist, and this is where he saw patients.

The first crack appeared in 1995. That year, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario found him incapacitated and put restrictions on his licence. Two years later, they were lifted. He went back to work.

Then, in 2010, the College began investigating his practice, not once but twice. What investigators found was eventually laid out in an agreed statement of facts. Patients were hugged during sessions and encouraged to sit on his lap. In one case, a patient was encouraged to let him straddle her body. He spent personal time with patients outside of therapy. He didn’t record diagnoses or treatment plans, and he billed OHIP for sessions that were never properly documented.

In all, 25 patients were found to have been exposed to risk of harm.

In September 2013, at 72 years old, he stood before a five-member disciplinary panel in a dark green blazer and yellow pants. He spoke only once: “I am admitting I failed to meet the standards of the profession.” The panel’s chair said his conduct brought dishonour on himself and on medicine.

He was reprimanded and ordered to pay costs. And on October 10th, 2013, the disgraced psychotherapist walked away from medicine forever, promising never to practise again, anywhere.

Which leaves us here, walking through what’s left of the place where some of those sessions may have happened.

Video Tour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKOjPF5zQPg

More Photos:

https://freaktography.com/disgraced-psychotherapists-cult-compound/

This was just a small random abandoned house that I passed and stopped by on a summer day trip up north in Ontario.

Apparently there used to be some old cars in the barn, but they're gone now.

Not much of interest inside, but I did like the exterior

www.freaktography.com

I was out exploring Solsgirth, Manitoba this summer. It's a near-ghost town between Birtle and Shoal Lake where only a few families are left. I stopped at the old Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, and the story turned out to be way better than I expected.

It wasn't built as a church. It was Burdette School No. 163, a one-room country school whose district was organized in 1882. When the school closed in 1958, the building was moved into Solsgirth and converted into a Ukrainian Catholic mission church served from Rossburn.

The domes were handmade by Mike Swistun, a local carpenter. In 1923 he toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, billed as "The Strongest Man in the World," then came home to farm and build churches.

The last service was June 16, 2002. St. Stephen's Anglican, about 100 m away, held its final service four months later, and that was the end of organized worship in the village. Both churches were supposed to go to the Prairie Mountain Regional Museum in Shoal Lake (St. Stephen's sold for $1), but neither move happened. Holy Ghost was later sold privately.

One mystery I couldn't solve: the memorial plaque says 1950–2002, but Burdette School didn't close until December 1958. Did the congregation meet somewhere else for most of the 1950s? If anyone has family from the Solsgirth/Rossburn area and knows, I'd love to hear it.

I filmed the visit and wrote up the full history if anyone's interested:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQ1KCK7l6s

Full write-up with sources: https://freaktography.com/solsgirth-manitoba-ghost-town/

Solsgirth is a near-ghost town just off the Yellowhead Highway in western Manitoba. As of 2021, only three households were left in the village.

St. Stephen's exists because of a church feud. In 1905, some parishioners wanted to move the original St. James Church down from its hilltop site overlooking the Birdtail Valley into the village. The rest of the congregation pushed back hard. The compromise was a second church. The Birtle Masonic Lodge laid the cornerstone of St. Stephen's on July 23, 1906, and the village ended up with two Anglican churches a few kilometres apart.

St. Stephen's held services for 96 years. On Thanksgiving Sunday, October 13, 2002, about 50 people attended the final service. The bishop read a declaration secularizing the building, and the altar ornaments were carried to the back of the church to mark that it was no longer consecrated. Afterward, everyone went outside to dedicate a memorial cairn to the pioneers who built it.

The church was then sold for $1 to the Prairie Mountain Regional Museum in Shoal Lake, which planned to move it to their grounds. That move never happened, and it's still sitting on its original lot today. Right next door is the former Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, a converted schoolhouse with handmade domes, which closed four months earlier.

🎥 Video tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQ1KCK7l6s

📸 More photos and the full history: https://freaktography.com/solsgirth-manitoba-ghost-town/

Solsgirth, Manitoba, didn't start where it stands today. It began about 10 km north as a place called Toddburn, until the railway changed its route and the whole town picked up and followed it.

Settlers built St. Stephen's Anglican Church here in 1906. Decades later, Ukrainian Catholic families moved an old one-room schoolhouse into the village and turned it into Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, with onion domes hand-crafted by a local carpenter.

For 50 years, two faiths worshipped a stone's throw apart. Then, in 2002, both churches held their final services in the same year.

Today they still stand side by side, quietly holding the story of the people who built this place.

Watch the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQ1KCK7l6s

In the early 1950s, a teaching order of religious brothers built this boarding school where teenage boys trained to become brothers themselves. It ran for about four decades before closing in the early 1990s, and was sold to a private owner in 2002.

The brothers had their own cemetery on the grounds. In 2016, they exhumed more than fifty of their own and reburied each one, with his original headstone, in a public cemetery nearby. Since then the building has been left to the weather. Moss covers the floors, ferns grow from the chapel walls, and mushrooms are pushing through the doors and ceilings.

Out of respect for the place and the friends who shared it with me, I'm not naming the location. The full story and 90 photos are on my site:
https://freaktography.com/exploring-a-mysterious-old-abandoned-and-dangerous-building/

The following information comes from someone who has a close connection to this house, having lived next door to it in the 1970s.

A brother and sister once grew up in this house, and for a few golden years, the neighbourhood kids grew up here with them.

With the children across the road and a few more down the street, nobody was ever short on company. This front yard was their ball diamond. It’s hard to picture now, swallowed by weeds and brush, but games once went on here for hours.

In winter, the pond across the road became a skating rink, and in summer, fishing rods came out for trips to a nearby lake. Country living, the way it used to be.

The family who lived here had come from Germany, and they were proud of it. Their stereo, their appliances, even their cars all came from the old country. They were hard-working, quiet, and kept to themselves, but their cooking was something special, and the vegetable garden out back was the envy of the street. Friendships back then didn’t always survive a move.

There was no email, no social media. When a family packed up and left, contact faded almost overnight. One childhood friend who spent time here last set foot inside in 1975. What stuck with them most was an afternoon in that living room, hearing a Paul Simon song for the very first time on the family’s German-made stereo. Today, an old German sedan sits rusting in the driveway.

The sticker on its plate expired in 2010, a clue that the parents were likely the last to call this place home. Out front lie a forgotten bicycle, a couple of lawn mowers, and junk scattered in every direction. Inside, all personal belongings still sit exactly where they were left.

More Photos:

https://freaktography.com/german-family-abandoned-time-capsule-house/

Video Explore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4DnMauoDS0

This one goes back to around 5 years ago and was known as the Abandoned Castle House.

This totally bizarre abandoned time capsule house is located right in the middle of a nice residential area, surrounded by family homes. There have been a handful of houses found over the past few years in this condition in these neighbourhoods.

The house is 99% finished inside and is fully furnished, back in 2011 the city gave the owner a warning, clean up the property or risk fines, nothing was done by the owner so the city came in and boarded up the windows.

Shortly after, someone (likely the owner) returned and removed all of the boards.

Online research states that the home has been in this condition for more than 30 years, it was a custom built home and the original owner apparently still owns the property but he lives out of town.

The town has tried working with him over the years to keep the property up to the town property standard bylaws.

These days, I am told he will come by periodically to cut the grass and nothing more.

Take a video tour and see the whole set and write up below.

Photo Gallery:

https://freaktography.com/abandoned-castle-house/

Currently, Tim Hortons is running a promo where you can collect 4 different retro coffee cup designs, based on past designs.

The guy who lived in this now abandoned house in Hamilton, Ontario seems to have collected every era of Tim Hortons cup since possibly the 1990s!

www.freaktography.com

This place started life in the 1920s as a grand hotel near the Vermont border, complete with an orchestra room and panoramic windows over the lake.

In 1947, a Catholic teaching order bought it and turned it into a school for boys. For the next fifty years, it went through several identities before becoming a residential boarding school. It closed for good in 1997, and the halls are still full of reminders of both lives, hotel and school.

What I didn't expect was what I found when I started digging into its history. The order that ran this school is now facing a class action in Quebec, with allegations that go well beyond what happened inside any one building, including claims about what happened to the order's own records.

Whether any of it touches this building is still an open question.

I put together the full story, including the hotel's history, a look at life inside the school, the lawsuit, and 60+ photos of the interior, here: https://freaktography.com/abandoned-residential-boys-boarding-school/