A Filmmaker’s Past Exploring Uninhabited Places

What is it about empty and uninhabited places that is so intriguing? I’m fascinated by them. I can think of a few reasons right off the top of my head. Entering them is like an experiential history lesson. Sometimes, without any context, the mind begins to make up stories and construct reasons why these places are in the state they’re in. Maybe you see an object that is completely foreign to you, and you imagine what it was once used for. What was it like here when it was bustling with residents and staff? What was it like here on the day the last person left? What were the everyday sights, sounds, smells, and feelings for those who walked the halls? Is there anyone else here now? Creeping in the shadows? There are so many mysteries and unanswered questions.

Years of neglect and decay impart a special sort of architecture altering beauty. Especially when the sunlight enters through the windows and open doors, breaking into slowly moving beams that highlight and accentuate evidence of nature reclaiming its ground. For me, filming at the Sheboygan County Hospital has felt like a fever dream from the start. I, like many people, have a history and fascination with places that have been identified as “abandoned,” empty, or defunct. From seeking out websites, books, and TV shows to actually visiting places in person, I have always had a passion for this particular brand of adventure and storytelling, as well as the images that the lived experiences in these sites spark in my imagination.

Sheboygan County Hospital still image from Asylum: Not Abandoned

My first experience with an abandoned place was when I was in high school. It was a Saturday night. I went to a punk show at storage unit somewhere in Fort Lauderdale. The show was supposed to start an hour earlier and was still delayed. I was getting bored, and annoyed. There was another kid there waiting for the show. I knew him from school, but we weren’t close friends, I thought he was funny and kind of a smart ass. He said, “Do you want to go to an abandoned neighborhood instead of waiting for this show to start?” I couldn’t believe that there was an entire neighborhood full of empty houses nearby; it sounded like science fiction to me. He admitted that he had never been there before, but he knew where it was. I was all in. I hopped in his Toyota SR5, and we were off on an adventure.

After a few wrong turns, we found the main road into the neighborhood. It was Ravenswood Road, just west of the Fort Lauderdale airport. We turned off onto one of the lonely, dark residential streets. There were blocks and blocks of empty houses, dead traffic, and street lights overgrown with vegetation. Trees were left to grow untrimmed in any direction and on top of everything. We parked the car behind some heavy growth to hide it in case the cops showed up and walked around in the streets. It was unsettling, spooky, and unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I was fascinated by it. The neighborhood was almost in the direct path of the airport, so the silence was broken by the frequent, thunderous sound of 737’s on final approach overhead, foreshadowing the destiny of these particular plots of land.

Ravenswood in 1995. Most of the houses are still visible in this image. Some demolition and new construction has started at this point. Note the abandoned mobile home park on the left side of this image.

Ravenswood in 2025. Most of the neighborhood is now employee parking for the airport.

What made it especially novel and wondrous was that the houses and the streets were just like the ones we lived in. A dystopian familiarity that I cannot fully describe with words. It became my favorite place in the world during that time in my life. And yes, we came up with all kinds of teenaged conspiracy theories as to why the place was abandoned. Everything from toxic waste to aliens, but in reality, all of the homeowners were bought out for the expansion of the airport.

A few years later, when I was in Orlando studying theater at UCF, I was in a band called Heronymus. It was a combined effort assembled by students from the music and theater departments. Musically, it was a mashup of jazz, punk, funk, progressive, and a theatrical experimentation that the kids could dance to. Somehow it worked and was pretty fun. None of this is important to mention except for to say that, of course, the band needed band photos taken for our album artwork. We decided that the defunct and very abandoned remains of Sunland Mental Hospital would be the perfect location.  We thought the location was unique, interesting, and full of texture. It was nothing like what other local bands were doing at the time.

Sunland Mental Hospital, Orlando, FL - Photo Credit: Orlando Sentinel, date unknown

By the mid 1990’s, Sunland Hospital had already been closed down for a long time and was literally crumbling. There was a chain-link fence around the perimeter to keep people out, and there were many accessible, forced-open entry points. Some other urban explorers and I had visited the hospital before at night. The building was legitimately disturbing. Spray-painted above the main entrance were the words: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” which I found to be both creepy and corny. As one can imagine, the building had a history of rampant vandalism. Vandalization is sad. When I zoom out and try to think of it as simply the manifestation of what’s going on inside the mind of the person who performed the act, it shakes me. Even if I look at it like a form of creative expression, it is still disappointing. It is an extremely selfish, violent, and disrespectful expression of creativity; I suppose I can imagine that maybe it is therapeutic for some, even if it is destructive... I’m sure there’s something to this that’s worthy of more commentary, but I digress.

We entered the building with our hired photographer and started taking photos. It was daytime, so there was a lot of sunlight making the ruins pretty. When we were shooting outside, a security guard eventually showed up. He was on the outside of the fence. He wasn’t particularly aggressive as he told us that we had to leave, and we did so immediately. Sunland was eventually demolished, which, in the interest of public safety, is a good thing.

Heronymus CD insert with photos taken at Sunland Mental Hospital in Orlando, FL

The Sheboygan County Hospital is, as the title of our film states, not abandoned. It is mostly unoccupied but very much still cared for and maintained as well as it can be. The current owners still have to deal with people who try to break in and cause damage. The electric fence around the perimeter has been a good deterrent by delivering a mind-changing shock to those who happen to come in contact with it.

Having access to film there and document the stories of still living and present people involved with the building, from the past to the present, is a privilege for me. It’s as if my history of sneaking around old places has led me here with the duty to document just one of many places like this. A place where there’s history, love, stories to tell and yes even a transmutation of purpose. A place that means so much to so many people, though not always in the same context.

We can imagine the patient who received treatment, the administrators, caretakers, and employees who worked and even lived there and called it home, the ghost hunters searching for evidence of the afterlife, the haunt actors in the haunted house finding their people and expressing themselves with their “haunt family,” and the current owners who are keeping it from further decay and demolition with admirable ambitions for the future of the building. It means something to so many including us too, the filmmakers who are compiling and telling the firsthand stories of waking life in this infamous and legendary place. This is why we are doing the work that we are doing and handling it with tremendous care.