- Jared Rydelek of Weird Explorer found an abandoned Girl Scouts camp outside of Utica, New York.
- Jason Huckeba of the YouTube channel Huck Outdoors explored an abandoned summer camp that a film crew used for the set of a horror movie.
- The YouTube channel NJ Outdoors featured a tour of an abandoned summer camp on the Jersey Shore.
Anyone who attended summer camp surely has fond memories of campfires, swimming pools, and cabins set in sprawling, wooded campgrounds.
But when a camp closes down and leaves the grounds abandoned for decades, those same structures become, quite literally, the stuff of horror films (“Never Hike Alone,” a “Friday the 13th” fan film, was shot at an abandoned summer camp in California).
Here’s a look inside three creepy abandoned summer camps.
Jared Rydelek of Weird Explorer found an abandoned Girl Scouts camp two hours outside of Utica, New York, in Beechwood State Park.
Rydelek often travels for work as a professional contortionist and sideshow performer, and started a Youtube channel to document his discoveries.
"I think I was up in Utica because I had a gig at a college nearby," he told INSIDER. "I had a free day so I tried to find some off-the-beaten-path type of places to check out while I was there."
He found a story about the abandoned Girl Scouts camp on Atlas Obscura and decided to pay a visit.
The camp dates back to 1929 and closed in 1996.
It closed due to financial difficulties, according to Standard News.
Some of the cabins were still standing, while others collapsed entirely.
Some of the cabins had succumbed to damage caused by rot, weather, or vandals.
Graffiti littered the abandoned campground.
One of the boarded windows displayed the message "Go back."
Every inch of the empty swimming pool was covered in graffiti.
The swimming pool was nothing but concrete.
It's unclear how much graffiti dates back to the original summer camp and how much is from more recent visitors.
According to Atlas Obscura, the town of Sodus is upping security in the area to prevent vandalism.
A tree had fallen through the ceiling of an abandoned bathroom.
Visiting abandoned buildings comes with risks.
The bathrooms themselves remained somewhat intact.
The toilet emptied out into a shed below.
Rydelek was drawn to the history of the abandoned summer camp.
"I imagined just how busy and full of life it must have been for decades of campers visiting," he said. "But now the site is dead and being taken back by nature. It's such a meditative and introspective thing to walk around the ruins and imagine what things must have been like compared to what it's like now."
Jason Huckeba and Matt Dunn were hiking in the San Bernardino National Forest when they found an abandoned summer campground in the area.
Huckeba hosts the YouTube channel Huck Outdoors. Matt Dunn has a channel of his own called Lead Me Outdoors.
"We just happened to stumble along the camp as we were hiking that day," Huckeba told INSIDER.
The San Bernardino National Forest covers more than 800,000 acres in California.
Many of the main lodge's support beams had burned, putting the building on the verge of collapse.
Much of the campground showed signs of fire damage.
Some of the buildings remained relatively intact.
The floor of this shed was covered in broken glass.
In the lodge's kitchen area, they found production schedules for a film called "Never Hike Alone."
The project was an independent "Friday the 13th" fan film set at Camp Crystal Lake and filmed at the abandoned camp, according to IMBD.
The site featured ominous graffiti, but it may have been left over from the set of "Never Hike Alone."
Huckeba and Dunn came across objects that were likely props from the movie such as candles and a stuffed doll made to look like a dead body.
The remains of a swimming pool were fenced off.
The pool was empty except for some swampy water.
Across from the pool, there were showers and changing rooms.
Signs in the brick designated them as men's and women's areas.
The showers, separated by small brick walls, were still standing.
The brick structures held up better than the wood lodges.
YouTuber Patrick Botticelli from NJ Outdoors featured an abandoned summer camp on the Jersey Shore called Camp Albocondo.
The host estimated that the camp owner's house was built in the 1950s and was abandoned 10 to 20 years ago, but little about the site is known.
The kitchen ceiling had fallen apart, and the fridge was strewn on its side.
Debris covered the floor.
The wallpaper in the kitchen was a throwback to the 1980s.
Plaid wallpaper is no longer a home design trend that's high in demand.
In what was probably a child's room. Paintings of animals decorated the walls.
Much of the wall was damaged, obscuring the design.
The walls showed signs of termite damage.
It's wise to hire home inspectors to check for termite damage before buying a home.
The ceiling of the garage was made of wooden beams.
Someone clearly put effort into the property at some point before it was abandoned.
Built-in shelving units appear to have held fishing equipment.
There was a fishing weight left on one of the shelves.
The deck area outside the house had caved in completely.
Nature was slowly taking over the property with branches growing in between slats of wood.
The diving board of the swimming pool was nothing but a pile of broken concrete.
The host of NJ Outdoors said that the cement surrounding the pool hadn't been installed with the proper support.
All that was left was merely a hole in the ground where the pool once was.
The steps to the pool were partially covered by a tarp.
Exploring abandoned places requires treading with caution.
