Kevvie, Kathy, and I drove three hours north to visit this abandoned mansion and do a photoshoot—if we found it was still standing. We went on this massively long drive without really knowing what to expect. I’ve been doing urban exploration for a long time and knew there was a chance it was demolished.

But after dishing on our exes for three hours we pulled up to a long gated gravel driveway with a red car already parked outside. It was raining a little bit and our makeup was running from the humidity. As we hopped over a low sitting stone in the fence, we started our way up towards this property. About halfway up the driveway, we saw several people in the distance carrying tubes and wearing their swimsuits. We weren’t alone!

This is generally good news. At first I thought we may run into another photoshoot or Goddess help us; a graffiti artist with something large and time consuming already set up. People are a bit uneasy when they do illegal things. It’s optimal to be alone when you’re exploring.

The kids with the tubes passed us after waving hello and telling us we looked like a coven of witches. I take that as a compliment.

After ten minutes of walking up the driveway in the rain; we saw the mansion. It wasn’t demolished at all. We later found out that it was owned by a real estate company who may or may not know the locals were using it as a spot to river raft.

We hurried into the entrance of the building to get out of the rain and looked around. The first floor was gutted out inside and the only light that came in was from the broken windows. It was really, really quiet.

Luckily, that meant we were truly alone. We found ourselves climbing to the second floor for the first half of the shoot. And then climbing up one more set of stairs into the attic for the very last image in this set.