Centralia, Pennsylvania

Again, we didn't have the time to hang around for long, but we did manage to stop in at Centralia to see the major sites, first and foremost, the infamous church. For anyone who has ever seen the movie Silent Hill, you'll understand the significance of it, but it wasn't easy to get to and the no trespassing signs were everywhere!


I really wanted to wander around a bit, but it just wasn't legal and it wasn't a line we were willing to cross. Finding the "graffiti road" was pretty easy, but getting there was a whole other story. It started with a walk past one of the front cemeteries (there are four in the town, three to the front and one at the back near the church):

Despite the state of everything else, they do take incredible care of the cemeteries and people are still being buried there even today:

Our first option was climbing down this hill...wasn't gonna happen because it's a lot steeper than it looks:

So we walked down this incredibly creepy road (and we all know how I LOVE trees):

Following clues left behind by previous fellow explorers:

We ran up on another even steeper hill until we decided we couldn't avoid the scary "pit of despair" as I took to calling it, so around it we went, but I swear I expected bodies to start coming up out of the waters at any point:

And viola!

I wanted to walk further down, but we just didn't have the time. There was some neat graffiti, some poignant considering, some just crap or signatures (and there were people actively tagging while we were there):

What did bother me though was the tagging in the trees and foliage surrounding the road...there is no call for that:

Am caught a picture of me "petting" the leaves of a tagged tree. I was having a "moment", but hey, at least you get to see my purple hair and my Trans Allegheny shirt I mentioned in my last post (man, I've really gained weight since getting out of the hospital!):

I wanted to walk all the way down to where the road actually breaks up, but Amber didn't want to and we were running out of time, so this was as close as I got:

When we got back out, it's amazing how much of the town has just "disappeared" back into nature:



And we could still see the creepy Silent Hill church from the Confetti Road:

Ironically, on the way out, we found a much easier way in...oh well, you know what they say about hindsight!

Again, I wish we could have had more time to explore the other cemeteries and more of the streets, but we had to get back on the road. But hey, at least I can say I've been there!

If you've never seen Silent Hill, it's a great horror movie packed with just about everything...ghosts, witches, demons, zombies, creepy kids, religious fanatics, portals to other realms, bugs, etc. and I highly recommend it! I made Amber watch it before we left and she didn't care for it (I believe she may have mentioned that I might have something wrong with me for liking that movie, but hey, what else is new?).