When kids love camp, they really, really love camp. And they’re not hard to spot since they never shut up about it — often into adulthood. So for those of you who relish the nostalgia of those carefree, summer days of yore, you’ll probably want to look away now. The blog English Russia has posted a collection of gorgeous, haunting and totally creepy photos of abandoned Russian summer camps. Because golden childhood memories, it seems, don’t age so well.
Taken at various camps along the bank of the Desna river, the photos show just what can happen when a place meant to provide comfort to so many gets its good deeds rewarded with neglect. What makes these scenes particularly unsettling is the fact that, simply due to the nature of summer camp itself, we know that these buildings were once bustling with screaming youngsters. Like in the void of a rec hall below, you can almost feel what must be a now-suffocating, unnatural silence.
Now, it seems as though the camps’ only guests are the occasional vagabonds who might happen to wander through their mould-choked doors. That, or Russian campers were once bestowed with a questionably liberal (i.e. any) vodka ration. But as eerie as these pictures seem in their own right, it’s hard to even imagine how stark the contrast might be between photos of the camps’ sunny halcyon days and these skeletal spectres of former glory. [English Russia via Digg]
