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The Lost Blog

The Lost Blog
by Barek Halfhand

Long story short, I had a long and typically bizarre narrative ready to accompany the photos of this site but as I am usually vigilant went it comes to backing up my files, I have become somewhat lax as of late in updating my backup preferences and manually committing files to the cloud as soon as I create them the way I used to …

So take this as a cautionary advisory for those that think it will never happen to you (like me)…it will…

In my early AM, pre-coffee haste to circumnavigate the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) I was experiencing upon start-up, I must have somehow inadvertently selected the options to completely format and reinstall windows instead of just another attempt at a repair (safe-mode wouldn’t even start) …The error message I was getting from the BSOD screen implied the problem was related to a recent hardware change and all I could conclude from this was that it had something to do with the fact that I both started and shut down my laptop with an HDMI cable plugged into a TV (for Netflix) the night before …I have had problems in the past with HDMI making the screen on my laptop freak out and making changes to my sound playback option that often necessitated manual changes to revert to the original audio functionality and stability etc. …

I was able to recover more than half of the photos via my “sent mail” files because I shared more than usual of the raw images with a few colleagues that were interested in this particular location… again I would usually back these up as soon as I transferred them from my camera, but not this time…I had the usual enhancements with the myriad of colorful boxes and arrows but those lost so I am just adding the base photos I have recovered from the emails …

The site itself was by way of a tip I received from a realtor that wishes to remain anonymous and has reported rumors of a long history of alleged activity on the two overgrown lots and long empty homes that now occupy these seemingly marketable and beautifully wooded plots of land…the first stone façade home was wide open and strewn with debris ranging from liquor bottles to portions of the ceiling has fallen to the floor …there was one locked bedroom missing a doorknob and when I peered through the hole I saw a shadow pass in front of the space between the door and the rear window which prompted an immediate exit and thus an abbreviated visit …

The second house turned out to be locked albeit the fact that my contact promised it would be opened …an open rear window where the air conditioner had fallen out revealed a musty dank interior and that special stale, sour smell and the house looked to be fully furnished and likely occupied by a senior citizen that either passed on or relocated to an assisted living situation …A few calls to my contact only connected me to voicemail and while I did get some temporary satisfaction from the frenetic message I left, it did not solve problem …while I was certain that I would be legally safe climbing through the window , a flash of prescience I have to trust prevented me from entering …There was a light burning in the front of the house as I made my way back to the front and down the gravel driveway … I heard the front door slam behind me halfway down the driveway...

Here are the (compressed to 1MB) photos...some have been slightly sharpened or color enhanced....b
http://s790.photobucket.com/albums/yy188/TheNotoriousMrhalfhand/The...