Abandoned Playground

 is an archive text dump from TV tropes's Trooper tales section.

Archive

 * This troper lives next door to a playground, and it hasn't been used since I turned eight. Since then, I never wanted to look at it at night. It all changed when one of the neighbors had kids.
 * This troper found the abandoned playground in the woods near her house the best to go in. It was just the right level of creepy, stuff rusted over and overgrown plants. This was on a marine base and one wonders what happened to get it to that state.
 * The sound of chains clanking against tetherball poles in the wind at this troper's elementary school in the off-hours is a sound that will haunt him for life.
 * Abandoned playground? Pssh. Abandoned school, complete with playground? There are cars in the car park, but you never see ANY kids or adults there, never see them leave at the end of the day, never see them go in at the start... brrr.
 * So I'm not the only one who has an abandoned school. I live in Ohio, and there's one right by the middle school I attend. It's effing creepy. I hear it's a place for the PTO to meet up, but oddly enough, I'm not sure that's the complete truth...
 * Go anywhere in the Midwest and you can see this kind of thing. Oddly, everything that was cool from TheFifties to present day is still cool. It's a bizarre time warp.
 * This troper uncovered an abandoned treehouse in the woods behind her house, half-built, and discovered that it was a failed project of her older brother ten years before.
 * A relative of mine recently bought an unused rural school to set up a business in. I find it and the playground just outside very thought-provoking. I can never help trying to imagine the kids who played there, the friends they had, and the memories they made.
 * Also, the playground at my old religious school, which went down for lack of funds. I'd give anything for one more day of play with my classmates...
 * This Tropette (AdelePotter) has a bit of a phobia towards these. There's something very unsettling about an abandoned place where kids used to play.


 * The playground next to the elementary school in this troper's old town was never abandoned, per se, but it was extremely unsettling to walk past at night...something this troper had to frequently due to the fact her after-school program didn't let out until after-dark. It was worse in winter, NightmareFuel because the wind would blow and make the swings swing back and forth, yet nobody was sitting on them.


 * While exploring the some local marsh/woods with her brother, this troper found not one but three abandoned cubbyhouses. While two were ricketty platforms mounted on trees, the third was a proper shed-style structure, complete with tightrope entrance and a strange set of rules for "members" on an interior wall.


 * There's a graveyard at the end of my road that has a playground. I've only ever seen this in Tennessee. Just the fact that we have a playground in our graveyard instead of down the road at the park, which doesn't have one, is creepy. It's worse that I drive past it every day, usually at night.


 * It doesn't seem too strange. Somebody could have built it for funerals to try and cheer up sad children, or entertain bored ones (if a child is too young to understand the concept of death, or didn't know the deceased very well, a funeral is an exercise in painful boredom.)


 * This Troper and friends managed to salvage an AbandonedPlayground from the backwoods forest as a hangout area in our preteen years. Lots of time afternoon-gazing on the rusty jungle gym and doodling on the brick wall that used to be an outdoors public bathroom.


 * This tropette loved her elementary school's playground when she attended the school. I hated it in the summer because most everyone left for vacation and no one who was still there would come to the playground. The school was built in 1972 and the playground still has that 70s feel to it and still has the original equipment. There was a tire pyramid on the playground and there was a rumour going around that a little girl was raped and killed in the pyramid when the school first opened. No one would play in it. That story has left me scarred for life. I also didn't like taking my younger siblings there because the school was "haunted" (at least, everyone who attended it thought so) and you could very clearly hear what seemed to be a little girl crying for help. Very unsettling place.


 * Its a little weird to see that every playground I've ever took step in (from the one within walking distance of home to the one all the way to Hiroshima) never seems to have anyone playing there. Ever. Its like we brought the disease to each one or something.


 * This troper has lived in several states over his life time and can attest that the Midwest has more abandoned creepy playgrounds (on school, off school grounds, public parks, hidden in the woods, etc etc) then anywhere else. In Cincinnati, Ohio alone there are 3 abandoned parks with playgrounds and several schools with rusted equipment. Columbus, Ohio has a dozen schools with rotten and rusted relics of the past, Harrisburg, Pennsylania has at least two schools with old playground equipment, Breezewood, Pennsylvania has a small parks with rusted slides and swings, and Manchester, New Hampshire happens to have an actual hidden playground in the woods rotting away..


 * When Edgy spent his summers with his great-grandmother, he would play in one of these. It had some monkeybars that were extremely bent, from a fallen tree, for a good 20 years before it was removed.


 * An elementary school @/SoWeAteThem yours truly went to as a kid is starting to show shades of this. The largest structure is still in good shape, even has a corrugated steel roof over it now. But there are two additional structures built near the running track. Last time I checked, they were growing weeds...


 * This troper's best friend wrote a short story about an area of suburbia situated around a playground, all of which became deserted. There was a strong suggestion that some kind of creature had caused the place to become deserted.