Spring Issue

The Asbury Park Casino before demolition.
This photo was taken in 2004.
This 2016 photo shows a stairway leading to an
abandoned house in northern New Jersey. Today,
only the foundation remains.
A 2016 self-portrait of Steven
Castrogiovanni in an abandoned farm-style
house located in northern New Jersey.
Old headstones made of sandstone and dating back to the 1800s
at Vail Memorial Cemetery in Parsippany.
In northern
the Mystic L
This photo
A piano sits collecting dust inside an abandoned resort in
the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. An armed caretaker
protects the grounds from vandals and trespassers.
Forsaken Places and Departed People
When Stephen Castrogiovanni married
in 1990, he and his wife could have
honeymooned at one of the lavish resorts
in the Poconos, about 40 miles west of Lake
Hopatcong.
They could have enjoyed a meal in a restaurant
overlooking Brodhead Creek, played a leisurely
game of tennis, relaxed in a heart-shaped hot
tub and, well, done the things lovers do.
That opportunity no longer exists for
honeymooners. One particular resort closed
in 2009 and was abandoned, leaving the
buildings vulnerable to vandals, graffiti artists
and pyromaniacs. The restaurant windows are
smashed. Overturned tables and chairs are
strewn across the floor.
Trees have grown up through cracks in the
tennis courts, and hot tubs in every room are
filled with turbid, brown water and trash.
The damage everywhere is nothing short of
cyclonic.
Now, for some reason, the resort’s appeal is
irresistible to Castrogiovanni and an esoteric
22
Story by BILL WOOLLEY
Photos courtesy of STEPHEN CASTROGIOVANNI
LAKE HOPATCONG NEWS Spring 2020
group of individuals who engage in “urban
exploring.”
“It’s sort of an underground club, a cult
thing that people usually keep to themselves,”
explained Castrogiovanni, a 56-year-old Oak
Ridge resident. “The term has been around for
10 years or more, but I was into it when I was a
kid, long before it became a thing.”
Urban exploring, or ‘urbex’ for insiders, is the
exploration of manmade structures, typically
abandoned buildings or areas generally
considered off-limits to the public. Dangers
include everything from broken glass, rotten
floorboards and airborne toxins, to drug users
and hostile squatters. Since trespassing is often
part of an urban explorer’s experience, there’s
also the risk of prosecution.
“There’s a bit of a rush in the danger,”
concedes Castrogiovanni. “Sometimes I won’t
go in a place because of the obvious risk
involved, or just because I get a gut feeling.
Once I enter a building, I just stand inside and
listen for any signs of activity before I go any
further.
“Sure, I could have gotten hurt many times,
but it’s like people who jump out of an airplane
for fun. There’s always the possibility of getting
hurt.”
Castrogiovanni’s attraction to lifeless venues
extends to cemeteries, which is how he first
became aware of what some might consider a
morbid curiosity. Dismissing that term, he rather
considers himself a taphophile, or someone
simply interested in cemeteries, tombstones or
memories of past lives.
It all started with a tiny cemetery in
Castrogiovanni’s native Parsippany. As a youngster,
he’d explore the graveyard when its 14 markers
were nearly unnoticeable, entangled amidst a
thicket of bushes and vines. Now resurrected and
known as the Little Lost Cemetery, it is presumed
to have served an old orphanage. The stones bear
the names of children who’d been born in the late
1800s.
While Castrogiovanni has been intrigued
by such long-forgotten venues ever since his
youth, he only recently decided to publicly share
his interest. He started, six years ago, with an
Instagram post of the massive, slope-shouldered
Dickerson mausoleum in the cemetery of the
First Presbyterian Church in Rockaway.
A year later, Castrogiovanni started a website