Tricked-out “haunted houses” are for Halloween amateurs. One local artist is well-versed in the real deal: Her hobby is visiting and photographing long-deserted asylums.
“I’ve been exploring abandoned buildings since I was a kid,” says Brooklyn-based cartoonist Julia Wertz. “My dad and I would go into places, and my mom would wait outside and shudder.” A California native, she’s found the New York/New Jersey area to be fertile ground for asylums, her particular favorite.
A recent trip saw Wertz and a friend actually spending the night at one crumbling, dusty institution upstate. “We slept on the roof,” she says, “because you don’t want to breathe in the mold and the asbestos.”
She never gets creeped out by her surroundings, though. “I’ve been exploring so many times, I don’t have that fear,” she says. “Haunted house movies are my favorite, but I don’t believe in the paranormal or haunting or the occult or any of that.”
Still, she says, there are a few things that do get to her, such as asylums specifically built for children — like the one she recently shot that featured a giant, terrifying mural of the creatures from “Where the Wild Things Are.”
“I have a harder time in them than adult ones,” she says, “but my love of exploring overrides that feeling.”
Julia Wertz’s latest book is “The Infinite Wait and Other Stories.” You can find more of her work at adventurebibleschool.com.