TheProperPeople

There's been a lot of places where I've been afraid of falling through the floor, such as old asylums which frequently have huge collapses. Also exploring an an abandoned iron ore mine in Alabama was pretty scary. The place looked like it was ready to come down any moment, you could see where huge chunks of rock had fallen. We also had to worry about bad air and getting lost (and we went DEEP into that mine). We had an oxygen meter and some other safety equipment but even so I could not wait to get out of there. Would probably never explore an abandoned mine again unless I knew there was something REALLY amazing in there.

As far as scary experiences involving people, the worst was probably this video that we put on our second channel. We were at an abandoned asylum in the middle of nowhere and the middle of the night. We drove all around the place before going inside and didn't see any other parked cars. After a few minutes inside, we look out the window and see a guy in the brush with a flashlight. It's not super clear on video but it was 100% a person. After he wasn't answering back to us, we felt super sketched out and got the hell out of there.

-Michael

Absolutely hate what ridiculous clickbait/thumbnails have done to the reputation of urban exploration. It really feels like those people have no appreciation for what they're doing and are just trying to cash in on the latest viral trend. I normally don't mind this kind of stuff since it doesn't affect me directly, but I feel like they are sucking the magic out of these abandoned places for a lot of people. It's also a terrible initial impression for those who don't know that much about the hobby, and this could lead to some bad stereotypes against the people who do these types of things. This is another big motivation for our Forbidden Explorers project, we want to show what urban exploration is REALLY about, and pull it away from whatever negative connotation or stereotype it may be heading towards.

-Michael

I don't really mean clickbait like Josh's videos, especially since he usually delivers with amazing locations. I'm talking about the people who use thumbnail images that aren't even from the same place they're exploring (and aren't their own photos either), overlay some ridiculous text or emojis over it, and the title doesn't even accurately describe what happens in the video. These are the people who you know are going to stop exploring abandoned places and switch over to whatever the next trend is as soon as it's not getting views anymore. Not trying to call anyone out specifically but this channel is just one example of the type of thing I'm talking about.

-Michael

Favorite place for me was definitely Nara Dreamland. It's a shame it was demolilshed but I'm happy I got to experience and film it before it was gone. Craziest thing is really hard for me to give a definitive answer on, if I think of one I'll come back to this. We've executed a lot of crazy plans to get inside of places, and a lot of unexpected stuff happens pretty much every time we explore.

-Michael

We both do the editing. Originally our editing philosophy was to cut everything down to just the action and dialogue between us, which I think helped us get a bit of the "short attention span" YouTube audience at the beginning. Eventually though as our appreciation for the places we were exploring grew, we wanted to try to capture more of the "feeling" of the places we were in rather than just our experiences. Something we try to do in every video is include some atmospheric sequences to convey the mood that we were feeling in the moment. Seeing these places on video is never as magical as being there in person so that's where the music and these more cinematic sequences come in, to help bring it back to what we were feeling.

-Michael