Best day at the old mall in Dayton was last October during a storm

I was exploring the abandoned Dayton Mall with my buddy Mike and a crazy thunderstorm rolled in. The power flickered on for about 10 minutes and it lit up the old food court with this eerie glow. We found a fully stocked ice cream freezer that still had 30 year old popsicles inside. The weird part was the security guard who showed up and just said "you kids need to leave, but take a look at this first" and pointed to a sealed door we never noticed. That door led to a basement bowling alley that was completely intact. Has anyone else found something that well preserved in a dead mall?

2 comments

2 Comments

ray6483d agoMost Upvoted

Found a similar thing in an old shopping center outside Cleveland. We were poking around the basement level and stumbled into a whole arcade from the 80s that still had games plugged in. Someone must have kept paying the electric bill on that section by accident or something. I figured if nobody's bothered it for decades, might as well take a few quarters and see what still works.

williamprice3d ago

That bit about "a whole arcade from the 80s that still had games plugged in" hit different. I used to think old arcades were just nostalgia traps, but finding one that's been sitting untouched like that - man, that's a real time capsule.