This week on the No Tracers Podcast I am joined by the incredible RumhamRevenge, an urban explorer who specializes in creating horror content! Wait until you hear this episode!
0 (1s):
Hey, what's up. Welcome to the No Tracers podcast. This podcast is all about urban exploration, tips, tricks, and crazy stories from explorers all over the world. Today on the podcast, I am speaking with RumhamRevenge. You may have seen some of his creepy horror themed photography on Instagram. You may have seen some of his videos on Tik TOK as well. And today we're going to be talking about his exploration history, how he got started, what he likes to explore and some stories of his explorations. But before we jump into this episode, I need to, first of all, welcome you. If you're new, if you are new, please hit that subscribe button. There's new episode of No Tracers that comes out every Friday.
0 (43s):
So I don't want you to miss an episode. I've got a bunch of guests that will be coming on this podcast. And if you haven't listened to the previous episodes, please go back and check them out. The first few are tips and tricks with just me talking to you guys about how to get into urban, exploring the gear you need, how to deal with security guards, things like that. So if you guys are interested, go back, listen to the previous episodes. And then if you guys are interested in buying a book for me, I have a book out called No Tracers, an urban Explorer, his diary, it's full of photography and stories from my explorations. And you can pick up a copy at No Tracers dot com slash shop. And you can also get photo prints over there and you can read blog posts, see my photography, all that good stuff.
0 (1m 26s):
Just in case you guys want to get to know me a little bit more, but in the description, there are going to be a bunch of Amazon links to gear. If you guys need backpacks, solar chargers for your gear, if you need a GoPro, a DSLR Camera, if you need boots, anything, there's a bunch of links down on the description that I think will help you guys out. I need to take a second to think our first partner, which is liquid death water. I am now a death peddler. If you don't know what liquid death water is, don't worry. You've got an ad coming in 3, 2, 1
1 (1m 59s):
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0 (2m 45s):
With that, all being said, let's jump into this episode with rumhamrevenge. Can you please introduce yourself and what it is you do to the No Tracers audience?
2 (2m 54s):
My name is Nick. I am known as rumhamrevenge and the social media I've been exploring for about five years. And I've been able to use that kind of in hand with my artistic ambitions of, I guess, creating creepy artwork.
0 (3m 20s):
So take me back to the very, very beginning. What got you into exploring in the first place?
2 (3m 27s):
Well, it kind of starts with my creative side. I had been making creepy stuff ever since I was a kid. I was born in Halloween. I was making home videos, horror videos. When I was like an fifth and sixth grade. I I've just always been a very creative person. And this one day I was driving. And like I said, I've been doing this for about five years now, but I guess you could say five years ago, I was just driving a normal route that I usually drive. And I saw this old farmhouse off a side road.
2 (4m 11s):
I'm just like, wow, that would make a really cool setting for like a short core video. So I turned around and I, and I pull up to it and it was just such a rush. And, you know, the house was in spectacular, but it was, it was spooky looking and I went inside real quick and it was just, I was like, wow, this is, this is great. And I mean, that one house right there, kind of kick-started it all. And it's like turn into a huge passion ever since.
0 (4m 54s):
So did you grow up watching, like horror movies and stuff? Did your parents like, was that like a normal thing in your household to watch horror movies?
3 (5m 2s):
Yeah. Yeah.
2 (5m 4s):
My dad he's he's a lot like me. He would scare the crap out of me any chance he, he got, I mean, artistically, he didn't do stuff like me, but, but yeah, it's just starting as a child. Like I said, I was born in Halloween, so I've always kind of enjoyed spooky things. And my dad is a prankster. He would scare me with stories and horror movies are very common. I think that the first one to remember watching, I was this horror movie called dolls and I use a lot of dowels in my work today.
2 (5m 46s):
Maybe that's where that comes from, but I don't know. I've always enjoyed the feeling of being scared and especially going into these abandoned and buildings, there's that rush and this creepy feeling and, and, you know, that's all a part of that as well. But yeah, horror movies definitely were a big part of my life still are. And it's inspired a lot of things that I do now.
0 (6m 17s):
So when did photography and video come into play with your explorations? Was that an immediate thing, like right at the beginning? Or did you kind of grow into the photography thing?
2 (6m 28s):
Oh, it was an immediate, like I said, when I, when I first, I just, when I first saw that old farm house, it just clicked. And you know, that was right around the time when cell phones are getting fancier, social media was growing and, you know, before all of that, it was really hard for me to make videos. And I actually did not have any interest in photography. It was all, I always wanted to be like a, a filmmaker and I actually went to college for some video production, but life happened. I had some kids and just, it took a big break from being creative for a good period of time.
2 (7m 13s):
But as soon as I saw that house, like I said, I don't know, I just clicked. And I checked it out. And then a week later I came back with my dad, had him dress up as this creepy mask guy. And I shot a few videos that was around the time the vine app was really getting hot. And so I was making a lot to just six second videos on my cell phone and it was just awesome. And then I just started noticing abandoned houses everywhere, like places that I normally would drive, but I just never really noticed them or felt the urge to look for that.
2 (7m 58s):
And so then I just like to say, just open up a whole new ballgame for me creatively. And I started, like I said, just shooting videos on my iPhone and about, and then I started taking pictures on my iPhone. I was like, come out, you know, I'm in here on I as well to start taking pictures. And vine was about to die there on Twitter is about to act to that app, which was devastating to me. And I was like, you know what, I guess maybe I'll just start taking pictures. And that's when I got into Instagram.
2 (8m 39s):
And like, you know, you can really tell a good story with a single photo almost as good as with the creepy video. And that was kind of eyeopening for me as well. I had never been into photography that much and as on all about video, but then once again, that was kind of another eye opening moment. Taking pictures is pretty, pretty damn fun too. And so, yeah, just from the get-go from that, you know, that first house I went into the sole purpose was to be taking videos and pictures to turn these adventures into something creative.
0 (9m 23s):
So as far as gear goes, what are you using now? What do you recommend for people? And this could be more than just cameras. I mean, if you have a backpack that you recommend or a pair of boots or a light or anything, what gear would you recommend for new explorers?
2 (9m 40s):
Well, my gear is pretty, pretty wild from, from a technical standpoint. I don't know crap about cameras. I really don't. I I've got an icon <inaudible>, which is a, it's a really nice camera. I don't know what the hell I'm doing with it. 90% of the time I use this same wide angle lens every time I just, I get lucky with some of these pretty good shots I get, but I mean, starting out, you can use anything. You can eat a cell phones, take beautiful pictures.
2 (10m 22s):
And then from cell phones, I got an icon. I think it was at 5,300, which you'd say it's a nice, really nice camera. I had to start off with me and it's not terribly expensive, but you know, as the passion grows through this, then you're going to want to keep getting more and more stuff. But, but that's, you know, the exploring part itself is it should be fun. And the gear all kind of comes secondary with that. As far as other gear, I take usually on a duffel bag filled with masks and creepy dolls.
2 (11m 4s):
It's quite a scene. When would I go exploring? I, I will, you know, nowadays I usually go with other people and, you know, people that will be in my pictures and yeah, I usually have my camera around my neck and a duffel bag filled with masks, dolls, vintage dresses. And I do have a light that I bring an external light just to an led light, just for dark situations. I try to bring a tripod though.
2 (11m 45s):
I hate using it and I wish I would use it more, but I liked to get all sorts of crazy angles and I liked to kind of be in and of these places. So I don't really take as much time as I should, these my tripod, but yeah, basically camera tripod, my bag, max and dolls, as far as other explorers, you know, I, I don't know, everybody, I guess, would probably bring their own unique set of tools that they use for, you know, for what they do.
0 (12m 23s):
Yeah, absolutely. And what has been your scariest exploration?
2 (12m 30s):
Wow. I wish I wish I had a really, really good story for that, but I don't, I've been to a lot of places over these past five years and there has been only one house that as soon as I stepped into it, I got the goosebumps. I mean right here, standing up and I'm just like, whoa, what is going on here? This just, this old farmhouse in the middle of Michigan, nearest big city is probably an hour and a half away. Just, I just kind of stumbled across it. And one of the windows was open and I went inside and like I said, I immediately got this weird vibe, creepy vibe.
2 (13m 22s):
The inside was kind of trashed, but there was still a lot of stuff in there, which those houses are really hard to come by. And I walked through the kitchen and through the dining room. And then as I'm turning the corner to walk into the living room, there is a big recliner chair with this huge antique doll sitting in it. And that scared the hell out of me and stuff doesn't usually scare me. Like I say, I collect creepy dolls for my photo shoots, but this, I mean, someone definitely placed that there.
2 (14m 3s):
I don't think a lot of people have been in that house because it was so, so isolated, but someone put that dam down there and they got me good. And there's all sorts of papers on the floor. I went upstairs and there's this old rotting bed up there. And it had a bunch of little doll heads on it. I can see this whole time. I just, I have the goosebumps and like this overbearing feeling of doom. And, you know, it's like what happened to this house? And then I went into a bedroom and it was like stepping into a time capsule.
2 (14m 46s):
There is a calendar is still on the, on the wall that was like from 1964 or something in the closet still had all these old clothes in it. And it was from a guy, it was an obvious guy's room. And there's all these letters with like, to set stamps on it. I didn't really go through too much stuff in there, but it was just very odd because downstairs there was a calendar in the kitchen that said 1992. So I dunno, it was just a very weird old farm house in the middle of nowhere. And I usually don't get creeped out. I've been to asylum's and it all starts to them just weird places, but this one house will always stick out in my mind is like, I wonder if something bad happened here really felt like there was some kind of presence in there following me around that damn creepy down.
0 (15m 45s):
Dang. That's crazy, man. Yeah. I call that feeling the darkness. I did a previous episode of this podcast, all about that feeling that you get. I've been into a lot of asylums and a lot of creepy places as well. And I've only felt this in like four different places that I've been in. And it's almost like, like there's a, like you said, like a presence there, like it's hard to explain to people unless they felt it. And I think urban explorers are like the only kind of people that know this feeling.
2 (16m 12s):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to describe it. And maybe I'm just not like, I don't know, consciously open as much as some people are to that. I guess I'm very surprised. I don't feel that more often because I'm pretty sure some of these places have had some crazy stuff happened in them, but just that one house really, really got me on it. It really makes you think about, you know, what happens in some of these places. You just don't know if something horrible or some sort of strategy tragedies happen.
0 (16m 45s):
And then what is your favorite history of a place that you've explored
2 (16m 51s):
This, this, this is a place I've been to somewhat recently. I would have to say the central state hospital in Georgia was once known as the world's largest insane asylum. And my buddy that I went with, I went with a small group of people, but they were kind of telling me about the history as we were walking around. And I mean, this place is like a sprawling. It's almost like a mini city. Supposedly there's a hundred abandoned buildings and the whole facility and the whole area was, was created in the 18 hundreds.
2 (17m 39s):
You know, it's called something ridiculous, like the whole on the insane and lunatics. I don't, I don't remember the exact name, but it was something like very ridiculous. And there's just some really crazy stuff that happened there. I had read that at one point, the 1950s, the place had been investigated for cause there was rumors that there was a snake pit and then what wasn't actually a rumor, but was real. Some of the patients from the mental hospital were actually hired in as doctors.
2 (18m 23s):
So literally the, the insane patients were helping run the insane asylum. So psych who knows what crazy stuff went on at that place and then also on the ground. So there's this huge like Memorial with these small little gray stones they're out there just numbers on them, but they represent like the thousands of unmarked graves of the patients that were buried on the facility grounds. And a lot of those grapes, you just don't know where they are markers removed or, or whatever.
2 (19m 10s):
So going into that, that facility in the insane asylum grounds, knowing that kind of stuff, it, it was really a really cool place to visit.
3 (19m 23s):
Wow. Yeah.
0 (19m 24s):
There's something super interesting about asylums. Like if I could go back in time to see an era of time, it would be like the late 18 hundreds when all this crazy shit was going on in asylums, just because like, like you don't need, we don't even know half the things that happen in these places because most of it has been kept a secret or has been, you know, there's no documentation of anything that happened. So it's crazy. Like asylums are one of my favorite places to explore just because there's so much unknown history there. And then do you have gold places, places you haven't been that you would like to go and do you have like a list, a running list of gold places?
0 (20m 4s):
I don't
3 (20m 5s):
Really, I just kind of
2 (20m 9s):
Go into places as they are, as they come along, meeting up with people and, and you know, I'm, I'm, I'm in Michigan here and I've already explored the hell out of Detroit and Flint and stuff. And so as far as specific abandoned places that I want to go to, I really don't have any I, one goal I have, and this is going to sound probably stupid and ridiculous, but I often daydream about like buying this creeper van and filling it with my, my masks and my, and my dolls and all my creepy props and like just doing a national tour, like the creepy rumhamrevenge national tour.
2 (21m 5s):
And then just being able to, to take out all that stuff and go to every city and just to have like a small on meetup with the group of people in each city and do a photo shoot and hit some local bandos. That would be like my ultimate goal is to be able to find funding or, or maybe, you know, win the lottery or something to be over to do that. I was, I was talking in a fall to a filmmaker in Texas and he was trying to get funding to do like a YouTube series, a behind the scene series to show kind of have like a camera crew crew follow me in to these abandoned houses and, and, and just document, you know, video me doing what I do going into these houses, exploring, bringing in and models and, and, and making them look creepy and taking these pictures.
2 (22m 3s):
And he even talked about incorporating a makeup artist to do or makeup on some of these models. Unfortunately nothing's come of it yet, but those are some of the goals I would like to achieve to, you know, just, I guess, have some sort of internet TV series based on and doing this kind of stuff cause incorporating the horror and the masks and the dowels and, and all that. It's, it's a whole another element to exploring. And I think, I think a lot of people would enjoy seeing that.
0 (22m 45s):
Oh yeah. I mean, even as like a Netflix show, you know, I mean, they've got the abandoned Netflix show, which is pretty cool. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's, it's just different explorers, you know, traveling around SEF lawless is featured in it. And yeah, I think doing a web series would be a great idea and I hope that it comes to fruition for you because I personally would love to see the behind the scenes of what you do. And as a videographer myself, I love filming behind the scenes content. So I would love to see that kind of stuff. Definitely.
3 (23m 16s):
Yeah. I, you know, I,
2 (23m 19s):
Earlier this year I've got on tic-tac I good job. I had always things about the app and I, it was dreading it and I almost deleted it after a couple of weeks, but I started posting some behind the scene clips of my adventures in Atlanta and new and New York and New Jersey. And all of a sudden they started blowing up, you know, one of them on there has got almost a million views. And so people really do like to watch these things. And like you said, the Netflix series, I mean, just seeing people going into abandoned places and learning the history and all that stuff is almost a show and about itself.
2 (24m 3s):
But then you add in also, you know, I can say a whole new creative element of spooky masks and then dolls and people like scary stuff too. When you combine the two, I just think, I just hope someday I'd be able to be able to do sound like that.
0 (24m 23s):
I believe it will happen for you, man. I like what you're doing and your content is incredible. So I mean, I, I know people are going to love something like that. If you could live in one place that you've explored for one week, which place would it be? They
2 (24m 37s):
Have to be central state hospital, kind of like what we were talking about earlier, asylums. They're just, those are my favorite places to explore just because of their history. And, and they're usually huge. And you know, I've been to one to New York and those are the type of places that you can't really even scratch the surface. If you go for a day, the one in Georgia, this has so many buildings, we were there for one day and that's it. And we only went into three. And a part of that is just because, you know, we all do take an props and masks in me.
2 (25m 20s):
We really focus on the creative photography while inside them versus just exploring. So that does take up a lot of the time, but yeah, that place, I would love to spend a whole weekend and really go through each room and each floor in each building that would be, that would be amazing.
0 (25m 47s):
And then what ha what is the farthest you've traveled to explore the
2 (25m 53s):
BARR? This would have to be new Orleans. I, that was right when I first got started, I was still using my iPhone to take pictures and I'd always wanted to go to new Orleans. So I got myself a ticket and went down there by myself for five days. I was pretty new to all of this exploring stuff, an ad, such big ambitions, you know, they had like the charity hospital down there and the six flags, all these amazing abandoned things in new Orleans and I'd get down there and, you know, all those places are heavily guarded and I kinda freaked out, I don't know, not really getting it, getting into any of the hospitals or anything, but I drove around a lot and got some pretty cool pictures of just some of the neighborhoods down there that were affected by hurricane Katrina.
2 (26m 56s):
And there is some pretty decent bandeau hot-spots down there and they just to go out of exterior's, but I stare at your pictures and it was still, I went to a haunted plantation, got to load tour. That was fun. So I, it was, it was a good trip. It was worth going all the way down there. I can say I'm up in Michigan. I think that's like a 15 hour drive, but I did apply. And normally I drive when I do these trips, just because I do have so many props that I bring, you know, I'm not really going to get on an airplane with a four foot out hanging, you know, this stuff in my luggage.
2 (27m 38s):
Oh no, this is my carry on. Generally I drive, I stuffed my car full of this stuff and I have been pulled over and I have been searched going into Canada. We spent a half hour interior gating me because of all of the weird things that I have, but it's not illegal to be a weirdo. So I've never, we got into trouble for, so it was fun. It was, it was worth the trip. That's probably the same.
0 (28m 10s):
And then my final question for you is what is something, you know, now that you wish you knew when you started exploring it's a tough one? I guess
2 (28m 24s):
I pretty much do everything exactly the same as I did when I started off. I, you know, I've been very lucky in all these hundreds of places that I've went into. I've never ran into really any problems, never been in any kind of trouble knock on wood. So, I mean, as far as going back, talking to my young Explorer self, I really don't have much advice for that. I mean, I just keep, I just keep doing what I've been doing this whole time. I mean, if anything, I would go back and I guess just give myself a high five for going into that first house.
2 (29m 4s):
Because, because I did that, it's really opened up a whole new passion and drive just wonderful hobby for me. And it's opened up so many doors for friendships and creating this really unique art and I've been to amazing places. So, you know, I wouldn't change anything at all. I, I would just go back and tell myself good job for going into that first creepy ass house.
0 (29m 43s):
Awesome. And then if anybody wants to see your work, or if they want to maybe hire you to do a portrait shoot session, or if they want to ask you some questions, where can they find you? I am usually
2 (29m 56s):
On Instagram the most just to rumhamrevenge everything I do on social media is rumhamrevenge. Instagram is mainly I answer my DMS on there and that's where I post most of my, my work. You can also find all my video stuff on tic-tac as rumhamrevenge, those are my main to social media outlets, but anybody is welcome to, to send me a message anytime if they have any questions about anything or advice. And if anybody's looking for some inspiration or look into, get themselves creeped out, I recommend checking out my gallery, an Instagram for sure.
0 (30m 50s):
Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on. No Tracers. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.
2 (30m 55s):
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on this was a lot of fun. All right,
0 (30m 59s):
Guys, that was my episode with rumhamrevenge. Please be sure to follow him on all of his social media. I will put these links down on the description for you guys. If you liked this episode, please do me a favor and leave a rating and some feedback. And if you do that, take a screenshot of your feedback and send it to me at No Tracers on Instagram. And I will send you a free signed photo print. It literally takes you 30 seconds to leave a rating and feedback. So do that for me. And you'll get a signed photo print out of it. Thank you guys for listening to this episode of No Tracers. If you guys hit subscribe, you'll be notified when the next episode comes out, which will be next week. And like I said, if you guys want to see my blog posts or get a copy of my book, head to No Tracers dot com, I will talk to you guys soon.
0 (31m 41s):
Stay strong, keep enduring, go out, go create something and remember leave no trace.