For those of you who have lived in a tunnel with no internet access till today, Infiltration.org is one of the most well known
and respected Urban Exploration / Infiltration sites on the net. Ninj also distributes his own zine worldwide, which I might add
is quite good.
So now I present to you 10 questions with
@Ninjalicious Facto!!! : Infiltration.org was originally themed after the game Elevator action
For more on Ninj's adventures
and info on the Zine please visit:
1) How did you start exploring ?
My parents have stories of me exploring from earlier than I can remember.
The first series of trips I can actually remember happened when I was seven
and my little sisters and I found a bunch of abandoned stone farmhouses in
the forest behind our house. We dubbed the place Monsterland, and visited
it fairly often. I managed to sink the first rusty nail into my foot before
I was eight. Boy were my parents proud.
2) What was your first big infiltration ?
My first in-depth expedition happened when I was confined to an old Toronto
hospital for a few weeks, and started exploring the place to alleviate my
boredom. I wandered the darkened halls in my hospital gown every night,
finding machine rooms, tunnels, construction areas, abandoned wings, the
morgue and the way out to the roof. The hospital blew my mind and made me
lust after secret spaces of all kinds.
3) Do you still explore with the people you first started exploring with?
A lot of them, yeah. These days it's not as hard to find people to go
exploring with as it used to be, but I still most enjoy exploring with
people I really trust, who have good senses of humour and all that.
4) which do you prefer, Live infiltrations or Abandoned infiltrations?
I like for there to be at least some human element. A hard-to-dodge guard
is more fun and more memorable to me than a hard-to-climb fence.
5) What prompted you to start infiltration ( Zine and website )?
When I became obsessed with the Royal York Hotel in 1996, I started showing
all my friends my huge collection of photos, telling them all the cool
stories I had about making various discoveries, getting chased around, etc.
While most of them thought I was a freak, to my surprise, a lot of them
also found it pretty interesting. So I thought maybe a good way to show all
the stories and pictures to all my various friends and acquaintances would
be to staple them all together and photocopy it as zine. That project
eventually became Infiltration 1. The website came a fair bit later, mostly
as a way to tell people outside of Toronto about the zine.
6) Did you ever think it would be this successful?
No, definitely not. During the first year and a half where I was spending
so much of my time exploring hospitals and hotels and schools, I didn't
even tell any of my friends and family about it, because I was sure they'd
think I was absolutely nuts for essentially having these big crushes on
buildings. Even after I made the first issue I never imagined that people I
didn't know personally would like it. I didn't try selling them to
strangers through stores until issue 4, I think.
7) Whats the worst thing you've ever experianced exploring?
That's tough, but I guess it would be the emotion of intense dread. Not
fear or worry but dread, when you not only fear that something terrible is
going to happen, but you actually KNOW that something terrible is going to
happen, because you see the cop walking right toward you and know you can't
run, or you hear the siren going off and know there's no back exit...
that's a really bad feeling. I try to avoid that one.
What explorers or groups do you admire?
There are way too many to name. Let's just say I've been inspired and
amazed by a lot of people out there, in one way or another. I consider
myself more of an enthusiast than an expert, so I'm delighted that so many
different people totally surpass me in terms of skill, knowledge, bravery,
initiative, persistence, photography, writing... you name it. There are
some really incredible people involved in this hobby.
9) Whats your personal favorite issue of infiltration?
I guess it's issue eight, the one where I explore Toronto City Hall.
There's nothing truly death-defying in there, but there's a nice variety of
interesting, surprising finds and audacious interactions with people, and
the happy ending always puts a smile on my face.
10) there are alot of up and coming explorer groups out there, what
advice, if any , would you give them.
This hobby consists of a lot more than just poking about in abandoned
buildings and storm drains and hanging out on web boards trying to impress
people. Being an urban explorer is a whole way of looking at the world,
where every ladder, door, window, grate and hole in the ground is a
possible portal to adventure.
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