A Fascinating Glimpse into the Life of A Recluse

Incredible video of BSF's exploration of an abandoned house.

I enjoy some Urbex videos every now and then, because there’s something very poignant about the little glimpses into our abandoned past. I usually watch Dan Bell or The Proper People, but a couple of days ago, I came across a video by Bright Sun Films and it captivated my attention. In the video, they explored an abandoned house that was home to a man called Gordon Lee and his family.

They found many cassette tapes strewn all over the house that contained random recordings by Gordon Lee.

On one of the tapes, Gordon was talking to lady, presumably a nurse who came to do a three-yearly visit. He told her he never married, that he had a girlfriend, who, from what I gathered from the brief recording, was never really his girlfriend.

Then the explorers found collages of photographs of young women and dead animals.

I thought, “oh man, he must be lonely, but there’s also something wrong with this guy.”

So quick to judge!

As with every video I watch, I scrolled down the comments to see what opinion others have. “Loneliness”, “serial killer”, “disturbing”, “obsessed”, and “crazy” etc. came up. But among these comments, I see people sympathizing with him too. And this lady by the name of Laurie Ann completely put me to shame. This was her comment:

This was definitely a fascinating exploration, but I guess I just feel sad seeing the majority of people jumping directly to the most negative conclusion.

More than anything else, I’m seeing a case of extreme social isolation here. Notice the paper with the birthdays, this man wrote “Girls I got a crush on”. Really think about that for a moment. Does that sound like the words of a psycho, or does it sound more like the words of a very lonely man who probably didn’t socially progress much further than high school?

This all strikes me as the remnants of a man who was stuck on the outside looking in, who spent his time comforting himself with fantasies of social interaction & sure, even girlfriends. Nothing you showed suggested sexual violence toward women, and those letters appeared to be one-offs. A lot of isolated people do these sorts of things (to this very day) as a passive & secure way to interact without risking too much emotionally. TV personalities become friends in their minds, but it’s so rare for it to escalate beyond that. It’s so much more common than you might think (and as an aside, my older bro took umpteen million pictures of Connie Selleca off the TV in the early 80s because there were no posters of her. That’s what we did in olden times, it was very common 😉

It might be heartbreaking & sad, but not a true threat to anyone. Even the dead animal photos. Wealthy hunters have the same types of photos, only they’re ‘tastefully shot’ and all that.

Of course I can’t say for sure if Gordon was a dangerous man or not, but I honestly don’t see a lot of evidence for it here. If you just research the behaviors/lifestyles of severely socially isolated folks, then watch this video again, I think you might find it much less terrifying.

I’m sorry if that came off as lecturing, I genuinely don’t mean to sound too harsh. I’ve just done a lot of work with the elderly, many of them all alone in poor living conditions, so it’s a topic close to my heart, that’s all. I’ve seen too many folks harmed by rumor & neighborhood gossip just because they were eccentric, different, or suffering mental illnesses which manifested in peculiar but ultimately harmless behaviors.

I completely understand why these finds are exciting, and why it can be a mysterious adventure. I just hope people might really take a critical look before deciding for sure someone was bad or deviant. A lot of these folks quietly build a fantasy world for themselves because they simply never found their place in the real one, you know? Nothing to be afraid of.

If you read all of that ‘YouTube Dissertation’, I thank you. Peace out, you guys (and I still think the BSF channel is brilliant :-) Brilliant comment by Laurie Ann left on Bright Sun Films’ video: Lost In Time – Terrifying ABANDONED Home

Isn’t the comment beautiful? I’m so glad I read it. And I hope I’m not infringing on any rights by sharing it on my blog. I certainly meant well.

Maybe it’s a survival thing to automatically think “red flag” when we come across behaviors like Gordon’s. Humans are conditioned to protect themselves. But, can we really blame him if he wasn’t right in the mind?

As a society, we can be pretty ruthless. Socially awkward people often get ostracized either openly or subconsciously. Being already self-conscious, getting ostracized can easily push them into reclusion, not by choice but by perceived exclusion. After decades of exclusion and extreme loneliness, Can we blame him for becoming weird?

Then again, was he really not right in the mind? We draw such conclusions so fast. What would we do if we felt we were isolated from the world and is free (relatively) to act however we want? I love animals so I wouldn’t hurt or dissect them, but I may make art that is disturbing toward humans, especially if I harbor a distrust toward society. People would perceive me as a hateful bitch with a potential for murder too.

I’m not saying it’s normal to skewer raccoons and take pictures of them. I’m just feeling guilty for thinking badly about him right away. It wasn’t his fault he became this way. It’ll be great if we all learn from Laurie Ann and consider things from that person’s point of view before we proceed to judge them so negatively.

More importantly, the lesson we should gather from this video and the comments is that we should watch our actions and words. So that we can make the society a less daunting place for people who are more sensitive and socially awkward (myself included). More often than not, people behave in certain ways as a response to what happened to them. He was stuck on the outside looking in, or stuck in his house looking out into a huge and daunting world he felt has no place for him. How sad is that? That would break most of us.

On a little side note, and no offense to Bright Sun Films because I clearly enjoyed the video, can you imagine having your private recordings thrown into the world? Then having hundred of thousands of people judge you based on them? I think we all owe it to Gordon Lee to not judge him so harshly, having peeked into his very private collection.