All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S09E05.Apocolyptic.Skyscraper.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

Narrator: In Argentina, a fantasy
world built by a desperate man...

Some kind of very obsessive

and very unusual mind
dreamed this place up.

..A sin city locked
in a skyscraper...

This looming tower went from
an opulent apartment building

to a vertical slum.

..An American town
whose story beggars belief...

From watching these movies
we see the 'wild wild west'

but this was really the kind of
place where it actually happened.

..And an ancient German
castle, the birthplace of a monster.

The superstitious population
saw him as a sorcerer

who'd made a
pact with the devil.

Decaying relics.

Shadows of lost worlds.

Ruins haunted by the past.

Their secrets waiting
to be revealed.

Near the hillbrow region of
Johannesburg, South Africa,

is a dystopian ruin
with a chequered past.

We're at the centre

of one of the city's most
notorious neighbourhoods

that are known for crime, for
violence and that are blighted.

This looming tower
that dominates

the skyline of Johannesburg.

Looks like it's sprung
out of the pages

of a science fiction novel.

It's this massive grey concrete
tube with this bizarre open centre

that descends right through
the middle of the building.

Travelling deeper
into the dark abyss

reveals an
apocalyptic wasteland.

The floor of the
central core is uneven,

there's still huge
slabs of bedrock, there,

it's as if they never quite
finished removing them.

When you go inside the building

has a desolate and
dangerous feeling to it,

there are broken windows,

walls that are
blackened with smoke.

You can see from the flats
and the abandoned facilities

that this was once a
luxurious residence

but something terrible
happened, here.

Some of my best moments
were actually lying down

in the middle of
this core, here,

and watching the clouds flow
over the top of the building.

It was a bit like
a kaleidoscope,

some days it would rain, as well

and make it really truly
special and unique experience.

Journalist, nickolaus Bauer,

moved into this brutalist
concrete construction in 2012

and lived here for five years.

This is a truly unique building,

something that you won't find
anywhere else in South Africa,

some people say it's
got to do with the fact that

the architects took too many
hallucinogenics in the '70s

when they put this
building together

but it's actually
a municipal bylaw

that stated you needed
two sources of light and air

going into each apartment.

This was the most bang for buck

that they could get in terms
of designing and building

with as much living
space as possible.

Yet, this trip down memory
Lane also serves as a reminder

of the terrifying period

that plagued this
building and it's occupants.

The core makes me ask
what would the story be

that these walls
could tell if they talked.

But then I often wonder

about all the different things
that have happened in this building

and I'm really happy
that they don't talk.

The origins of this ambitious
structure reveal a dark side.

It's creation dates to a time

when the country operated under
the shameful apartheid regime.

Apartheid-era South
Africa, is a society

in which there are rigid, rigid
boundaries between racial groups

in terms of where one can live,
who one can marry what one can do.

And access to the
inner part of the city

for South Africa's
black residents

was restricted to those
who had work in that area.

At this time the only
legal black inhabitants

for miles around were
live-in domestic workers.

Called the ponte
city apartments,

this was an exclusive
residential complex

built for the
city's white elite.

If you lived in
ponte in the 1970s

this was the creme de
la creme of lifestyles.

If you had this address you
were part of the in-crowd.

The three-storey penthouses

that crowned the
tower boasted jacuzzies,

saunas and patios
with a breath-taking view

across Johannesburg
central business district.

Johannesburg was
considered akin to New York

as a sort of a
Cosmopolitan mecca

and ponte city was supposed
to be the crown Jewel.

Conceived as a modern
utopia within the city,

it had a shopping mall, a movie
theatre and a bowling alley.

The luxury facilities meant
the 3,500 wealthy inhabitants

never had to leave.

But these highs
didn't last for long.

Instead, this tower started a
long journey into infamy and decay.

Although ponte was designated,
officially, as a whites-only area,

the politics of it were a
little bit more progressive

and it wasn't unknown for different
racial groups to mix in the region.

Throughout the
'70s and into the '80s

there were nightclubs
and dance halls

which had licences to allow
people of different races

to mix and socialise.

Many landlords found
it to their advantage

to look the other way when
it came to who they rented to

since illegal tenants
would have little ground

to complain about rent
increases or maintenance issues.

The white-led
apartheid government

was appalled by the
brazen racial mixing

and acted quickly
to stamp it out.

What the apartheid
government decided to do

was to redline hillbrow.

Now, redlining basically means

that the economic taps
get switched off to an area

and what you had very quickly
from about the mid-'80s, onwards,

was this rapid urban degradation
of all buildings like ponte.

So, there's no running
water, there's no electricity

and then when the
rubbish collection stops

what happens is the core
starts to fill up with garbage.

It was 15 storeys of rubbish

piled up high in
the core, itself,

all of the residents decided
to throw all of their rubbish

and their refuse into
the middle of the building

rather than trudge it down,

however, many flights of stairs from
their home down to the ground floor.

But rubbish was the least
of the buildings problems.

What ends up happening
is what would be referred to,

in the United
States, as white flight,

the white residents
leave and crime moves in.

Ruthless drug lords
hijack the building

and a deadly new era began.

The 14th floor was
ruled by gangsters

and the floor above became
an informal sinister marketplace.

Whatever it is you
were looking for,

guns, drugs, prostitutes
you could find it all there.

It was so bad that when
someone was shot at ponte

or when there was a crime
that was called into authorities,

paramedics and the police
would stay away from the building.

By the mid-1990s it had become
the world's tallest urban slum.

10,000 people were
crammed into a space

originally designed for
a third of that number.

It was years before anybody
really wanted to touch it.

Ponte, the region around it,

it had some of the worst rates
of murder and rape in the world.

Even after the end of apartheid,
ponte remained out of control

and it remained a symbol of
lawlessness in Johannesburg.

But ponte city's fate
was not yet sealed.

In 2001 its owners decided to
restore the neglected building,

a task not for
the faint-hearted.

When they decided
to clear this building out

there was no machine
that could come and do it,

there was no suction,
industrial-style suction

that could just suck
all of the rubbish out,

it was all done by hand.

And there were things, here, far
more gruesome than just waste.

The absolutely horrific things

that people pulled out of the
rubble when they were clearing it up,

really, is something
that leaves you

absolutely shivering
with the chills.

And reportedly there
were 23 corpses found.

Now, most of those were
rumoured to be gang murders

and the others were suicides.

But there was still life
remaining in the tower.

Every single drug dealer,

every single criminal,
every single sex worker

was moved out of the building

as the owners of the
building tried to turn it around

and make it a decent place
to stay for inner-city residents.

So, it was around that time that
the owners of ponte, kempston,

decided to enter into an
agreement with the developers

and turn ponte into
its original incarnation.

Today, the ponte city
apartments are, once again,

providing a home to the
people of Johannesburg

but transforming its fortunes
didn't happen overnight.

The years of neglect
meant lengthy restorations

which still
continue to this day.

No longer is it
the den of iniquity,

it's become a safe and
clean place for people to live

and really be safe from a
lot of the unsavoury aspects

of inner-city Johannesburg.

And ponte's
post-apocalyptic appeal

has also attracted a very
different kind of occupant.

It's likeness to a Sci-Fi scene

has not gone
unnoticed by Hollywood

and several major films
have involved ponte,

among them, 'district 9',
'chappie' and 'resident evil'.

But ponte's real legacy is
simple, it's a symbol of hope.

We continue to see migrants

coming from, not only
all parts of the country,

but, indeed, all parts
of Africa, as well,

as they search for a better
tomorrow in Johannesburg

and ponte remains that symbol
dotted on the Johannesburg skyline

that's synonymous with trying
to envisage a better tomorrow.

In the mountains of Idaho is the
scene of a deadly love triangle.

So, you've got this really
quite spectacular valley

at around about 6,000 feet which
is kind of surrounded by peaks,

some of which
are over 9,000 feet

and a kind of icy river
running through it all,

it's beautiful but also
quite a stark place.

While the summer and
spring might be beautiful,

you can tell that the
winters, here, are harsh

and you could probably be
trapped here for a very long time.

Scattered over 390 square miles
are remnants of a community.

When you come
upon these settlements

you see all different
states of buildings.

You see these,
obviously, handmade

wood structures in
various states of disrepair,

you can see these cabins that have
started to fall in upon themselves.

As you walk around the towns

you can see that some
buildings are really quite simple

but others have
a lot more to them

so there must have been money

to be made in this
particular part of the world

and clearly, some people
had it and some people didn't.

Deep in the wilderness are clues
to what drew so many people, here.

There are remains
of machines and tools

littered around everywhere
so you can clearly tell

that this was part of some kind
of mechanical processing project.

Something industrial, something
was being processed here

but it's not exactly clear what.

People came here
seeking fame and fortune

but for some, it would
be their final resting place.

The real mystery of this place
lies in its overgrown cemetery

and the vestiges of
three specific graves.

150 years ago this
region was empty.

But in 1877 one man arrived.

And founded the town of bonanza.

The first buildings were
really simple log structures

that people constructed by hand

but it wasn't long before
there was a saloon

and soon, people from all over
started to descend on this area.

By the mid-1880s bonanza
had over 600 people

which is a fairly
large community.

They have several
businesses in the areas,

they have a dance
hall and a marketplace.

It also has its own cemetery.

Park ranger, Larry Gary
has been trying to figure out

the mystery of
bonanza for decades.

So, we're going up to what's
called a boot hill cemetery.

Back in the 1800s all three of these
people in this cemetery were shot.

But nobody knows
who did the killing.

Inside are the
headstones of a couple

killed on the same day in 1880,

the number one suspect
was bonanza's founder.

Many in the community
thought he was probably guilty,

we don't know,

people in the community
certainly suspected him.

I mean, we all know from
watching these movies,

we see the 'wild
wild west', I mean,

but this was really the kind of
place where it actually happened.

And we're seeing
the remnants of it.

Bonanza is located in a
region called the yankee fork.

Its story begins in
the era of the cowboy.

Around 1866 a group of
prospectors came to this area

and they were looking
for mining opportunities.

The one thing
that they did leave

was the name of this
place, yankee fork.

Yankee, because
that's what they were

and fork, because this place
lies at the fork of the salmon river.

It was in the mountains
of yankee fork

that a discovery was made.

What they actually found in
the mountain was a kind of vein,

a two to three-inch
line or vein of material

and that was the actual
direct source of the gold.

The discovery of gold caught
the attention of an entrepreneur.

His name was Charles Franklin.

In 1877 Charles Franklin
decides to go to this place

called yankee fork

he's going to found this
town or city of bonanza

which, of course, grabs
on to all that romance,

all that idea of
hope and opportunity

to be in a town called bonanza.

First, he built a few houses,

hotels popped up in
these small communities,

they had to repair tools,
we had blacksmith shops.

There was other
little dress shops

and general stores,
butcher shops.

By 1878 hundreds of people
had moved into yankee fork

but that summer a
new couple arrived,

their names were
Richard and Lizzie king.

They moved from england
to the states or to this nation

and eventually made their
way into the yankee fork valley.

They started out as
very sophisticated people

and very well-to-do.

A home like this more
upper class, if you will,

was something that Richard
and Lizzie king built and lived in

and across the street they built
a saloon and a large dance hall

where they held
dances quite frequently.

The kings helped build
the town of bonanza

but its founder, Charles
Franklin, had eyes for Lizzie.

Lizzie was described as
this golden-haired beauty

and it was rumoured

that she spent lots
of time with Franklin

even when her
husband wasn't around

and in those days
that meant trouble.

On 14 July, 1879,
Lizzie's husband was killed

during a fight with a
business associate.

Lizzie had a real hard time
with the death of her husband

but their friend, Charles Franklin
became even closer to Lizzie

and everybody in
bonanza thought that

Charles Franklin and Lizzie
king would soon be married.

Franklin had a really interesting
way of showing his affection

because shortly after Lizzie
purchased Richard's grave,

Franklin decided to buy
two more plots, nearby.

One for him and one for Lizzie.

But Franklin's amorous
advances didn't work.

Lizzie was smitten
with another man.

She actually ended
up falling in love

with a card dealer at the saloon
that she operated, Robert hawthorne,

and the two were
married shortly thereafter

but it only lasted six days.

So, they got married and six
days after their wedding day

they had a freight wagon

come in with new
furniture for the house,

a few seconds later
there was two gunshots.

The surrounding
townspeople showed up,

went into Lizzie king's and
Robert hawthorne's house

to find them deceased.

The rumour that went
around the town, of course,

was that Charles Franklin,
in a fit of jealous rage,

had killed them, both.

We have no evidence of this,

we don't know what happened,
they were obviously murdered.

But one clue suggests
that Franklin was involved.

When Charles Franklin

had Lizzie and her new
husband's headstones made,

instead of putting their death
date on those headstones,

he, instead, put the
date of their wedding

which had been six days earlier.

After Lizzie and her
second husband were buried,

Charles Franklin left
the town he had founded.

Obviously, people
were suspicious

that Franklin had murdered
Lizzie and her husband

in a fit of jealous rage.

But it couldn't be proven.

Bonanza continued without
its founders for nine more years

until in 1889 it was struck
by another violent event.

But this time, it was a natural
force that rocked the town.

Unfortunately,
fires strike bonanza

just too much of
the town is destroyed

and many of those
business owners

just move two
miles down the road

to custer and bonanza
quickly falls into disrepair.

Shortly after, the yankee
fork's gold dried up,

everyone abandoned the town

and the buildings were
reclaimed by nature.

(Dramatic music)

Ten years after
Lizzie king's murder

in a town 15 miles from bonanza

there was one
final twist in the tale.

Two prospectors
were wandering around

looking for places
to make claims,

they came upon this cabin,

they find Charles Franklin

still in his bed but
very much dead.

They pulled the blankets back

and they'd seen in Charles
Franklin hand, a locket,

they opened up the locket

and in that locket was
a picture of Lizzie king.

Today yankee fork is silent

except for curious folk

who come to hear the story
of the mysterious murders.

Everybody suspects it,

possibly Charles
Franklin may have done it

but then again, Charles Franklin
was so in love with Lizzie king,

why would he kill her too?

Why not just kill Robert?

Makes you wonder.

In a suburb of Buenos Aires,

a peculiar-looking town

appears to belong
in a fairy tale world.

(Instrumental music)

It looks like it's some
kind of medieval village

and then as you get closer

these strange details
start to emerge.

There are these strange
steam punk houses

with towers coming
out in odd places.

It looks like something

that maybe Willy wonka
would have dreamed up.

At ground level, the
mystery deepens.

Walking through
the many passages,

nooks, crannies
and secreted places,

there's a really
intriguing atmosphere.

It feels kind of
like a film set,

in that everything
is sort of artificial

but it's built to last, I mean
it's built of stone and wood.

It seems so welcoming

but apart from a few stray
dogs there is no one around.

Obviously it's not a place
where people really live,

they're just big empty
spaces, there's no furniture,

this is an imaginary
idea of a town.

In many ways, it's like
a cartoon come to life.

It doesn't quite feel
like it's the real world.

Campanopolis was the
life project of one man

and it was built in
a race against time.

The man behind this enchanting
place is Antonio campana,

a self-made
supermarket millionaire.

His son Oscar, now looks
after the peculiar village

and has kept his father's
office just as it was.

The story began when campana
decided to try his hand at farming.

But his dreams of a
pastureland were soon ended.

The year campana buys the land

coincides with the start

of the argentinian civil
military dictatorship.

It was a very dark
period in the country,

it's known as the 'dirty war.'

many people were
'disappeared' as they say,

they were just
taken off the streets,

never to be seen again

and the powers that
be appropriated his land

and used it as a dump.

For years Antonio stood by

unable to reclaim what was his,

as the fields were
used as landfill.

But some terrible personal
news inspired him to fight back.

Diagnosed with tonsil cancer,

he was given just
a few years to live.

So, Antonio campana
took on the fight

and even though it took years,

he eventually won his battle
against the government.

He now had to clear 70
million cubic feet of rubbish.

Campana realised that the
land was no longer suitable

for cattle grazing.

He had to find a
new use for the land.

Campanopolis is a
hoarder's paradise

and it feels like a window into
campana's unfathomable mind.

But exploring the town

it is still possible to
piece together the Jigsaw

and find clues to the method
behind the apparent madness.

At the time they were
ripping up a lot of railroads

so he was able to get a
lot of railroad equipment

and other materials
from that process.

But campana was thinking big

and it would take more
than railroad equipment

to fulfil his new ambition.

Maybe going through this ordeal
made campana acutely aware

of all the waste we
accumulate as humans,

maybe he just found
lots of treasures

as he was clearing up the site.

Either way, his plans
changed from farming

to creating a town made from
upcycled and recycled materials.

He scoured the nearby capital

and found a treasure
trove of materials.

Much of it with origins
from further afield.

Campana was lucky,

at the time Buenos Aires
was going through a big boom

of renovation

and many of the older buildings
were being knocked down.

People were selling off
a lot of the old features,

architectural mouldings,
gates, doorways, posts, fence,

so campana went around auctions,

his motto was 'recycling
and optimisation.'

but for a dying campana,
the clock was ticking.

By the time he began constructing
his town in the early '80s

he was already years
into his terminal illness.

But he powered on undeterred,

determined to see his
vision become a reality.

Campana didn't have any
background as an architect or a builder

but he did have really big
ideas and enormous enthusiasm

and lots of money.

The plan was not to have a plan

and to allow the place
to grow organically.

And this is sometimes
reflected in the architectural style

or perhaps more
accurately the lack of it.

Overall, it feels
very harmonious

but then as you start to pick out a
few details, nothing makes sense,

no two elements are the same.

Year after year campana
continued to defy the odds

and his prognosis.

Fortunately for campana
his doctors were wrong

and that gave him years

to keep adding on
to his fantasy town,

kind of making it
up as he went along,

he would come up with
all kinds of crazy ideas

and send his
builders to work on it

but over time he
patched together

this really remarkable,
little fantasy land.

The 500 acre site evolved
into a beacon of sustainability.

Campana planted 100,000
trees to accompany the structures.

Creating a thriving ecosystem on
land that was destined for waste.

Campana was a visionary,

not only for his own
times but also for our times,

we are fighting battles of waste
and renewability in the world

but even back in the '70s

he was able to conceive
of an entire village

built really only out
of recycled materials.

Amazingly there's almost
no plastic in his village,

he was a real pioneer
of sustainability.

In one of those
beautiful symmetries,

campana didn't only
give life to the village

but the village
gave life to him,

he was expecting to die very soon
but in fact lived another 25 years.

(Dramatic music)

Today Oscar looks
after campanopolis

and still feels a deep
connection between the place,

his father and human kind.

And the story of
campanopolis is far from over.

(Dramatic music)

In central Germany
at the top of a hill

is a castle with a famous name.

(Dramatic music)

You see this ruined
castle looming over the hills

and it's hard not to imagine
ancient stories that come to mind

once you hear the
name of the place.

The castle really uses it's
surroundings to it's advantage.

The solid granite it's built
on acts as a protective barrier.

Beyond the walls are signs
that visitors are not welcome.

Once you're inside the castle
your imagination takes over

because you can see staircases,
towers, a ruined old chapel,

this clearly was a
very formidable castle.

In the centre of
the castles grounds

is a structure that can
be seen for miles around.

The thing that stands
out most dramatically

is this watchtower that was clearly
part of some kind of fortification.

A hilltop castle, high
above a dark forest,

a setting for any
good fairy-tale.

There really can't be
many people in the world

who don't know the
name of this place.

Because it's the name of a
notorious fictional character.

This is castle Frankenstein.

(Instrumental music)

Approaching this place
is a journey of the senses

because to get to it

you have to hike through
a dense atmospheric forest.

Ralph eberhardt has heard
all the stories of this castle.

Inside the castle's
chapel is a statue

but some say it's not a member
of the Frankenstein family.

It is believed that
the five foot 11 statue

is of a former
resident of the castle

who went by the name
Johann konrad dippel.

Dippel was born there in 1673,

he came from a long
line of lutheran clergyman

and his father very much
wanted young Conrad

to follow in the
family footsteps

so he undertook the boys
education here in the castle.

Dippel grew up in
the ways of the church

but he also had an
aptitude for science.

Like many thinkers in that era
he was fascinated by alchemy,

the idea that you could somehow

chemically transform a
base metal like lead into gold

or transform other things,

alchemy wasn't just
about making gold,

it was about this
idea of altering things

from a lower state
to a higher state.

An accident in his lab
produced a strange result,

a chemical with a blue pigment.

He actually shared a
workshop with a painter,

now the two tools mixed and
this rich blue dye was created.

Blue had only been available
before then at massive cost,

so the sudden availability
of blue that was scalable

meant it exploded.

The prussian army
used it for their uniforms

hence it's name 'prussian blue.'

prussian blue was
great for dippel's profile

but his fame soon
turned to notoriety.

Dippel though wasn't
interested in pigments and paints,

his real focus lay in the
search for immortality.

His quest for eternal life

and the strange tests it involved
were not to everyone's liking.

It seems like dippel was someone
who often kind of freaked out

the people around him.

There's a lot of stories
about people being warned

about his experiments
and what he was doing.

Dippel's methods combined
science with the supernatural.

He searched for a
way to prevent death

by experimenting on the living.

Dippel was fixated with ideas
about the human soul and its meaning

and in order to
experiment with this,

he engaged in soul transference,

in other words finding animals

and trying to swap one
soul from one to another.

He also had this idea

that if he could boil
down animal bones

and extract some kind
of essence from them,

he would have an elixir that
would be extremely powerful.

After years of work, dippel
made a breakthrough,

he produced a substance
which he called 'dippel's oil.'

he developed this disgusting

greasy liquid from this process

that he believed was
a secret to very long life

and thought it was
something of immense value.

Dippel's oil may not
have been an elixir of life

but as an insecticide and a
weapon of war it had its uses.

At one point he actually
tried to buy the castle

by trading it for his
formula for his elixir,

he also claimed that his elixir

would help him live
to be 130 years old.

But rumours began to circulate
that dippel was experimenting

on the corpses of dead people.

It's said that he
had a particular like

for exhuming dead
bodies after dark

and he'd try and dig
out the fresher bodies

because he believed

it still contained some
of their soul within them.

Suspicions still surround
dippel's research

and of course he never
won his battle for immortality.

Dippel died of a stroke in 1734.

But some claimed
that he was poisoned

because he was so
unpopular with the locals.

After dippel's death,

castle Frankenstein
faded into obscurity

but in 1814,

a young woman was
travelling with her fiance

through central prussia,

her name was Mary shelley.

On that journey, they
stopped at gernsheim

which is only ten miles away
from Frankenstein's castle

and you can see
the castle from there.

It's entirely possible that
she heard tales from locals

and people in the
party of the castle

and even possibly of some of
its most notorious inhabitants.

Four years later,

Mary shelley published
her debut novel,

'Frankenstein' or the
modern 'prometheus.'

Mary shelley's Frankenstein

became one of the most
iconic horror novels of all time,

it has been in reprint
all over the world.

It was incredibly
visionary piece of work,

especially amazing,

the woman who wrote
it was only 18 years old.

Shelley's story about a scientist
who made life out of death

echoed the legend of
Johann konrad dippel.

For many dippel was the
original doctor Frankenstein.

It's certainly plausible that
some thread of this story

was something she'd
picked up along the way,

the fact that she used the
name Frankenstein for her doctor

is one hint.

We'll probably never know

but it's certainly fun to
think about that connection.

(Dramatic music)

Today, castle Frankenstein
and it's haunting legends

make it a real tourist hotspot.

It's certainly been good
for the people in this region

they get thousands of visitors
who love to visit the castle

and apparently Halloween
night in this castle

is really something to see.

Inevitably there are local legends
that dippel still haunts this site.

Supposedly, he can be
seen sitting on the chapel roof

with his bones clanking,

hunting for the lost
entranceway to his laboratory.

Captioned by
ai-media ai-media. TV