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Filmmaker Documents Abandoned Sites In New England With Drone Camera

CLINTON (CBS) - A Rhode Island filmmaker is looking to capture parts of New England's past that have been forgotten.

Jason Allard is using a drone camera to get into abandoned places in a new web series called "Abandoned From Above."

"I've always had a fascination with abandoned places, why they're there, how did they get into that state," he told WBZ-TV.

Allard was intrigued after learning about Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine.

"It really shows the scope of some of these places once you see it from the air, you can see just how large they are and then you go on the ground to get a more intimate look at what they're like," Allard said.

"From there I started exploring more locally abandoned places because I was fascinated with what happens once people just up and leave these places."

He's learned a lot from visiting forsaken spots, like an abandoned train tunnel in Clinton, and is eager to pass that knowledge on to his online audience.

Jason Allard
Jason Allard outside an abandoned train tunnel in Clinton. (WBZ-TV)

"Anytime I visit a place where people have made significant memories with their families, or even just growing up, whether it's a school, amusement park or drive-in movie theater, those are always the most interesting to me," he said.

abandoned spooky world
The abandoned Spooky World in Berlin, Massachusetts. (Image credit: Jason Allard)

"One of the spookiest places I've been to was an abandoned summer resort in Connecticut. We walked into some of the guest rooms and some of the beds were still made, the curtains were still on," he told WBZ. "Everything was still set up as if people were going to come back some day."

"In a way they are time capsules, when you go to explore them you see them as they are, stuck in time."

To see more of Allard's work, visit his YouTube page.

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