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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Vassia Barba

Inside haunting abandoned funeral chapel with operating table and rusting tools

The haunting images of an abandoned funeral chapel show the decay of a once-prosperous family business.

The funeral home in South Carolina, US, was owned by a second-generation mortician who completed his education at a Pennsylvania mortuary school and returned to South Carolina to work alongside his father in the family's funeral home.

It prospered over the years allowing them to expand by opening multiple locations in neighbouring towns - but now it remains locked in disarray.

Photographs of the abandoned place showcase the eerie and desolate atmosphere of an abandoned funeral chapel, with remnants of its former use still visible.

The images captured by urban explorer Leland Kent, known online as Abandoned Southeast, show an abandoned white Rolls Royce on the property left to decay along with empty caskets in a display room.

A lavish Rolls Royce funeral car is parked on the outside of the building (mediadrumimages/LelandKent)

Other shots show tools of the trade left behind, including an embalming machine and multiple surgical instruments.

The lavish Rolls Royce funeral car is parked on the outside of the building while inside, a waiting room area with two sofas that once welcomed the grieving guests still stands wide above the warmth of a comforting dark carpet floor.

A dark corridor leads to the other areas of the facilities, including an office, a chapel, and a laboratory.

Everything is left as it was while the home was still operational.

An operating table, on which the corpses were prepared for their final journey completes the macabre image. (mediadrumimages/LelandKent)

Paperwork and desk accessories are laid in the office and a dark chapel with a narrow ceiling retains the memories of sorrow and mourning.

Empty coffins filled with white sheets are still left there, some of them open, and a red rose is left on one of their thick pillows.

But the most chilling images come from inside the laboratory, where stained, rusty tools and syringes were left drying forever on a paper tissue.

Surgical tools and embalming powder (mediadrumimages/LelandKent)

An operating table, on which the corpses were prepared for their final journey completes the macabre image.

The owner's sudden death in 2015 left the business without a full-time funeral director, which was required by state laws.

Although the funeral home continued to operate, the state licensing board sent a cease-and-desist notice to the funeral home ordering the business to close.

Empty coffins filled with white sheets are still left there, some of them open, and a red rose is left on one of their thick pillows (mediadrumimages/LelandKent)

The family went before the state board to appeal the notice stating they hired someone who had met the requirements.

In 2016, the funeral home's request to reopen was approved, but, for unknown reasons, it remains closed until today.

The building sits boarded up, with the power still on, in the hopes of reopening one day.

Recently, the custom Cadillac limousines were removed, perhaps sold, while the future of the funeral home remains uncertain.

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