Living Dead Environs: Pittsburgh

[geneweigel]

I was just watching "Night of the Living Dead" the other day so I looked up where it was filmed on IMDB. They had all the areas surrounding Pittsburgh and the Dawn of the Dead as well.

The farm was demolished but the cemetary is still there. How about that Monroeville mall? Is it still there?

I recall mentioning this briefly with you Scott (since you live(d?) in that area) some time ago but I can't recall what we were talking about.

[Scott]

One of my old girlfriends lived close to where the original NotLD was filmed. Monroeville Mall is still there, and as a matter of fact they had a zombie weekend festival there last week.
Some of my friends and I went to be extras in the NotLD remake. Two of my friends can be seen, but I don't think I made the final cut.

[geneweigel]

The cemetary can be seen from Google Earth under "Evans City" (N of Pittsburgh) and the location of where the farm was is "Monongahela River" (South of Pittsburgh).

I just looked up the remake and the farm was in East Buffalo, PA thats way east. I actually was near there (to some degree) a couple of weeks ago for my nephew's wedding (Mount Carmel, PA).

Thats some isolation out there in mid-PA!

I recall going to that area (In the hills outside of Frackville in the 70's and my godmother's relative's children (and other local children) were wearing their "underwear only" outside the house. And her "aunt" in particular (that she was visiting) was hanging out the window up the muddy hillside up from the dirt road (my godmother didn't have use of her legs) and absolutely refused to come out of the house down to the road to see my crippled godmother. I got some weird memories, man. ).

Upstate New York is just as bad (and worse in my experience) so I'm not casting any aspersions. Its just weird!

[Scott]

Yes, you can definitely find some isolation without having to look too hard. Some of my extended paternal relatives are big outdoors types, and they own some pretty big chunks of isolation.

[geneweigel]

I can't say the same anymore. My family sold the 189 acres of Catskill mounains 2 years ago to the NYC DEP for water conservation putting the house on 3 acres in the middle of never to be developed land which kind of sucks as my old camping days are fucking dead now.

[Scott]

My camping days have been dead for years, but that is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.
I got a tent for my birthday, so maybe I'll be hitting the great outdoors soon enough.

[geneweigel]

Well, I have the kids now so thats going to change the quickness of it if I ever get around to it again. I wanted to set up a tent on the lawn up there last summer but I was reticent since I had bad luck the last time (big rain out).

[geneweigel]

Hey, I forgot to mention this weird related camping/horror setting anectdote.

I went to a comic convention around 1989 and one of the guests was jim Starlin., the artist/writer who did Captain Marvel/Warlock/ Dreadstar . At the time he was writing Silver Surfer and he had a spinoff mini-series called Thanos Quest which detailed the plans of the returned to life Thanos from Captain Marvel. So I was pretty pumped to see him there. Anyways, he had this regular paperback (non-graphic) novel that he wrote for sale there. So me Bill and Chardo bought copies (at cover price) then he signed them for free (hey, those were the days, can't get anything signed for free now). It was called AMONG MADMEN. I started reading it the next week, It was similiar to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in scope but large percentages of the world became homicidal maniacs either raving mad or sneaky killers. The setting was where we would go camping every year up in the Western Catskills. All the places we would normally go carefree in the past had this new edge of potential doom after that. Weird.