ESTATES w/ A SIDE OF VILLAS!
If you drive the narrow road behind the popular “Brooksville Christmas Village”, it’s hard to miss the acres of land that hold 2 infamous housing developments…The Brooksville Villas & The Hillside Estates. Both were built with the intention of being used to provide low cost housing to families…Both were ran by the Brooksville Housing Authority…And BOTH now sit, vacant & falling apart.
In 2010 there were around 125 families living in the units of Hillside & The Villas. Just 2 years later, those same families were being handed eviction slips. The reason…That same Housing Authority that existed to help families in need find homes misused the funds needed to maintain the units & surrounding property. With NO money available for upkeep, things began to deteriorate…FAST!! By 2012, it was determined that it was NO longer a safe place to live & ALL residents in Brookside & Hillside were told to leave. As officials have stated that it would take well over a million dollars to have the properties demolished, Both have sat empty & rotting away ever since. Such a FREAKING waste!
OLD SCHOOL BOMB VILLAGE & THE WALKING DEAD!
Until I visited, I didn’t know that there were 2 properties! It’s The Villas that you actually see 1st & they’re pretty hard to miss! Hillside Estates can be described as a community frozen in time, almost like one of those 1950’s fake towns used for bomb testing (You know, the ones with the creepy mannequin families that you see in movies!)…The Villas are the complete opposite! Buildings falling down, graffiti everywhere & the Walking Dead around EVERY corner! OK, so maybe I didn’t actually see the zombies BUT I’m telling you THEY WERE THERE! I only went inside a couple of the outer units on The Villas property as I saw a couple of guys on the other side working! I grabbed some pics & snuck back to my car.
DRIVING TOUR OF A…SHOOTING RANGE???
The Nuclear Test Site…Sorry, I mean Hillside Estates, was too spread out to try to walk it on my own, so I opted to drive it. Funny, The Villas were a complete sh$t show due to having fallen victim to vandals, TIME & the elements. Hillside, on the other hand, sits a stone’s throw away & the ONLY sign that It’s a ghost town are the boards on the doors & some of the windows. The property looked well maintained & I would imagine that ANY person in need of a place to stay would stumble upon one of the many empty units & think they’d found heaven! As I got further back, I started noticing strange holes in some of the doors. After about the 3rd OR 4th time of seeing them, I finally jumped out to get a closer look...
Bullet Holes! People had been using the little houses for target practice! This wasn’t a 1950’s bomb testing village…It’s a GOD DAMN GUN RANGE!!! Yep, TIME TO GO!
JANUARY 2017
People often express interest in my lunacy, even asking on occasion to join the craziness! So I was thrilled when I was able to arrange a 2nd trip with NOT only the Bestie BUT another good friend as well (who brought along her hubs & son!)…We got a bit of a late start & it was butt ass cold & rainy but when we FINALLY got there, it was EVERY bit as AWESOME & creepy as I remembered! Fortunately, it was too freaking nasty out for the Zombies to ambush us, which gave us ample time to explore without having to fight off the ravenous hoards! Outside of the normal site of roofs & walls caving in & the random toilet sitting in a living room, most of our time there was interesting & definitely fun BUT uneventful as far as anything scary goes.
A FINAL THOUGHT…
I know I said that our visit was uneventful BUT there was this one thing that I thought was eerie enough to kinda freak me out! If you walk down the main road inside of the Villas complex, you’ll come to a dead end…There you will find an area where the grass has grown up & the rusty, tattered playground equipment sits unused, like a scene from a Freddy Krueger movie. Maybe someone should go look for those children…
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AND FINALLY…
I must say that I have the greatest friends…EVER!! I’m almost always exploring on my own so it was AWESOME having one of my oldest friends, Sharon, her hubs Rob & her oldest son, Tommy join me for this adventure! I had a blast & can’t wait to do it again! Who knows, maybe her hubs can convince MY hubs to go with us! Love Ya Girlie!
LAST BUT DEFINITELY NOT LEAST:
To My Bestie…
I have NO idea how I got so lucky in the BF Department BUT I’m NOT gonna complain! You join me on even the craziest of adventures & ALWAYS make sure there’s bail money set aside just in case! “If I Only Had One Helmet I Would Give It To You!” 💜💙💜
Finding Florida 
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