Located in Mexico City, La Posada del Sol is an abandoned architectural masterpiece shrouded in mystery and ghoulish stories of murder.
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From the outside, the over 80-year-old building doesn’t look like much, with its dilapidated, graffiti-covered walls and boarded-up windows.
The building is notoriously difficult to access, with round-the-clock security and green steel gates wrapped in barbed wire.
But once urban explorers manage to find their way into the great building, most are left stunned by the sights that have been kept tucked away behind the mysterious blockers.
One professional adventurer, Mike Corey, 38, explored the abandoned site back in 2017.
MORE ON ABANDONED BUILDINGS
Known as Fearless & Far by his 2.43million YouTube subscribers, he told The Sun it took him months to negotiate entry into the fascinating grounds.
The site reportedly spans an enormous 450ft, and is made up of six stone buildings now leaning under their weight – making it appear more of an abandoned mini-city than a hotel complex.
The buildings rise seven stories high, and 600 empty rooms fill the space of the beautifully decaying chapel-like hotel.
A grand ballroom with checkered flooring lies beyond the security gate, with massive crumbling pillars supporting the blackened ceiling.
Attached to one wall, and dominating the space is a fireplace adorned with inscriptions and oversized stained glass windows.
Statues of Aztec Olmec heads have been left to the elements in the gardens, but one sculpture in particular, is enough to send chills down the spines of those who have the courage to enter the grounds.
“There were these old stone statues, people like frozen in time, and these very strange descriptions carved into the walls,” Mike recalled.
“It was just these strange inscriptions – almost like you’d go into a haunted apartment, and there’d be Sharpie markers on the walls kind of thing.
“Like, if you’re gonna be chipping something or marking something onto the wall of a room, there’s some significance there for you”.
Next to the inscription-covered walls, a statue of a robed Saint Francis of Assisi and his wolf had been erected by the compound’s bell tower.
But a deeper mystery surrounds the bell tower, which is believed to be one of the most cursed areas within the hotel.
Local lore says Fernando Saldana Galván – the eccentric businessman behind the 1940 building of La Posada del Sol – slaughtered his entire family in a fit of rage before hanging himself in the bell tower when construction of the hotel stopped in 1945.
It is said the giant statue of the hooded saint curses anyone who enters the site.
In addition to tales of Galván’s murder-suicide, there’s another legend involving a young girl in the 1960s who allegedly vanished from a nursery on the grounds.
The unnamed girl went missing from the daycare while the giant building housed the offices of the National Institute for Community Development and Rural Housing.
The horrific tale claims that workers searched frantically for the little girl, before finding her lifeless body in a hidden basement located in one of the building’s many tunnels.
To this day, there is a makeshift altar at the spot where the body was allegedly discovered – in room 103.
In the dark corner are a small table, a framed photo of the unnamed young girl, and the little white dress she allegedly died in hanging above it.
“It was really spectacular in there,” Mike said.
“When we went down there – and it’s a really long, dark hallway with no lights – that is a very spooky kind of vibe, right?”
“Because you’re getting led down this dark corridor, this tunnel basically, where you can maybe see a faint bit of daylight on the far, far side, but you have no idea where you’re going”.
“Into the bowels of hell,” he added.
“There’s all these old photos of the girl and her old toys, all very old stuff, and we were there just like taking our photos and there was some candles lit for her as well.
“And so then it was getting kind of quiet as we’re just kind of sitting in the spookiness of it”.
Sweets and toys are now left by thrillseekers and security guards in a chilling effort to avert the child’s curse that is said to linger in the cold, damp room.
“The fact it’s tucked away in the very center underground through a long dark hallway makes it very ominous, for sure,” Mike said.
“I wouldn’t call myself a believer of ghosts,” he added, “but it was definitely a very spooky experience and you can’t not feel anything,” he added.
Above ground, there are multiple gardens, fountains, terraces, and patios, plus galleries, tea rooms, Turkish baths, and a human-sized chessboard.
A theatre is also tucked away in one of the hundreds of abandoned rooms.
The vast space is filled with over 100 yellowing seats facing a bare stage, cloaked in darkness.
Some of the dust-covered chairs have remained folded while others have retained their outward position – as if a person was constantly sitting on them.
Next door is a circular Catholic chapel embedded with astrological signs and a giant multi-coloured dome ceiling.
There are 33 round chairs positioned in a particular way and the reasoning behind this remains unknonwn to this day.
Tomb-like stones make up the walls and a slim cross is pinned to a wooden board at the back of the eerie room.
According to The Mexican Herald, the chapel is also believed to have been the base where dozens of students were executed after being raped and tortured by a notoriously corrupt police chief named Negro Durazo in the late 1960s.
The Mexican, dubbed El Negro, was the owner of the now-derelict La Posada del Sol at the time and used the space to torture young people who protested during the student movement of 1968.
One neighborhood resident who recalled hearing about the atrocities, told a local paper: “They say that they locked the students in the back of La Posada del Sol so that the screams would not be heard due to the width of the walls.”
They added: “Strange rites were carried out in the chapels inside the Posada”.
Venturing out of the spooky chapel, grand winding staircases adorned with gargoyles snake up through the building.
The upstairs levels are completely demolished, with rubble scattered across what should be the floor.
Slabs of wood and piles of bricks are scattered across the ground, within the grand unfinished project.
But while the La Posada del Sol continues to turn to dust, there have been no decisions about what to do with the “haunted” crumbling towers.
It is now only available to enter with the permission of Cuauhtémoc’s mayor, Sandra Cuevas Nieves.
“It took us a long time, and quite honestly I had to pay a fee to get in, but again we weren’t the first people to get in and do it,” Mike said.
“So if you’re a passionate explorer, the place is fantastic”.
But La Posada del Sol is not the only once-glorious hotel to have been left to gracefully wither away.
In southern France, a classic 17th-century boutique hotel built 400 years ago was abandoned and is now up for sale.
Big arched windows and glass-panned French doors lead onto balconies with views over the quaint village of Anduze, which dates back to pre-Roman times.
And haunting images revealed the inside of an abandoned hotel, which has mysteriously sat empty for 50 years.
The 22-storey Añaza hotel sits on the shores of Los Pocitos village, in Tenerife, but has not had a single guest for over five decades.
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