Conjuring at the Ghost Mills Mall

Have you seen The Conjuring yet?  I love a good scary movie (or even an awful scary movie as my husband will be quick to attest to), but even he really enjoyed this one.  He said it did all of the things that scary movies do that usually annoy him, but they did a good job at it.  It's supposedly based on a true story involving a husband and wife team of paranormal investigators who agree to help a family who just moved into a Rhode Island farmhouse and are experiencing some unsettling situations.  It was released back in July, but the Danbarry Dollar Saver Cinemas shows older movies - for only $3 a head!  October is the perfect month to convince Francisco to binge on horror movies with me, so it wasn't too hard to get him to agree to go. 

First we grabbed some appetizers at the nearby Cock & Bull Public House. The Bavarian Pretzels with beer cheese [far left] were perfection (if only there was more beer cheese!), but the maple aioli that came with the Basket of Sweet Potato Fries [far right] stole the show! Francisco proclaimed that the food was splendiferous (I'm a bit of a tougher critic).

There was a gorgeous sunset as we pulled up to the mall - it saddened me that the backdrop was the highway, but whacha gonna do? :-P

We have been to several malls now across the Greater Cincinnati area, but we had not yet been inside Cincinnati Mills. 

We walked in and this place is a GHOST MALL. It is uber creepy.  The entrance we came in immediately leads to this little children's play area; probably one of the more enticing play areas that I've seen in a mall setting but utterly deserted.

We checked the Directory to figure out how to get to the theater. As you can see, there are a lot of black bars where store names used to be.

Then we headed deeper into the mall - not an occupied store in sight in that first hallway.

 We headed down the escalator to the food court area. The theater was right next to the food court.   

After the creepy movie, the mall was even creepier to walk through. Most of the lights had been shut off and there were eerie sounds.  A sheet of black plastic serving as a doorway for one of the deserted stores flapped lightly in the wind and it sounded like it was raining outside, but we saw that it wasn't.

I wanted to take more pictures, but Francisco was encouraging me to leave. And reminding me that this is how scary movies start - and standing around taking pictures was one step away from peeking behind that black plastic sheet and being sucked into a nightmare world.

He went to grab the door to leave. LOCKED.

Bahaha, but there was an automatic door to our left standing wide open that we hadn't noticed at first. So, we turned to that door and it started to close.  Francisco made this hilarious hooting noise and darted through the closing door. I was so amused by the whole thing. Seeing The Conjuring only heightened the experience of walking through this creepy mall.

The history of the mall is detailed further at DeadMalls.com.  While looking for more information, I wasn't the least bit surprised to see that this mall was listed on a site with such a name.  It is sad to read about this great mall's demise.