Obscura Day 2012: It Lives!

(Picture from NYTimes on our 2011 Obscura Day event in the Green-wood Cemetery) 

So it’s here. Obscura Day 2012 is a mere month away, April 28th 2012, and we are in full on crazy mode at the Atlas getting everything set up and the events listed on ObscuraDay.com. 

In case you have no idea what this is all about, Obscura Day is an international celebration of unusual places. It is a day of expeditions, back room tours, & exploring. It’s organized by us here at Atlas Obscura and is our big annual event.

This year it is happening on April 28, 2012 in cities and towns all over the world! (By the way, if there isn’t an event near you, we highly encourage you to organize something! That can mean getting in touch and doing something with us, or just getting friends together to go check out that one wierd thing you are always meaning to see. We just want to see your pics!)

This is the third year we are doing Obscura Day, and I think this one is going to be particularly epic. (Fedora sized hat tip to our events mistress Annetta Black who has been working her butt off to make this happen.)

Over the past two years, nearly 10,000 people have attended over 200 different events on Obscura Day, and they’ve have done some pretty amazing things - from visiting a Bioluminescent Glow Worm Cave, to over 400 folks exploring a desert ghost town, to ventuing into the hidden parts of Alcatraz in SF. Below is a video of our event from Coney Island in 2011. 

Coney Island Obscura Day 2011 from Atlas Obscura on Vimeo.

This year I have a few events I am particularly geeked out about. (Keep in mind my tastes tend towards the nerdy and the morbid, so yeah…) Among them:

• Dissecting the Past with the Chirurgeon’s Apprentice in London. We are gonna join blogger “Chirurgeon’s Apprentice” for an afternoon of blood and guts as we explore the dissected specimens of the Huntarian Museum. Best Medical Museum in the World. 

• A Trip To The Moon from Observatory Hill in Boston to look at Harvard’s trailblazing images of the Moon and the cosmos ranging from daguerreotypes to CCDs. Should be amazing if you are any kind of space/science nerd.

• In Idaho Falls, Idaho we will be taking a tour of the Experimental Breeder Reactor No.1 to see two aircraft nuclear propulsion prototypes, a reactor control room, and more amazing/terrifying nerdery!

• “Bound to End Badly” at the Boston Athenaeum is a look at alchemy books, rare texts (think grimoires) and books from the 1500s - 1800s bound in human skin. Basically, prepare to see the Necronomicon.

• The Tour of Manhattan’s Library of Magic should be pretty excellent. I fully expect flying books.

• Finally “An Evening in Jail” in Warrenton, Viginia, where you will enjoy a unique dining experience; a recreation of a mid 20th Century prison meal. I bet it features potatos.

Long story short: Go to ObscuraDay.com, Find an event near you. Do something amazing on Obscura Day! Nothing near you? Help us make something amazing happen. Take pictures. Tweet. Drink a beer. Have a ridiculously good time. We are pretty excited.

In the very kind words of a fan: Obscura Day! To some of us this is Christmas & Space Christmas combined!  Excited to see you out there.

An overly long-ish message from  Atlas Co-Founder Dylan Thuras