TALL TALE
Inside abandoned 49-storey skyscraper dubbed the ‘ghost tower’ still looming over iconic skyline 26 years on
AN abandoned 49-storey skyscraper dubbed the "ghost tower" is still looming over an iconic skyline 26 years on.
Images from inside show how the unfinished Sathorn Unique Tower in Thailand's capital city Bangkok looks after being left neglected.
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Tourists still flock to take pictures of the derelict building made from reinforced concrete, or for YouTube.
It was also popular with until climbing the building was made illegal in 2014, though videos continue to be shared online from inside and on top of the tower.
Work on the 185-metre-tall tower began in 1990, promising luxury condominiums for wealthy Thai families, but ground to a halt seven years later.
That was when the Asian financial crisis hit hard across the region, beginning in Thailand as the government devalued the national currency of the baht.
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An estimated 500 building projects were called to a halt and while some have been resurrected the Sathorn Unique remains left alone.
The name came from the district next to the Chao River it overlooks.
But despite remaining a lure for tourists, the residents these days are bats and birds rather than affluent business men and women.
The Sathorn Unique is among the world's most eye-catching abandoned buildings, alongside a crumbling airport in what's been called Europe's last "no man's land" in Cyprus.
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The Thai towerblock is now plastered in not only corporate advertising banners but also graffiti, while trespassers often intrude.
Architect and property developer Rangsan Torsuwan had behind early work on the Sathorn Unique.
He was charged in 1993 with the attempted murder of Thailand's Supreme Court president Pramsan Chansue before being found guilty 15 years later but acquitted on appeal in 2010.
His son Pansit later took control of the Sathorn Unique project.
He announced in 2015 he was increasing security patrols after a rise in trespassers as well as people "freerunning" on the tower.
The body of a Swedish man was found hanged on the tower's 43rd floor in December 2014.
A 2017 horror film called The Promise was filmed at the building, which some have suggested is haunted after being constructed on a former graveyard.
More images have been revealed of how another skyscraper was left hollow and abandoned yet was transformed, in Johannesburg in South Africa.
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Meanwhile, a hotel in the Spanish holiday resort of Tenerife has sat empty for half a century.
And a 25-storey towerblock in Mexico City has been abandoned for the past 40 years, surviving six earthquakes during that time.
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