For three years, TikTok creator Aisha Barratt kept fans terrified and entertained with her footage of an abandoned hospital. But this was no urban exploration adventure – it was her home
Few people would dare spend the night in an abandoned hospital, but could you imagine actually living in one? For Aisha Barratt, this isn’t a situation out of a horror film – it’s home.
The TikToker lived in a disused hospital in London, as what is known as a ‘property guardian’, meaning a tenant who lives in an empty building, taking care of the premises for an enviably low rent. It’s understood that some pay as little as £35 a week for this sort of set-up, and it makes sense for many as the ongoing cost of living crisis rumbles on.
Naturally, Aisha’s unusual living situation has garnered plenty of interest online, where she regularly documented what it’s like to wander the corridors of a building which made her feel as though she was “the last woman on Earth”. It comes after a woman claimed ‘My friend is naming her baby after a fish – she can’t see how ugly it is’.
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Aisha no longer lives in the abandoned hospital, which she has described as a “wild time”. The London-based influencer, who has since moved to a ‘cute girly apartment’, lived in the unique property for three years, and fans couldn’t get enough of her eerie content.
In a tour she filmed to mark the ‘end of an era’, Aisha showed her fascinated followers the radiographer cupboards she used to use as wardrobes, and revealed that she would also use an X-ray cupboard to store sweets. She said: “So much you can do with these non-conventional spaces. That’s part of the fun of it.”
Although she shared how she would miss the “little quirks” of her spooky home, TV producer Aisha admitted that she certainly wouldn’t miss having to dust every five minutes.
In a previous video, Aisha poked fun at the idea that the old abandoned place may be haunted, joking: “POV: You live in an abandoned so you have to sage every corridor you go down.”
Naturally, followers were curious about Aisha’s living situation, but many didn’t fancy it too much themselves. Commenting on one clip, where Aisha can be “modelling [her] first leather coat and biker boots fit of the season for the ghosts”, one person shuddered: “Wow I would not be able to sleep ha ha brave girl.”
In another clip, where Aisha showed how the building contained boarded-off sections and restricted zones, a second follower gasped: “How did you decide to live in an abandoned hospital? What if people break in to explore or smth? How are you so brave?” A third simply asked: “Why do you live there?”
Those of a more nervous disposition may be relieved to learn that Aisha was not alone during her long stay in the hospital. Although she had her own private room, which she was responsible for taking care of, she shared the building with some 150 people, under the property guardianship scheme.
Outlining this scheme to those who had no idea there was such a thing, Aisha explained: “There’s a building: an office, a school, a church, a hospital. The owner wants to do something with it like demolish it, extend it, or turn it into something else but they need time for planning permission to go through. You don’t want don’t a tenant, you don’t want a business in there, so you put some [property] guardians in there.”
She continued, “Guardians know that when you get your notice, you have to go. In exchange for that, guardians get cheaper rent [and] great locations.”
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