An Abandoned Church Near Franklin, Pennsylvania

I believe this poor, sad, swaybacked old place was once known as Hebron Methodist Church, though it's been abandoned now for many a long year.  It sits along Old Route 8 between I-80 and Franklin, in Venango County.  I'm back up here for a planning retreat.

It sits in the sparsest little cemetery along a partially forgotten thoroughfare.  They're doing a lot of construction on the 4-lane now known as PA Route 8, but I've heard that they're actually reducing it back to a 2-lane--since Franklin and Oil City are mere shadows of their former selves.  I don't know.  Did most of the headstones in this cemetery get knocked over or stolen, or is the cemetery pretty empty?

Even here in the hinterlands, a church has some flights of fancy, some rural pretensions to ecclesiastical glory, like the playful design on these plain old wooden window panes.  You might catch a ghostly shadow in this window, too: the blogger formerly known as The Snowbelt Parson.

I love sacred architecture, but this place has a strangely hollow feel to it, almost creepy.  The honeybees seem to like it though.  

Are there people buried in this churchyard, in unmarked graves, or does it sit mostly fallow, so to speak?  

Someone may have loved this place at one time, but that was long ago.  

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock."  And you'll knock a long time before anyone opens this door.  It's nailed shut.  I was able to take a few interior shots through the windows.    

 This is the chancel--which is to say the "stage" or "dais."  See the rail?  That's sometimes known as "the altar," though it's technically an altar rail.  It's where old-timey Methodists would have come to kneel in penitence to confess their sins and "get saved."  Methodist services back in those days always closed with an "altar call" to invite penitent sinners to change their ways.  You can see where they tried to lower the ceilings to save on heating bills.  But it all came down in the end...as all things will.