Complaint Review: ABANDONED AMERICA

Please remember to take everything with a grain of salt on here. You can't know that these reviews are real or that they weren't made by the same person.

Matthew is a stand up guy, well known in the community of photography. He has a long-term established social media presence. Matthew's only crime was to criticize Seph Lawless which many people have been doing.

The initial complain is suspiciously similar to the one filed against Seph Lawless - which leads to me to believe Seph created this fake review. Certainly Matthew has never ripped anyone off that I'm aware of.

Don't believe what you read on here, even my review - but do take a moment to find Matthew on social media and see the thousands of people who he's been able to establish positive rapports with and look at his photography.

Then take a look at the one star reviews of Seph. Do't bother with the 5 star Goodread reviews because when you take those people's pictures and plug them into Google Images, they turn up belonging to people with different names. In other words, someone has taken people's photos and used them ot create fake reviews for Seph's books.

Seph in my opinion is a scum bag. He's barely able to articulate a sentence and serves no purpose in the photography community except to worship himself and his low quality photography. Book deals and TV shows that never materialize and continual threats to 'sue' anyone who disagrees with him. Further, anyone who does disagree with Seph is labelled a "stalker" on his social media (and on Ripoffreport) when in fact the people have done nothing but criticize him. When you do the research you'll find that Seph is all about fake stories (the trolley tragegy that never was a tragedy), the haunted houses with EVP sounds that are actually music slowed down and not 'moans' of ghosts, and addresses that have been changed so the houses you think you're going to find, aren't even in the proper state.

Again you're likely going to find a reply attacking me or attacking Matthew and I urge you to read into it with a grain of salt - and a large shovel for the manure pile.

I'm a keen hobbyist photographer in her mid 20s from the south of the UK who is attempting to get a job in photography. Not sure how my email address could be traced, and if it was somehow traced, how the f*** would it get traced back to Matthew Christopher?!

I received the book Abandoned America:The Age Of Consequences on my birthday this year from my mother. I was happy as Larry because I'd been following his work for months.

This false review is really poor conduct by Seph Lawless, who appears to have a vendetta against whoever exposes his porky-pies (lies) about the locations and their history. At one point, I'm fairly certain that it was Lawless who tried to add me on Facebook at some point last year. I ignored the request as I don't know him personally, but checked out his page regardless. Every post appeared to be spam messages promoting his book, which put me right off.

Christopher's book is excellent. The photographs are lovely, and the pieces about the location are interesting and while I'm not personally going to do urban exploration photography myself, it has inspired me to look more at architecture in my own photography. I have only received a reply on a comment from Christopher once, and he was polite and respectful; nothing like the descriptions from Lawless about being a cyber bully. If you note the iPhone shots from my previous rebuttal, they are not the horrific quality described in the poorly written review.

I have no comment on Seph Lawless' book as I have never looked at nor purchased it. I have, however, seen some particularly scathing reviews about the image quality and grammatical errors, and do not foresee myself purchasing them. I'm just attempting to defend a photographer whose work I admire (Matthew Christopher) from having his name dragged through the mud for no good reason.

If you enjoy Christopher's book, I'd highly recommend checking out the work of Rebecca Bathory (formerly Litchfield), and Johnny Joo.

Seph Lawless, you are not doing yourself any favours by trying to get petty revenge on other photographers and thehauntedlibrarian for helping to debunk your stories. Respect is earned, and if you continue to throw your toys out the pram at everyone who challenges your falsehoods, you will receive none from me.

 As an unbiased reviewer of this entry I noticed that the consumer complaint was done by Matthew Christopher aka Abandoned America. He is a fraud and liar who uses misinformation to mislead and misinform people online. A know bully and harasser of people on Facebook with proof with heavily sourced links to his online abuses here: Thehauntedlibrarian.org Matthew Chistopher aka Abandoned America's book Age of Consequences is terrible and him selling books is a scam and rip off. The 'publisher' isn't even real and my book never even came in the mail. Just stole my money. Scam. Buyer beware.

I received a copy of Abandoned America's book, Age of Consequences, as a birthday present.

There are no blank pages where there shouldn't be. The photographer's images are of high quality with interesting back stories. Not a rip-off in any respect, particularly to those interested in urbex photography.

There is no evidence that he is a cyberbully. There is no evidence that he is a stalker.

Seph Lawless appears to be attempting to bring Abandoned America (amongst others) down for debunking several stories told in accompaniment to his photos, which appear to bear a lot of resemblance to the work of well known urbex photographers. He is possibly also impersonating and harassing the person running this blog in order to push his own book. http://thehauntedlibrarian.com

I would take Lawless's claims with a grain of salt.

The author of this report is Joseph Melendez, who goes by the pseudonym Seph Lawless. He created this report in part due to an article I wrote earlier this year debunking an ebook he is selling which falsely states that a well known streetcar salvage yard is the scene of a haunted train wreck. This article I wrote can be found here: abandonedamerica.us/debunking-the-great-trolley-tragedy

In response, Melendez has gone on a rampage defaming my business. This behavior of threats and harassment is well-documented by other people who have experienced it, including another writer who pointed out his flagrant dishonesty, which can be read about here: thehauntedlibrarian.com/2015/05/23/open-letter-to-joseph-melendez-pseudonym-seph-lawless/

The points in this 'report' are false and unsubstantiated. I have a Masters degree in Imaging Arts and Sciences from Rochester Institute of Technology (2012), and I have taught photography on a college level at both RIT and Lebanon Valley College. The workshops that I teach are quite popular and attended by hundreds of people. It is a business, not a charity, but in the process of teaching them I have raised nearly $80,000 for property owners and preservation organizations. There are no blogs reporting that I 'steal the money' of attendees'. If I did that my business would fail and no properties would work with me. My point that this is untrue can be substantiated by the work of dozens of photographers who attend these workshops. Feel free to view their work at the following link: facebook.com/groups/768564243164097/

There are absolutely no instances where I have made fun of "old people and people with mental illness". This is an unsubstantiated lie, and is not sourced with any link to any such behavior. None of these so-called blogs that this report references exist. Regarding my book having 'blank pages' and being 'poorly written with journalist and grammar errors', the solid 4.8 star rating from 129 reviews on Amazon should be enough evidence that this is false - the link is here: amzn.to/1ul3Y8K - however the blank pages remark comes from a review on Goodreads of Melendez' book in March of 2015: goodreads.com/book/show/25251285-variety-theater

In much the same way, the remark about being told to 'eat sh*t' was found at this earlier Ripoff Report entry about one of Melendez' books: ripoffreport.com/r/Seph-Lawless/Cleveland-Ohio-44102/Seph-Lawless-Joe-Melendez-Cleveland-Ohio-1201512

Melendez has a clearly established pattern of online harassment under fake accounts, and this is no exception. He has no evidence to back up his claims (just "I even read this from some place which I am not naming because it doesn't exist"), his allegations are defamatory and made anonymously so as to avoid repercussions for them, and following the links above will show that not only is what he is saying untrue, but that most of what he is alleging about my work has been said by others about his. I feel that last fact - that his remarks come from other writers who have been critical of him - should be enough to strongly suggest to an impartial reader that it is Seph Lawless/Joseph Melendez writing this.

Seph Lawless has made a pattern of abusing other photographers in the Urban Exploration community with behavior like this to the point that none of them respect him or his work, which has spawned dozens of people speaking out about his dishonesty, such as in this blog: sephlawlesslies.com/ . As someone reading this report, you have only to look at the links above, or do some basic research beyond the news articles that have featured his photographs, to find out that Melendez is a sad and disturbed individual who hides behind accounts like these to try to intimidate people who legitimately criticize the dishonest ebooks and news stories he peddles.