Anemoia is one of Blake Pfeil’s favorite words.

Author John Koenig coined the unofficial English word, which means a longing for a time or place you’ve never known, in his 2021 book, “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows,” a collection of words he dreamed up for emotions not described in English.

It’s an apt word for Pfeil, a Colorado Springs native, who explores abandoned spaces around the globe in his award-winning “Abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” Season three launched a week ago. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other streaming services, as well as blakepfeil.com/audio.

“Anemoia is a really grounding feeling that makes me feel proud to be human,” Pfeil said from upstate New York, where he now lives. “It makes me feel connected to people in a moment when everything is so chaotic and everyone is angry and confused and no one knows what to do.”

Pfeil also will be part of Green Box’s Artist-in-Residence program this December. The arts organization, which puts on the annual Green Box Arts Festival every summer in Green Mountain Falls, selects artists through an application process to participate in month-long residences throughout the year. Pfeil plans to build an immersive multimedia piece using sound as the focal point, and also travel to several abandoned sites around Colorado for his podcast.

But long before he gallivanted across the country in search of the forgotten, the Rampart High School graduate lived in the Peregrine neighborhood, about half a mile from an abandoned dairy farm that had once been part of a tuberculosis sanatorium. Before it burned down in 1993, Pfeil loved to spend his days tromping around the empty property, daydreaming about who lived there and what their lives looked like. It was there he felt the first blush of what he’d later call anemoia.

“This dairy farm felt alive to me,” he said. “It’s where I cultivated the practice of playing pretend as a tool for healing. I created entire worlds inside that sanctuary and learned to harness my imagination as a space for reprieve and a place to understand who I am.”

For Pfeil, abandoned places conjure up feelings of wanderlust, nostalgia and wistfulness. They represent the story of America, culture and community.

“Each one tells a fascinating story they’re not putting in papers and school curriculum. This is one reason I think journalism is so important,” he said.

“The journalists who are going to save us are the ones who are looking underneath the building or looking behind the curtain to figure out what’s going on. Abandoned buildings tell us a story that may not be as pretty or mighty as we might want to tell ourselves. Abandoned places are the human experience — we start and go for awhile and nature takes us back. And they show us that.”

Finding abandoned spaces across the U.S. can be tricky, though Pfeil says there are thousands of documented spaces and many more that are undocumented. He relies on social media and word of mouth to ferret out such spaces as Saratoga Springs Air Force Station in New York; Nevele Grande Hotel in New York; Penn Hills Resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania; and Central High School in Virginia, all of which he’s spent time peregrinating.

“I’m not too selective, but the ones that speak to me most are the places that look like they’ve gone through a rapture,” he said. “Where people were almost plucked out of their church or mall and everything is left, as if to suggest we were here and we don’t want you to forget that.”

While all podcasts provide an aural experience, Pfeil uses the phrase “immersive experience” to describe his, and recommends people listen to it with headphones to get the full taste of his soundscapes.

A love for sonic storytelling grew roots in childhood, when his family listened to vintage radio plays and dramas, including “Adventures in Odyssey,” audio stories for kids by Focus on the Family.

In “Abandoned” he pairs storytelling with ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response), a phenomenon said to produce pleasant tingling sensations in the body in response to certain sounds.

“I was interested in encouraging folks to use their own imagination, especially those who expressed interest in going to these places but never felt brave enough,” he said.

“But if you give them a sonic outline, their brain naturally will try and reproduce a visual story in their head.”