Building upon Akhil Gupta’s theories on urban decay, this paper positions urban soundscapes as a continuum of decay and ruination that shape acoustic experiences and reconfigure one’s orientation in place. Through soundwalks of abandoned environments in Dallas, Texas, I examine how the acoustic dimensions of derelict environments facilitate a mode of perception shaped by acoustic hauntings, uncanny atmospheres, and remnants of past human activity. Rather than treating abandoned and ruined soundscapes as static backdrops, I view urban soundscapes through Tim Edensor’s theory that ruined environments are dynamic, arguing that abandoned places function as ever-evolving acoustic fields marked by constantly shifting spatial and temporal horizons. Defined by the mnemonic traces of their former lives and the remnants of material environments that dwell within them, ruined places function as continuously evolving loci of collective memory, where temporality and spatiality collapse, creating a fragmented phenomenological experience of overlapping acoustic fields. By viewing urban soundscapes through the lens of ruination and decay, we can begin to understand how these auditory environments function as a process, rather than a location where sounds and silences are collected. This paper challenges the dominant human-centric assumptions of placemaking by demonstrating how soundscapes evolve beyond human habitation, resulting in an uncanny discord between their past lives and unrealized future horizons. By recentering acoustic experiences around displacement, absence, and loss, this phenomenological framework reconceptualizes the human relationship with sound, place, and temporality in contemporary urban soundscapes