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4 Disturbing Urban Exploration Stories (URBEX) · Stories from the Dark

0:23
Speaker 1: A lot of my urbex or urban exploration stories are
0:28
Speaker 1: It was scary at the time, but funny later. Like
0:31
Speaker 1: the time a rat dropped onto my back while we
0:34
Speaker 1: were in this dark basement, or the time that we
0:36
Speaker 1: thought someone had just silently appeared in the room with
0:39
Speaker 1: us and it was just a dusty mannequin. But there's
0:43
Speaker 1: this one story that was scary at the time and
0:45
Speaker 1: then stayed with me. And even all these years later,
0:48
Speaker 1: I still get a little nervous just talking about it,
0:51
Speaker 1: and I'd like to share it with you. I've changed
0:53
Speaker 1: the names where it matters, and I'm not going to
0:55
Speaker 1: pinpoint the exact site beyond rural Ohio, somewhere north of
0:59
Speaker 1: the old industrial belt. And the last thing I want
1:02
Speaker 1: is a bunch of kids getting hurt down there, messing
1:04
Speaker 1: with the scene the cops already looked at. But with
1:07
Speaker 1: that out of the way, I'll just get into it.
1:10
Speaker 1: In the fall of 1993, me and two friends of
1:13
Speaker 1: mine named Pete and Johnny decided to hit up this
1:15
Speaker 1: derelict underground factory complex. We'd been urbexing for a while,
1:21
Speaker 1: years before anyone gave a name to what we were doing,
1:24
Speaker 1: and back then, we'd just sort of be like, hey,
1:27
Speaker 1: You want to go check out this place or that
1:29
Speaker 1: a place, and it was implied the place would be
1:31
Speaker 1: some kind of postmodern ruin because that's what we did.
1:34
Speaker 1: And that weekend, we had a tip from an old
1:38
Speaker 1: forum post about the factory complex and how it used
1:41
Speaker 1: to make machine parts during the war years before closing
1:44
Speaker 1: down for good in the 70s. The above-ground buildings were
1:48
Speaker 1: mostly gone, but the post mentioned tunnels and sublevels that
1:52
Speaker 1: the county never properly sealed. and where security was little
1:56
Speaker 1: more than a couple of chain-link fences and some keep-out signs.
2:01
Speaker 1: So with the site having such a high potential for
2:03
Speaker 1: a good day's exploring, it didn't take much to get
2:06
Speaker 1: all three of our votes. When it came to prepping
2:09
Speaker 1: for days out, we lived and died by the five
2:12
Speaker 1: Ps my Uncle Ted used to talk about. Proper planning
2:15
Speaker 1: prevents poor performance. Urban exploration often presents you with multiple
2:20
Speaker 1: problems per trip, so The more problem solvers you bring
2:24
Speaker 1: with you, the deeper you can explore. We packed headlamps, flashlights, respirators, gloves,
2:30
Speaker 1: and a pretty advanced first aid kit. We also brought
2:33
Speaker 1: a ton of spare batteries for all of our lights.
2:36
Speaker 1: Because trust me, the last thing you want is to
2:39
Speaker 1: be stuck down there in the dark without any working batteries.
2:43
Speaker 1: We parked about a mile out on a gravel road,
2:46
Speaker 1: then walked the rest of the way through overgrown fields.
2:49
Speaker 1: About a quarter mile in, we came to the surface structures,
2:53
Speaker 1: all still intact but nothing more than a mess of
2:55
Speaker 1: brick piles and rusty I-beams. I wandered around until we
3:00
Speaker 1: found a concrete stairwell, half buried under debris that led down.
3:05
Speaker 1: We took it down, and the air changed right away. Cooler, damper,
3:10
Speaker 1: with that sort of rusty, stagnant water smell. We flicked
3:15
Speaker 1: on our headlamps as we hit a long corridor hallway
3:18
Speaker 1: on the first sublevel. They cut cones of light through
3:21
Speaker 1: the dark as we explored side rooms full of broken machinery.
3:25
Speaker 1: There were old stains on the floor that looked like
3:27
Speaker 1: they'd never dried, the usual graffiti from previous explorers, all
3:31
Speaker 1: pretty standard stuff, really. But it didn't stay that way
3:35
Speaker 1: for long. Down on the second sub-level, we hit a
3:39
Speaker 1: hallway that branched towards the end. But since one path
3:43
Speaker 1: was blocked by a partial collapse, we took the other.
3:46
Speaker 1: Now this took us down another flight of stairs to
3:49
Speaker 1: the third sub-level, and there, the walls were thicker, poured
3:54
Speaker 1: concrete with rebar showing in places, and Johnny said something
3:57
Speaker 1: about it feeling like a bunker, and let me tell you,
4:00
Speaker 1: he wasn't wrong. Now not long after, we came to
4:04
Speaker 1: a set of heavy steel doors that had been forced
4:06
Speaker 1: open years ago, as in the hinges were still solid,
4:10
Speaker 1: but the locks were long gone. Beyond that, the temperature
4:14
Speaker 1: dropped by at least another few degrees, with condensation beating
4:18
Speaker 1: on the walls and our breath starting to show. Things
4:22
Speaker 1: got majorly creepy down there, and while we always had
4:25
Speaker 1: that feeling that we were somewhere we weren't supposed to be,
4:28
Speaker 1: down there it was just way more intense, you know.
4:32
Speaker 1: And then not long after, we found it. We came
4:36
Speaker 1: to a long, dark, stinking corridor with what I'm guessing
4:39
Speaker 1: were old storage rooms or something, There were maybe ten
4:43
Speaker 1: or twelve of them, and so me, Pete, and Johnny
4:46
Speaker 1: split off and started searching them one by one and alone.
4:50
Speaker 1: Some were empty, some had old rusted shelving units in them,
4:54
Speaker 1: which is why I took them for storage. But then
4:57
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, Pete spoke up so loud it made
4:59
Speaker 1: me jump, saying something like, Uh, guys? You should come
5:04
Speaker 1: see this. I could tell by his tone of voice
5:08
Speaker 1: that something was wrong from the get-go. and so me
5:11
Speaker 1: and Johnny both rushed to see what he'd found. But
5:14
Speaker 1: nothing could have prepared us for what we saw. Nothing.
5:19
Speaker 1: They weren't large rooms, maybe 20 by 30 feet, with
5:22
Speaker 1: low ceilings and a single empty light socket. But what
5:26
Speaker 1: made this room different from the others was that it
5:29
Speaker 1: had a drain in the center. It was so clogged
5:32
Speaker 1: with silt that it was barely visible. But that wasn't
5:36
Speaker 1: what had Pete sounding so scared. It was what was
5:40
Speaker 1: in the far corner. What he had his headlamp fixed
5:43
Speaker 1: on because bolted in the concrete were chains. These heavy
5:49
Speaker 1: galvanized chains, the kind that you see on industrial equipment,
5:53
Speaker 1: ran from thick steel rings set into the wall down
5:57
Speaker 1: to a pair of sort of handcuffs or manacles on
6:00
Speaker 1: the floor. You all need to understand what I mean
6:04
Speaker 1: when I say galvanized too because... It's when you make
6:08
Speaker 1: it so metal can't rust. So while everything else down
6:11
Speaker 1: there was all rusty and rotten, the chains shined under
6:16
Speaker 1: the light of our headlamps, meaning whoever drilled them into
6:19
Speaker 1: the wall did so long after the factory closed down.
6:24
Speaker 1: Those handcuffs or shackles, whatever you want to call them,
6:28
Speaker 1: that were attached were open, but the metal showed smooth
6:32
Speaker 1: spots from where something had been rubbing against them for
6:35
Speaker 1: a long, long time. Next to them was a second set,
6:39
Speaker 1: slightly smaller but in the same good condition, and that
6:42
Speaker 1: was the first thing that made me feel like the
6:45
Speaker 1: hairs on my arms were standing up. They weren't theatrical
6:49
Speaker 1: or decorative. They were practical. The bolts were driven so
6:53
Speaker 1: deep that the concrete around them was cracked from the
6:55
Speaker 1: force of installation, from where someone had made damned sure
7:00
Speaker 1: that they were going to hold. The floor under those
7:04
Speaker 1: handcuffs were darker than the rest. and so I crouched
7:07
Speaker 1: down with my light to take a closer look. The
7:10
Speaker 1: surface was pitted, like it had been scrubbed hard at
7:13
Speaker 1: some point and then left alone, like someone had tried
7:16
Speaker 1: and failed to escape. We didn't speak for like a
7:20
Speaker 1: full minute, and then Johnny was the one who noticed
7:23
Speaker 1: the stuff on the walls. He swept his headlamp across
7:27
Speaker 1: the far wall, then it suddenly stopped. Then when me
7:30
Speaker 1: and Pete looked, we saw the concrete there was covered
7:34
Speaker 1: in all these shallow carvings, Now these weren't the usual
7:38
Speaker 1: tags and dates left by other explorers. These were whole
7:42
Speaker 1: words and sentences that looked like they'd been scratched into
7:45
Speaker 1: the brickwork by a nail or a piece of broken metal.
7:49
Speaker 1: Some were faint and looked like they'd almost been weathered
7:52
Speaker 1: away by the damp. But others were deeper, with jagged
7:56
Speaker 1: letters that made it look like the person had pressed
7:58
Speaker 1: really hard to make their mark. There was a bunch
8:01
Speaker 1: of different stuff, but the ones that really stick with me,
8:04
Speaker 1: the ones I can remember clear as day, were these.
8:07
Speaker 1: The first said something like, tell Marie I love her,
8:11
Speaker 1: which was kind of heartbreaking as well as terrifying because
8:15
Speaker 1: did Marie know what happened to whoever was kept down there?
8:18
Speaker 1: Did she think he just walked out on her when
8:21
Speaker 1: really he was down there, all alone and in the dark?
8:26
Speaker 1: I didn't dwell on it too much in the moment.
8:28
Speaker 1: I really couldn't because the next second my eyes found
8:30
Speaker 1: the words, it said, I'm sorry, mom. Johnny and Pete
8:36
Speaker 1: were each seeing their own spine-chilling carvings and I remember
8:40
Speaker 1: Johnny saying, oh my god, dude, when he saw one
8:44
Speaker 1: which said, can't remember the sky. It wasn't all the
8:49
Speaker 1: same handwriting either, meaning it hadn't just been one person.
8:53
Speaker 1: It had been a lot of them over a long
8:55
Speaker 1: period of time. The last one I saw before I
8:59
Speaker 1: was like, we need to leave, was don't let them
9:02
Speaker 1: get the kids. Because, well, Who the hell were they,
9:06
Speaker 1: you know? But seeing as whoever were down there knew
9:10
Speaker 1: that they went after kids, I didn't feel like getting
9:13
Speaker 1: a personal introduction. And so that was very much our
9:16
Speaker 1: cue to leave. But on the way out, Pete was
9:20
Speaker 1: talking about dates that he saw from the 70s and 80s,
9:23
Speaker 1: at least if the numbers were right. And he also
9:26
Speaker 1: said that he saw a spot where someone had carved
9:28
Speaker 1: these little marks, groups of five, these tallies, stretching in long,
9:32
Speaker 1: uneven lines. He said he counted past 60 before he stopped.
9:38
Speaker 1: Johnny said the worst one that he saw just came
9:41
Speaker 1: to this one name, Georgie, repeated over and over until
9:45
Speaker 1: the surface sort of flaked. There were no bodies, no clothes,
9:49
Speaker 1: no personal items beyond the chains and the scratches, but
9:52
Speaker 1: the implication was clear enough. People had been kept prisoner
9:56
Speaker 1: there in a place designed to keep noise in and people... out.
10:02
Speaker 1: If you screamed down there, who would hear it? The
10:04
Speaker 1: nearest house was probably a mile or more through fields
10:08
Speaker 1: and woods, and then at night, with the wind, you'd
10:11
Speaker 1: have to be standing on top of the place to
10:13
Speaker 1: even have a chance of hearing anyone. The ride back
10:17
Speaker 1: was a heavy one and I think we all stayed
10:19
Speaker 1: silent for maybe 20 minutes once we got back to
10:22
Speaker 1: the car and back on the road. And I kept
10:24
Speaker 1: coming back to that one message that said tell Marie
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Speaker 1: I love her. Maybe it was written by someone who
10:30
Speaker 1: still thought that there might be a future where the
10:32
Speaker 1: message got delivered or maybe by someone who needed to
10:35
Speaker 1: say it even if it never would get delivered. And
10:39
Speaker 1: then after a while it was Pete who said quietly
10:42
Speaker 1: we have to call this in. And so we did.
10:46
Speaker 1: The next morning, I drove to the nearest state police
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Speaker 1: post and told them what we'd found and where. The
10:53
Speaker 1: trooper who took the report was polite, but what stayed
10:56
Speaker 1: with me was how totally unshocked this guy seemed. It
11:00
Speaker 1: was like it wasn't the first time that he'd heard
11:02
Speaker 1: about someone finding something like that. He said that they'd
11:05
Speaker 1: send someone to check it out, and I left my
11:08
Speaker 1: contact info, and then about a week later I got
11:11
Speaker 1: a call from a detective. Now, he started off by
11:14
Speaker 1: asking a few clarifying questions. Stuff like how we got in,
11:18
Speaker 1: whether we'd moved anything, or if we'd seen any recent
11:20
Speaker 1: signs of activity. And I answered straight, admitting that we
11:24
Speaker 1: were trespassing, but he made it clear that they weren't
11:27
Speaker 1: interested in anything we'd done, so long as it was
11:29
Speaker 1: only trespassing. And I told him everything, from the change
11:33
Speaker 1: to the scratches on the wall, and how we all
11:35
Speaker 1: figured something really bad had been happening down there. And
11:39
Speaker 1: that detective agreed, said he'd look into it, and said
11:41
Speaker 1: that he'd call back if he had any more questions.
11:44
Speaker 1: But that was the last time we spoke. It was
11:47
Speaker 1: obviously on our minds for quite a while after and
11:49
Speaker 1: kept on thinking that it'd be just one more day
11:52
Speaker 1: until the detective called back or some big story broke
11:55
Speaker 1: in the news. But nothing happened. No news stories, no
11:59
Speaker 1: missing person cases linked to the factory complex, and it
12:03
Speaker 1: was like it wasn't even a big deal. And sometime after,
12:06
Speaker 1: Pete drove past the access road that we used and
12:09
Speaker 1: said the entrance looked exactly the same. No new barriers,
12:13
Speaker 1: no crime scene tape, nothing at all to indicate what
12:16
Speaker 1: the cops had found down there we figured the cops
12:19
Speaker 1: must have gone down checked it out and decided there
12:22
Speaker 1: wasn't enough to open a full investigation and i guess
12:25
Speaker 1: that's true all we found were some chains and some
12:28
Speaker 1: scratches on the wall not enough for a case but
12:31
Speaker 1: the implications to me were terrible beyond imagining and we
12:36
Speaker 1: stopped exploring for a while after that not completely permanently
12:40
Speaker 1: but there was a definite cool-off period Pete and Johnny
12:43
Speaker 1: still go out on trips sometimes and sometimes I join them,
12:46
Speaker 1: but these days it's mostly camping trips and to nice
12:49
Speaker 1: safe places too, and not just because we're so much
12:53
Speaker 1: older now. The last few urbex trips that we went
12:56
Speaker 1: on just didn't feel the same anymore and I remember
12:58
Speaker 1: the subtle feeling that maybe our luck had finally run out.
13:02
Speaker 1: We avoided anything with multiple sub-levels too because God knows
13:06
Speaker 1: that once was enough. The place is still out there
13:10
Speaker 1: I guess, at least as far as I know, In
13:12
Speaker 1: which case, so will those scratches, too. The ones that said,
13:16
Speaker 1: tell Marie I love her and I'm sorry, Mom. Written
13:20
Speaker 1: by people who had time to think about what mattered most,
13:23
Speaker 1: while the rest of the world above kept on spinning
13:26
Speaker 1: without them. I saw you had a couple of videos
13:53
Speaker 1: about abandoned places and urban exploration, and I figured if
13:56
Speaker 1: anyone might get what happened to us down there, it's you.
14:00
Speaker 1: I don't need some shout-out, I just need to get
14:02
Speaker 1: this out somewhere that isn't another therapy session or a
14:05
Speaker 1: dead group chat. And just for some context, this was
14:09
Speaker 1: back when I was 24, and I was in my 20s,
14:10
Speaker 1: and living in a cheap apartment outside Grand Rapids with
14:13
Speaker 1: two buddies from high school, their names being Jason and Derek.
14:18
Speaker 1: We'd been into urbex for a couple of years, nothing
14:21
Speaker 1: too crazy, because around Michigan, we had plenty of places
14:24
Speaker 1: to choose from that didn't require ropes or respirators. I'm
14:28
Speaker 1: talking about old factories, shut down schools, empty rail yards,
14:33
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But then, we heard about the
14:36
Speaker 1: underground reservoir and cistern complex. It seemed like a suitable
14:41
Speaker 1: step up, a way to up the risk-reward ratio without
14:45
Speaker 1: too much risk, and the place wasn't even all that
14:47
Speaker 1: bad either in terms of finding our way in and
14:50
Speaker 1: around it. But driving out there, we had no idea
14:54
Speaker 1: that it was going to be the last place we
14:56
Speaker 1: ever visited as a team. The place was mentioned in
15:00
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of local history forums, and there was
15:03
Speaker 1: even the occasional Reddit thread on it too that showed
15:05
Speaker 1: up in our Google searches. Most of those Reddit posts
15:09
Speaker 1: came with a warning about flooding or the potential for
15:12
Speaker 1: structural collapse. But we figured that if we took things
15:15
Speaker 1: slow and made sure that there were no heavy rain
15:18
Speaker 1: forecasts for the day of our trip, we'd most likely
15:20
Speaker 1: be good. Officially speaking, the site had been decommissioned decades
15:25
Speaker 1: ago as part of an old municipal water system that
15:28
Speaker 1: got replaced in the 60s or 70s. But while the
15:32
Speaker 1: brick and mortar buildings were mostly gone, the underground chambers
15:35
Speaker 1: were all still there. half hidden under a patch of
15:38
Speaker 1: woods outside the city limits. We read that inside, the
15:42
Speaker 1: place was a maze of concrete tunnels, holding tanks and cisterns,
15:47
Speaker 1: some of them still holding standing water. And then once
15:51
Speaker 1: the location of the entry hatch was confirmed, we were
15:54
Speaker 1: just about itching to get going. I mean, the place
15:57
Speaker 1: sounded cool as hell, and since we'd ticked off a
15:59
Speaker 1: ton of other places already, we went in guns a-blazing.
16:04
Speaker 1: Now four of us went in on a Saturday in
16:06
Speaker 1: late October. It was me, Jason, Derek, and our other
16:10
Speaker 1: friend Chris. Chris was the one who'd done most of
16:13
Speaker 1: the research on the place, so it was him who
16:16
Speaker 1: found the entrance coordinates, and him who had been checking
16:19
Speaker 1: over flood reports and old engineering maps. And so it
16:23
Speaker 1: was also him who warned us to bring extra headlamps, ropes,
16:27
Speaker 1: and plenty of waterproofing for our electricals. And the plan
16:31
Speaker 1: was simple. Get in. work our way through the complex,
16:35
Speaker 1: and then get out before dark. We knew the risks too, hypothermia,
16:40
Speaker 1: bad air, etc., but we weren't stupid. Because while we
16:44
Speaker 1: were far from what you might call pros, we sure
16:48
Speaker 1: as hell weren't headed down there to party, you know
16:50
Speaker 1: what I mean? And once we'd walked out into the
16:52
Speaker 1: woods and found that hatch, we found it open onto
16:56
Speaker 1: a vertical shaft complete with a corroded metal ladder. It
17:00
Speaker 1: dropped maybe 20 feet into a dry antechamber, and then
17:03
Speaker 1: from there, the tunnels started to branch. We marked our
17:08
Speaker 1: path with chalk on the walls the way we always did,
17:11
Speaker 1: but a little more wary that time since we could
17:13
Speaker 1: hear water dripping deeper down the tunnels. We spent about
17:17
Speaker 1: an hour exploring the upper levels, checking out empty holding
17:20
Speaker 1: tanks and pipe galleries with valves that hadn't turned in decades.
17:25
Speaker 1: And then there was all the graffiti from previous explorers,
17:27
Speaker 1: some of which looked at least a decade old. And
17:30
Speaker 1: the graffiti was everywhere, man. Like people would obviously use
17:33
Speaker 1: the place as a regular spot for years and years.
17:36
Speaker 1: But then once we got to the lower cistern section,
17:39
Speaker 1: all the graffiti just sort of stopped. The floor slanted
17:44
Speaker 1: down into the dark, and there the concrete was so
17:47
Speaker 1: slick that there were algae and mineral deposits growing on
17:50
Speaker 1: the walls and floors. At the bottom was a large chamber,
17:54
Speaker 1: roughly circular, maybe 40 feet across, and the water inside
17:58
Speaker 1: of it was black. Now, I'm not talking like dark
18:02
Speaker 1: gray or murky. I'm talking oily, coal dust black, and
18:07
Speaker 1: so black it didn't reflect our lights the way normal
18:09
Speaker 1: water does. It just sort of swallowed them. The surface
18:13
Speaker 1: was perfectly still except for occasional slow ripples that seemed
18:17
Speaker 1: to start from nowhere. But the smell was awful. That metallic,
18:23
Speaker 1: stagnant water smell with a kind of rotten egg back
18:26
Speaker 1: to it. And Chris was kind of lagging behind by
18:29
Speaker 1: the time we walked along the water's edge. And then
18:32
Speaker 1: as the rest of us got to the end of
18:34
Speaker 1: the walkway and up onto drier concrete, he stayed back
18:38
Speaker 1: to take a closer look. I looked back at him
18:41
Speaker 1: to sort of say, Yo Chris, come on man. Because
18:44
Speaker 1: Derek and Jason were starting to move. And then the
18:47
Speaker 1: second I turned my head back, I heard the splash.
18:51
Speaker 1: One second he was there, and the next he was
18:53
Speaker 1: in the water up to his chest, thrashing and yelling.
18:57
Speaker 1: Derek and I ran back down straight away but Jason
19:00
Speaker 1: stopped to drop his pack and grab the rope that
19:02
Speaker 1: he brought along and thank God too, you know. Because
19:06
Speaker 1: even though we could reach him, his hands were just
19:09
Speaker 1: too freaking slippery to get a grip. The concrete lip
19:13
Speaker 1: was rounded and slick as well so there was no
19:16
Speaker 1: getting out that way either and I just remember all
19:19
Speaker 1: of us sort of panicking as his headlamp beam was
19:21
Speaker 1: going this way and that way as he thrashed around
19:24
Speaker 1: in the water. He was shouting stuff too but The
19:28
Speaker 1: water and the echoes made it hard to hear, and
19:30
Speaker 1: for a split second, I thought that I was about
19:32
Speaker 1: to watch one of my best friends just drown in
19:35
Speaker 1: that sewer. But then out of nowhere, unlike a goddamn
19:40
Speaker 1: hero that he was, Jason threw Chris that rope, and
19:43
Speaker 1: once he tied a strong loop into it, then seconds later,
19:47
Speaker 1: Chris was out of the water. It took all three
19:50
Speaker 1: of us, but I swear we pulled with enough force
19:52
Speaker 1: that he just about flew up onto that concrete ledge,
19:56
Speaker 1: coughing and spitting as I felt the rope burn blisters
19:59
Speaker 1: coming up on my hands. I didn't feel much pain
20:03
Speaker 1: at the time though, I was too focused on Chris,
20:05
Speaker 1: how he was coughing and shaking with the black water
20:08
Speaker 1: streaming off of his jacket and pants. Water which left
20:12
Speaker 1: dark stains on the concrete that didn't look like regular
20:15
Speaker 1: dirty water. More like oil mixed with soot. We got
20:21
Speaker 1: Chris onto solid ground and then started stripping the wet
20:24
Speaker 1: layers off of him. He was pale and his teeth
20:27
Speaker 1: were chattering hard and then once he was able, he
20:30
Speaker 1: started talking fast and loud about how something grabbed him.
20:34
Speaker 1: his ankle, and pulled him in. I actually laughed, thinking
20:39
Speaker 1: it was Chris using his sense of humor to keep
20:41
Speaker 1: from losing his marbles completely. But it was no joke.
20:45
Speaker 1: It was serious. And when he realized I thought he'd
20:48
Speaker 1: been kidding, he got angry. He insisted, something grabbed my ankle, dude.
20:53
Speaker 1: I know what happened. And it wasn't a prank either.
20:56
Speaker 1: Chris was genuinely scared out of his mind and, from
20:59
Speaker 1: his breathing, was well on the verge of a panic
21:01
Speaker 1: attack too. We tried talking him down, saying how the
21:05
Speaker 1: edge was slippery and how he'd probably just leaned too
21:08
Speaker 1: far in. But he wouldn't hear any of that. He
21:11
Speaker 1: kept saying he felt something close around his ankle before
21:15
Speaker 1: yanking it hard. And then he pulled up the leg
21:18
Speaker 1: of his pants to show us. Now, there was a mark.
21:22
Speaker 1: I'm not saying there wasn't. And to describe it, it
21:25
Speaker 1: looked like a pressure mark. Reddish and already starting to
21:29
Speaker 1: swell a little bit. But as Jason... said, it could
21:33
Speaker 1: have just as easily come from Chris scraping his ankle
21:36
Speaker 1: against the concrete edge on the way in, or from
21:38
Speaker 1: the way he'd kicked while we pulled him out. We
21:42
Speaker 1: told him that, over and over, but every time he'd
21:44
Speaker 1: just shake his head, and we just focused on getting
21:47
Speaker 1: him out of the complex after that. And as fast
21:50
Speaker 1: as we could, too, but the climb back was absolutely miserable.
21:54
Speaker 1: Chris was shivering so hard that he almost lost his
21:57
Speaker 1: grip twice and so we drove him straight back to
21:59
Speaker 1: the place for a hot shower, some dry clothes, and
22:02
Speaker 1: some coffee. And the mark on his ankle darkened into
22:06
Speaker 1: a bruise over the next few hours, and I guess
22:08
Speaker 1: if you squinted you could see something like maybe a
22:10
Speaker 1: handprint or whatever. But while we tried to reassure him
22:14
Speaker 1: that it was just his mind playing tricks on him
22:16
Speaker 1: that night, Chris would not stop talking about it. He
22:21
Speaker 1: described the pull, sudden and strong, and then how the
22:24
Speaker 1: water was colder than it should have been. thicker too,
22:27
Speaker 1: like it resisted when he tried to kick. He also
22:31
Speaker 1: said something brushed against his other leg while he was
22:33
Speaker 1: in there, something that moved quickly when he kicked out
22:36
Speaker 1: against it. And we just listened in stunned silence as
22:39
Speaker 1: he talked and then when he was done, Derek tried
22:42
Speaker 1: to offer a few rational explanations. He said it could
22:46
Speaker 1: have been algae or submerged debris catching his boot, maybe
22:50
Speaker 1: even just current from an old pipe. Panic, Derek said,
22:54
Speaker 1: could make a guy imagine things, and it made sense
22:57
Speaker 1: to me, but Chris just kept getting angry. He stood
23:01
Speaker 1: up and started pacing, with his voice getting louder as
23:04
Speaker 1: he said stuff to Derek like, I know what I felt,
23:07
Speaker 1: don't tell me I imagined it. Jason tried to calm
23:11
Speaker 1: him down by saying something about currents or pressure from
23:14
Speaker 1: the old system, but that made Chris so mad that
23:17
Speaker 1: he slammed his hand on the table, hard enough to
23:19
Speaker 1: rattle the mugs. We changed the subject afterwards, or at
23:24
Speaker 1: least when Chris allowed us to change the subject, we did.
23:28
Speaker 1: He ended up apologizing for getting mad, and I get it, man.
23:31
Speaker 1: He was tired and scared. And then since he didn't
23:34
Speaker 1: want to drive home alone in that state, we just
23:37
Speaker 1: let him sleep on our couch. In the morning, the
23:41
Speaker 1: bruise was darker, purple-black in some places, with a few
23:45
Speaker 1: small scrapes that looked consistent with concrete. He kept touching
23:49
Speaker 1: it like he expected it to turn infected or something.
23:53
Speaker 1: And it didn't, but over the next week or so,
23:55
Speaker 1: Chris didn't let this idea go. And over time, he
23:58
Speaker 1: started not answering any of our texts about future trips.
24:03
Speaker 1: And we tried to get him to come with us
24:04
Speaker 1: to other places. And whenever we asked, he'd just steer
24:08
Speaker 1: every conversation back to that cistern and what happened down
24:11
Speaker 1: there that day. He'd send text messages to our group
24:14
Speaker 1: chats about how he was researching the history of the
24:16
Speaker 1: site obsessively. looking up old newspaper clippings about workers who
24:21
Speaker 1: died during construction, reports of contamination, or stories from other
24:25
Speaker 1: explorers who claimed something was living down there on the
24:28
Speaker 1: lower levels, like a snake or a gator that got
24:32
Speaker 1: flushed away and survived down there on nothing but rats.
24:36
Speaker 1: It was obviously all bullcrap, but Chris had pages and
24:39
Speaker 1: pages of stuff printed out and stored in a folder,
24:43
Speaker 1: a folder he brought over a grand total of four
24:45
Speaker 1: times before he finally suggested that Maybe he was spiraling.
24:49
Speaker 1: And to us, it was like he was losing his mind,
24:51
Speaker 1: but to him, it was like we weren't listening. And
24:54
Speaker 1: a couple of times, things even got physical. About a
24:58
Speaker 1: week later, when Derek said the mark on his ankle
25:00
Speaker 1: looked like a normal bruise, Chris shoved him into the
25:03
Speaker 1: wall hard enough to knock a picture frame down. Another time,
25:07
Speaker 1: when I was over at his place and suggested that
25:10
Speaker 1: he might have imagined that pulling sensation, he threw a
25:12
Speaker 1: glass across the kitchen that shattered against the cabinet. He
25:16
Speaker 1: didn't throw it at me, but it was still enough
25:18
Speaker 1: for me to just up and walk out of there saying,
25:21
Speaker 1: I can't do this, bro, while he stood there breathing hard,
25:24
Speaker 1: staring at the broken pieces and not saying a thing.
25:28
Speaker 1: I was mad about it. I was worried too. Chris
25:32
Speaker 1: had always been solid, no history of mental health issues
25:35
Speaker 1: that any of us knew about, but the way he
25:37
Speaker 1: was acting, all the sleeplessness, the anger, the absolute certainty
25:42
Speaker 1: that he was right, it wasn't like him at all.
25:45
Speaker 1: We talked to his older sister and she agreed something
25:47
Speaker 1: was off. And then after two weeks of careful pushing,
25:50
Speaker 1: we convinced him to just go see a counselor. And
25:53
Speaker 1: he only went because we framed it as dealing with
25:55
Speaker 1: the stress of the fall and the near drowning, not
25:57
Speaker 1: the something grabbed me part. And I guess he did
26:00
Speaker 1: about four sessions. And after the fourth, he told us
26:03
Speaker 1: he wasn't going back. He wasn't mad anymore. He was
26:06
Speaker 1: just sad that we all thought he was crazy. Now
26:10
Speaker 1: we tried one more time to talk him through it rationally.
26:13
Speaker 1: He listened with his sort of tight, furious expression, and
26:16
Speaker 1: then stood up and said that if we didn't believe him,
26:19
Speaker 1: he had nothing left to say to us. A month later,
26:22
Speaker 1: he quit his job, broke his lease, and moved. Not
26:25
Speaker 1: across town, but across the country. He packed a U-Haul
26:29
Speaker 1: in one day with the help of his sister and
26:31
Speaker 1: then just drove west. Last we heard, he was somewhere
26:35
Speaker 1: in Oregon or Washington, working construction and living in a
26:38
Speaker 1: place where the nearest body of water was a river
26:40
Speaker 1: that he could see from a distance. He blocked most
26:43
Speaker 1: of us on social media, but his sister still talks
26:46
Speaker 1: to him occasionally. She says he doesn't bring up the
26:49
Speaker 1: reservoir anymore, but he checks locks twice and still keeps
26:52
Speaker 1: a light on at night, I guess. We went back
26:55
Speaker 1: to that complex once, about six months after he left,
26:59
Speaker 1: just Derek and I. We wanted to see if there
27:02
Speaker 1: was anything we'd missed, stuff like submerged pipes or old
27:06
Speaker 1: machinery that could have caught Chris's boot. The water was
27:09
Speaker 1: still black and stagnant and we'd stayed back from the edge,
27:14
Speaker 1: but nothing moved except the ripples caused by these slow
27:16
Speaker 1: drips probably coming from the ceiling. I don't know what
27:20
Speaker 1: happened down in that cistern. Maybe Chris slipped. Maybe the
27:23
Speaker 1: cold and the dark and the sudden immersion scrambled his
27:26
Speaker 1: sense of what was real for a few seconds and
27:28
Speaker 1: his brain just filled in the rest. Maybe the bruise
27:32
Speaker 1: was just a bruise. People have breakdowns. Trauma does strange
27:35
Speaker 1: things to people. But for a rational, careful guy I
27:38
Speaker 1: knew for years to be willing to uproot his entire
27:41
Speaker 1: life and put a thousand miles between himself and a
27:44
Speaker 1: hole in the ground in Michigan, it makes me wonder
27:47
Speaker 1: if there really might be something down there, hiding itself
27:50
Speaker 1: away in all that dark, stinking water. So I don't
28:18
Speaker 1: talk about this much because when I do, people start
28:21
Speaker 1: looking at me like I'm either full of it or
28:23
Speaker 1: I need a psychiatrist. But this isn't some ghost story
28:27
Speaker 1: and I'm not asking you to believe anything supernatural. This
28:30
Speaker 1: is just the story of why four grown-ass men ran
28:34
Speaker 1: out of a building like it was on fire when
28:36
Speaker 1: there was no fire. In late October of 2023, a
28:41
Speaker 1: few buddies and I decided to organize an urbex trip
28:44
Speaker 1: to the Willowbrook State School. Now, we'd done a bunch
28:48
Speaker 1: of research on this place and found out that it
28:50
Speaker 1: was sort of like a reformatory for what they called
28:53
Speaker 1: wayward youths, which between you and me is basically a
28:56
Speaker 1: fancy name for kiddie jail. But we also found out
29:00
Speaker 1: the place was forcibly closed in the mid-80s after a
29:03
Speaker 1: whole bunch of scandals. Scandals involving stuff like abuse, overcrowding. Basically,
29:09
Speaker 1: think of a way that place could have screwed up,
29:12
Speaker 1: and they did it. Most of the campus had been
29:15
Speaker 1: either demolished or sealed, but this one outbuilding still stood
29:19
Speaker 1: on the edge of the property, and boy did it
29:22
Speaker 1: look inviting. What we look up said that the basement
29:26
Speaker 1: levels flooded every spring and that the upper floors were
29:29
Speaker 1: structurally unsafe. But since it was the fall and we
29:32
Speaker 1: didn't plan on heading up too high, three out of
29:35
Speaker 1: the five floors sounded okay, we decided that it'd be
29:39
Speaker 1: perfect for a few hours of exploring. We parked about
29:43
Speaker 1: a half mile down a service road, then hiked in
29:45
Speaker 1: after dark with headlamps and gloves and all the other
29:48
Speaker 1: unusual gear. And we like to stay low impact too,
29:52
Speaker 1: so no spray paint, no breaking windows. We'd leave nothing
29:56
Speaker 1: but our boot prints, we'd say. Now the building was
29:58
Speaker 1: a three-story brick thing, plus a basement with most of
30:02
Speaker 1: the windows either boarded or smashed long ago. The main
30:05
Speaker 1: doors were chained, but someone before us had pried a
30:09
Speaker 1: side entrance open enough to slip through. And inside it
30:13
Speaker 1: smelled exactly like you'd expect. A ton of mildew, old plaster,
30:17
Speaker 1: animal urine, and that flat chemical tang of decades-old disinfectant
30:22
Speaker 1: that never quite seems to leave the place. We moved
30:26
Speaker 1: slowly and carefully, keeping our eyes peeled for crumbling or
30:29
Speaker 1: cracked concrete. The first floor was all offices and day
30:33
Speaker 1: rooms with peeling paint, overturned furniture, and file cabinets with
30:37
Speaker 1: water-damaged paper still inside. The second floor had patient rooms,
30:42
Speaker 1: so metal frame beds bolted to the floor, with restraints
30:46
Speaker 1: still hanging off a few of them. There was graffiti
30:49
Speaker 1: pretty much everywhere, but it started to peter out at
30:51
Speaker 1: the second floor. And then on the third, there was nothing.
30:55
Speaker 1: almost like the taggers knew better than to climb up there.
30:59
Speaker 1: I guess they knew something we didn't too, because after
31:02
Speaker 1: walking around the third floor for a while, we found
31:06
Speaker 1: the cell. It was at the end of a long hallway,
31:10
Speaker 1: with its door still on its hinges, but hanging open
31:13
Speaker 1: about six inches. And the room number plate was gone,
31:16
Speaker 1: but the heavy sliding bolt was still there and still
31:19
Speaker 1: very functional. No one sighed. The room was maybe 10
31:23
Speaker 1: by 12 with a single high window boarded from the outside,
31:27
Speaker 1: so only thin lines of moonlight came through. The floor
31:31
Speaker 1: was concrete, stained dark in places, but it wasn't those
31:35
Speaker 1: dark stains that really got our attention, or the usual
31:38
Speaker 1: hospital stuff. It was the presence, and in a very
31:43
Speaker 1: high amount too, of a specific kind of item. Against
31:47
Speaker 1: one of the walls, someone had dragged in an old
31:50
Speaker 1: metal examination table... like the kind with foot stirrups still attached.
31:56
Speaker 1: The leather straps were cracked and blackened, so they'd clearly
31:59
Speaker 1: been there a long, long time. But next to it
32:02
Speaker 1: sat a rolling cart with drawers half open, and inside it,
32:06
Speaker 1: we found a pair of forceps. Now, they were the long,
32:10
Speaker 1: curved kind, used to extract newborns during difficult births. A
32:15
Speaker 1: pair of scissors with dried residue in the hinge lay
32:18
Speaker 1: close to it. along with several lengths of what looked
32:20
Speaker 1: like thick surgical tubing. There were torn strips of sheet,
32:25
Speaker 1: with some of them having stiffened into shapes that suggested
32:28
Speaker 1: they'd been used as ties or padding. And we also
32:32
Speaker 1: saw a whole bunch of empty bottles, most likely some
32:34
Speaker 1: kind of antiseptic or maybe even pain medication. But since
32:38
Speaker 1: the labels had long since rotted, it was impossible to tell.
32:43
Speaker 1: The last thing was a metal basin on the floor
32:45
Speaker 1: that held a crumpled mass of fabric. It looked like
32:48
Speaker 1: it might have been white once, but by then, it
32:50
Speaker 1: was brown and stiff. No one said anything for a
32:54
Speaker 1: solid minute, and then my buddy Aaron nudged the dried-out
32:57
Speaker 1: fabric with his boot, and it made a very dry,
33:00
Speaker 1: crinkly sound. And then Carla, Aaron's girlfriend at the time, says,
33:06
Speaker 1: I don't think this stuff is from the original hospital.
33:10
Speaker 1: And she was right, too, and we all knew it.
33:13
Speaker 1: The layout of the stuff was too deliberate. The table
33:16
Speaker 1: wasn't bolted down the way beds were and had clearly
33:18
Speaker 1: been moved in sometime after the place closed. And then
33:22
Speaker 1: all the tools and equipment wasn't just scattered around like
33:25
Speaker 1: a bunch of looters had tossed it out of a
33:27
Speaker 1: supply closet as they were going through it. It looked
33:30
Speaker 1: almost arranged. Like someone had set this room up for
33:34
Speaker 1: a specific purpose and then left it. The stains on
33:38
Speaker 1: the floor weren't fresh, but they weren't ancient either, so
33:42
Speaker 1: the implications were nothing short of terrifying. Because while abandoned
33:46
Speaker 1: asylums attract all kinds of people after the staff leave, squatters,
33:51
Speaker 1: people hiding from the system or worse, a room like
33:54
Speaker 1: that doesn't get set up by accident. Women had been
33:58
Speaker 1: giving birth there, in a place with no lights, no
34:01
Speaker 1: running water, no clean anything. But our main questions weren't
34:05
Speaker 1: so much who, but why. Why not go to a hospital?
34:09
Speaker 1: Why shack up in some filthy abandoned wayward kid's home?
34:13
Speaker 1: A place where it wasn't safe or clean enough to eat,
34:16
Speaker 1: let alone bring a new life into the world. Every
34:19
Speaker 1: question led to an answer that scared the crap out
34:22
Speaker 1: of us, so it didn't surprise me that Aaron and
34:24
Speaker 1: Carla wanted to leave right away. Our other buddy, Mike,
34:28
Speaker 1: kept circling the table, not touching anything, just looking. Like
34:33
Speaker 1: what he was seeing just wouldn't sink in no matter
34:35
Speaker 1: how hard he tried. I remember the way our headlamp
34:39
Speaker 1: lights moved across the walls. Slow at first, and then
34:42
Speaker 1: faster and faster as we obviously got more and more nervous.
34:46
Speaker 1: I just remember this specifically sticking with me. And Mike
34:49
Speaker 1: and I were freaked out, but we didn't think that
34:51
Speaker 1: we were in any obvious danger. And so for about
34:54
Speaker 1: five minutes, we argued back and forth in these low voices.
34:58
Speaker 1: And in the end, we got Aaron and Carla to
35:01
Speaker 1: agree to one last stop. We check out the basement,
35:04
Speaker 1: and then we get the heck out of there. Because
35:07
Speaker 1: if there's one thing we all agreed on, it's that
35:09
Speaker 1: when the mood turns... You don't linger much longer. The
35:14
Speaker 1: concrete stairs down were narrow and wet in places where
35:17
Speaker 1: water had seeped in through cracks over the years. Pipes
35:21
Speaker 1: ran along the ceiling, some of them dripping, and our
35:24
Speaker 1: lights picked up more graffiti and trash. At the far
35:27
Speaker 1: end were larger rooms that might have been laundry or
35:30
Speaker 1: storage areas at one point, but we didn't make it
35:33
Speaker 1: that far. We were maybe halfway down in the main
35:36
Speaker 1: basement hallway when we first heard it. It was loud
35:40
Speaker 1: at first. It was little more than a whisper, actually.
35:43
Speaker 1: Just this thin, high-pitched cry coming from somewhere way deeper
35:47
Speaker 1: than we were. But there was also no mistaking what
35:50
Speaker 1: it was. It was the cry a newborn baby makes.
35:55
Speaker 1: Like that short, wet sound, somehow more like a hiccup
35:59
Speaker 1: than a full wail. We all froze, turning our heads
36:03
Speaker 1: towards the sound so that all of our headlamps were
36:06
Speaker 1: facing in the same direction. Then the cry came again.
36:10
Speaker 1: A little longer this time. And then after a pause,
36:15
Speaker 1: there was another. No one moved at first, and I
36:20
Speaker 1: remember Mike saying out loud, That's like a raccoon or
36:25
Speaker 1: a cat, right? Animals get trapped in these sorts of
36:29
Speaker 1: places all the time, and I've heard foxes that sound
36:31
Speaker 1: so human it's had us all bolting out of a
36:33
Speaker 1: building like it was haunted. But it was all totally
36:36
Speaker 1: wishful thinking from Mike, and we knew it. This sound
36:40
Speaker 1: didn't loop the way animal sounds do. It had that
36:44
Speaker 1: off rhythm of something that was actually breathing between its cries.
36:48
Speaker 1: A short burst. A gasp. Another burst. Exactly like a
36:52
Speaker 1: baby that was either hungry, cold, or worse. Carla said
36:58
Speaker 1: something like, Okay, this isn't funny, guys. But none of
37:02
Speaker 1: us were laughing. I guess that was more wishful thinking,
37:06
Speaker 1: or her part that time, praying it was just a prank.
37:10
Speaker 1: But it wasn't. I remember how Aaron took three steps
37:13
Speaker 1: forward and called out, Hey! Anyone down there? But nothing
37:20
Speaker 1: answered except the cry. A little louder that time, like
37:25
Speaker 1: it had turned towards us. We didn't discuss it. There
37:29
Speaker 1: was no conference. And the four of us just turned
37:32
Speaker 1: and ran back the way we came, way faster than
37:35
Speaker 1: we should have considering how wet those concrete stairs were.
37:39
Speaker 1: The sound followed us too, not getting any louder but
37:43
Speaker 1: not fading away either. Every time we thought the distance
37:47
Speaker 1: had muffled it, another cry cut through, and by the
37:51
Speaker 1: time we hit the first floor we were basically out
37:53
Speaker 1: of our minds with terror. Outside it was still audible
37:58
Speaker 1: throughout the trees for a few seconds before the night
38:00
Speaker 1: air seemed to swallow it, but we still didn't stop
38:02
Speaker 1: running until we reached the car. We barely spoke until
38:06
Speaker 1: we reached the first gas station, at which point we
38:09
Speaker 1: pulled over and just sat there with the engine running.
38:13
Speaker 1: Mike was the one who finally said what we were
38:15
Speaker 1: all thinking. That the room upstairs and the sound downstairs
38:18
Speaker 1: were connected in a way none of us wanted to
38:20
Speaker 1: examine too closely. Someone had to use that cell, and
38:25
Speaker 1: more than once by the looks of things, and whatever
38:28
Speaker 1: or whoever had been down in that basement was still
38:32
Speaker 1: using it the night we showed up. I've gone over
38:35
Speaker 1: the rational explanations a hundred times, telling myself it was
38:39
Speaker 1: the wind blowing through broken pipes or even a stray
38:41
Speaker 1: animal like I mentioned before. Hell, I'd even take it
38:45
Speaker 1: being some random homeless woman who'd somehow gotten into the
38:48
Speaker 1: building and was hiding after giving birth. The tools could
38:52
Speaker 1: have been staged by previous explorers for some shock value,
38:56
Speaker 1: but while it was easy to tell myself that, I knew, though,
38:59
Speaker 1: that the stains and items arrangement were way above the
39:02
Speaker 1: scope or skill of your average urbex prankster. There was
39:06
Speaker 1: no chance it was like an amateur horror movie set
39:09
Speaker 1: either because the filmmakers would have taken the stuff out
39:11
Speaker 1: with them, right? At least some of it. And that's
39:14
Speaker 1: what people suggested, too. The old buildings make weird noises
39:18
Speaker 1: and all we'd done was manage to spook ourselves. But
39:22
Speaker 1: I was there. I heard the intervals between the cries
39:25
Speaker 1: and I saw the way the forceps were laid out
39:27
Speaker 1: next to the table. i don't think it was some
39:30
Speaker 1: prank or a horror movie set i think this was
39:33
Speaker 1: real none of us ever went back and from what
39:36
Speaker 1: i've heard the willowbrook school had its security enhanced with
39:40
Speaker 1: fences and cameras the works Online, people still post photos
39:45
Speaker 1: from the upper floors, but I've never seen anyone mention
39:47
Speaker 1: that particular room or the basement in the same detail.
39:50
Speaker 1: Maybe they didn't find it, or maybe they did and
39:53
Speaker 1: decided the same thing we did. But sometimes when I
39:56
Speaker 1: hear a baby crying in a grocery store or on
39:58
Speaker 1: a bus, I'm back on those wet stairs, listening to
40:01
Speaker 1: something that had no business being down there in the dark.
40:29
Speaker 1: My name's Mateo. I'm a 28-year-old urbexer from Mexico, and
40:34
Speaker 1: up until about eight months ago, the worst thing that
40:36
Speaker 1: ever happened to me on a run was a busted
40:39
Speaker 1: ankle and a long limp back to the truck. I
40:42
Speaker 1: loved urbex, and I always told myself it was going
40:45
Speaker 1: to take a heck of a lot more than a
40:46
Speaker 1: sprained ankle to stop me doing it. But if there's
40:49
Speaker 1: a single lesson to be learned from this story, it's this.
40:53
Speaker 1: Don't tempt fate. It was late October here, so while
40:58
Speaker 1: the rainy season was slowly tapering off, the nights were
41:01
Speaker 1: cool and still humid enough to be comfortable. Four of
41:05
Speaker 1: us went out. It was my cousin Diego, his girlfriend Sophia,
41:09
Speaker 1: and our friend Andreas and myself. We'd been heading out
41:12
Speaker 1: on our trips together for almost six years by this
41:15
Speaker 1: point and had graduated to chasing unfinished high-rises for a
41:18
Speaker 1: couple of years. These were places the developers walked away
41:23
Speaker 1: from when the money dried up and This one particular
41:26
Speaker 1: site we picked out was sat on the northern edge
41:28
Speaker 1: of the city, way past the industrial parks where a
41:31
Speaker 1: tower of maybe 25 floors rose up out of what
41:35
Speaker 1: used to be a construction yard. And we parked our
41:38
Speaker 1: truck maybe two blocks away under a burned out streetlight
41:41
Speaker 1: and then walked in with our packs. We moved quiet too,
41:46
Speaker 1: the way you learn to after a few close calls
41:48
Speaker 1: with either night watchmen or even stray dogs. And around here,
41:53
Speaker 1: the strays are no joke. Now this place was much
41:57
Speaker 1: like any other high-rise that we had visited around that time.
42:00
Speaker 1: Concrete that was all grey, very stained with rebar sticking
42:04
Speaker 1: out like broken bones, and a fence around the perimeter
42:08
Speaker 1: that kind of reminded me of a ribcage. I like
42:11
Speaker 1: to think of these places as living, breathing places that
42:14
Speaker 1: we explore, just to show respect. Luckily for us, that
42:19
Speaker 1: fence had been mostly flattened or cut open years ago
42:22
Speaker 1: by those that came before. and there was no security,
42:25
Speaker 1: no lights, just the usual graffiti and dust. Diego always
42:29
Speaker 1: carried all the heavy climbing gear because he was the strongest,
42:32
Speaker 1: which meant we gave him the nickname The Mule. This
42:36
Speaker 1: was the height of our hobby too, so we took
42:39
Speaker 1: all kinds of pretty fancy gear with us, not just
42:42
Speaker 1: the climbing equipment. And when we arrived at the ground floor,
42:45
Speaker 1: we found it was just filled with food wrappers and
42:49
Speaker 1: empty cement bags and rusted scaffolding. the kind of trash
42:52
Speaker 1: that builds up naturally when a place is left derelict
42:55
Speaker 1: for years. We then started climbing the unfinished stairwells, careful
43:00
Speaker 1: to test every step for weaknesses, and some of the
43:02
Speaker 1: landings had no railings either, so we had to be
43:05
Speaker 1: extra careful where we put our feet. We went up
43:08
Speaker 1: and up, higher and higher, with the wind moving through
43:11
Speaker 1: the open upper floors in a way that made a
43:14
Speaker 1: little bit of a low moaning sound, and while that
43:17
Speaker 1: was spooky, we got used to it after a while.
43:21
Speaker 1: Then around the twelfth floor we started finding the first
43:23
Speaker 1: signs that someone else had been using the place, and
43:26
Speaker 1: from the looks of things, these weren't the usual squatters.
43:31
Speaker 1: There were drag marks in the dust and then dark
43:33
Speaker 1: stains that looked a little too thick to be oil
43:36
Speaker 1: or rust. In one corner of an open floor we
43:39
Speaker 1: found a pile of old clothes, some of them torn,
43:43
Speaker 1: and then a little bit of wire that I later
43:44
Speaker 1: realized was used to bind wrists and ankles. Sophia then
43:49
Speaker 1: spotted a couple of spent shell casings near a concrete pillar,
43:53
Speaker 1: and we realized that this was no ordinary abandoned building.
43:58
Speaker 1: It was like this shift in the air, one we
44:00
Speaker 1: all felt, and then on the 15th floor, the signs
44:05
Speaker 1: got worse. There was a section where the floor was unfinished,
44:10
Speaker 1: just beams and plywood sheets, and under one of the sheets,
44:14
Speaker 1: someone had shoved a couple of black plastic bags. We
44:18
Speaker 1: saw them first, but the smell didn't hit us until
44:20
Speaker 1: the wind had blown. One of them had split, and
44:25
Speaker 1: I won't describe what was inside beyond saying it was
44:28
Speaker 1: human and had obviously been there a while. Diego swore
44:32
Speaker 1: under his breath as Sophia turned away to cover her mouth.
44:36
Speaker 1: Me and Andreas just stood there, open-mouthed and not saying
44:40
Speaker 1: a word. But we didn't need to. We knew what
44:43
Speaker 1: we were looking at. In this part of the country,
44:46
Speaker 1: you don't need a badge to recognize cartel work, and
44:49
Speaker 1: we'd come across what I think was an execution site,
44:53
Speaker 1: or a dumping ground, whatever you want to call it.
44:57
Speaker 1: We knew we had to get the hell out of there,
44:59
Speaker 1: fast and quietly, with no lights if we could help it.
45:02
Speaker 1: And so we started back down the stairs, keeping as
45:05
Speaker 1: calm as possible. At least, until we heard vehicles coming.
45:10
Speaker 1: There were two pickup trucks rolling down the track with
45:13
Speaker 1: their engines low and no headlights until they pulled into
45:16
Speaker 1: the yard below. We heard the doors open, the engines
45:19
Speaker 1: shut off, and then voices, short and rough like these
45:23
Speaker 1: barked commands. We froze up there on the 14th floor
45:28
Speaker 1: and looked down through a gap in the concrete to
45:30
Speaker 1: see four men, maybe five, wearing some very dark clothes.
45:34
Speaker 1: But the thing that really spooked me was how one
45:37
Speaker 1: of them carried something over his shoulder that struggled once,
45:40
Speaker 1: and then seemed to go still. They had a fifth
45:44
Speaker 1: person with them, hands bound and head covered, and they
45:47
Speaker 1: were taking him toward the base of the building. We
45:50
Speaker 1: should have really been gone by then, but instead we
45:53
Speaker 1: were halfway down with our packs still on the ground
45:56
Speaker 1: floor where we'd left them to move lighter while exploring
45:59
Speaker 1: the upper levels. That meant as the cartel guys walked
46:03
Speaker 1: onto the open ground floors and saw our packs, they
46:07
Speaker 1: knew someone was there. After that, they started yelling up
46:12
Speaker 1: the stairwell. Come out, we know you're here. Not yelling,
46:16
Speaker 1: but loud enough that it started to carry. And honestly,
46:20
Speaker 1: it was probably the single scariest moment of my entire life.
46:24
Speaker 1: And I'm sure I don't need to go into detail
46:25
Speaker 1: about what the cartel does to people they want to disappear.
46:29
Speaker 1: I know American TV shows have talked about it by now.
46:33
Speaker 1: And for me, it wasn't the thought of being dead
46:35
Speaker 1: that scares me. It was having my mom wonder where
46:38
Speaker 1: I was. but we all felt it too and so
46:41
Speaker 1: we didn't think. We didn't speak. We just moved. We
46:46
Speaker 1: obviously went up and not down because there was no
46:49
Speaker 1: way past them on the lower floors. But the unfinished
46:52
Speaker 1: sections above the 16th floor were only reachable by climbing
46:56
Speaker 1: the external rebar or using the rope on the open
46:58
Speaker 1: elevator shaft. We'd already scouted a route earlier. Diego had
47:04
Speaker 1: free climbed a short section and left a fixed line.
47:07
Speaker 1: A good thing too because when the time came, We
47:09
Speaker 1: needed it. We each climbed with shaky hands. Sophia went first,
47:15
Speaker 1: with her being the lightest, and then the rest of
47:17
Speaker 1: us one by one. The rope creaked, and the winds
47:21
Speaker 1: were blowing stronger up there, but below us, we could
47:23
Speaker 1: still hear the sound of voices and boots on the stairs.
47:27
Speaker 1: We kept on climbing until we reached a half-finished mechanical floor,
47:31
Speaker 1: maybe the 18th or 19th. There were no walls on
47:35
Speaker 1: two sides, just columns and a bunch of tarps that
47:38
Speaker 1: the construction crews had left years ago. And then a
47:41
Speaker 1: few piles of insulation, some broken drywall and a random
47:44
Speaker 1: trash that I guess had blown in and gotten stuck there.
47:48
Speaker 1: We killed the lights and crawled under those tarps, spreading
47:51
Speaker 1: as much trash as possible over ourselves as best we could.
47:55
Speaker 1: The floor was open in places and you could see
47:58
Speaker 1: straight down to the yard in certain spots, but we
48:01
Speaker 1: just laid still as possible. knowing it was our best
48:04
Speaker 1: chance of not getting found, and just listened. The cartel
48:09
Speaker 1: guys beneath us were searching methodically, and as the voices
48:13
Speaker 1: got louder and louder, we started to hear this odd
48:16
Speaker 1: radio crackle as well. At one point someone fired a
48:20
Speaker 1: single shot, apparently just to make noise and flush us out,
48:24
Speaker 1: but then I remembered the person they'd brought with them,
48:27
Speaker 1: and after the gunshot, we heard a short, muffled cry,
48:32
Speaker 1: and then nothing. It was the worst part, having heard
48:36
Speaker 1: a man die than waiting for our own fate to
48:39
Speaker 1: come around. Time seemed to stretch out and at one point,
48:43
Speaker 1: Sophia got so scared that her hand found mine under
48:46
Speaker 1: the tarp. I don't know if she thought I was
48:49
Speaker 1: Diego or something, her boyfriend, but all I did was
48:52
Speaker 1: squeeze back to try and tell her everything would be okay.
48:57
Speaker 1: But I didn't know that at all. I thought we
48:59
Speaker 1: were screwed. I just didn't want her to get so
49:01
Speaker 1: scared that she cried out or something. I prayed to
49:04
Speaker 1: God that they'd stay away from our level, but it
49:07
Speaker 1: wasn't long before they got to us and my prayers
49:09
Speaker 1: went unheard. We heard them arguing just below us about
49:13
Speaker 1: what to do with the hatch and the floor, which
49:15
Speaker 1: was the only access point without climbing the outside. They
49:19
Speaker 1: decided on one boosting the other up, and then after
49:23
Speaker 1: an uno, dos, tres, I'm pretty sure a head and
49:26
Speaker 1: shoulders came up through the hatch. Like I heard, but
49:29
Speaker 1: I didn't see it happening. I did see how someone
49:33
Speaker 1: had moved a flashlight across us as they scanned for
49:36
Speaker 1: any signs of us, How it passed over those tarps,
49:39
Speaker 1: the trash piles, and the rebar. I thought that was it.
49:43
Speaker 1: That they'd call out and start shooting. But when one
49:46
Speaker 1: of them said something very dismissive and dropped back down,
49:50
Speaker 1: the relief was like nothing I'd ever felt before. There
49:54
Speaker 1: was a little more arguing, and then their footsteps faded away,
49:57
Speaker 1: but we stayed put another hour after that last sound.
50:02
Speaker 1: Their pickup trucks eventually started and drove away, but we
50:05
Speaker 1: still waited. and then when we finally moved, it was slow.
50:09
Speaker 1: The fixed line was still there. We climbed down the
50:12
Speaker 1: outside in the dark. Our hands were raw and walked
50:15
Speaker 1: the long way around the fence line back to the truck.
50:19
Speaker 1: And thank God we parked as far away as we did,
50:22
Speaker 1: otherwise that cartel would have zoned in on our way
50:25
Speaker 1: and we might have been trapped and killed when we
50:27
Speaker 1: tried to climb in. No one spoke until the city
50:31
Speaker 1: lights were behind us, and when someone did, it was
50:33
Speaker 1: to tell Andreas to delete all the photos he took.
50:37
Speaker 1: We never went back, but the shell casings and the
50:40
Speaker 1: bags and the clothes, they stayed with us for a
50:41
Speaker 1: long time. Diego doesn't like to talk about it, and
50:45
Speaker 1: Sofia left the group not long after. Andreas and I
50:48
Speaker 1: still go out sometimes, but only to places that we
50:51
Speaker 1: know are safe. Sometimes I still wake up thinking I
50:55
Speaker 1: hear boots on concrete, and it reminds me that the
50:58
Speaker 1: world isn't the playground that we grew up thinking it is,
51:01
Speaker 1: and that it's owned by some very, very bad men.
51:29
Speaker 1: Let's read submissions at gmail.com and maybe even hear your
51:32
Speaker 1: story featured on the next video. And if you want
51:53
Speaker 1: to support me even more, grab early access to all
51:56
Speaker 1: future narrations and bonus content over on Patreon or click
52:00
Speaker 1: that big join button to hear about the extra perks
52:02
Speaker 1: for members of the channel. And check out the Let's
52:05
Speaker 1: Read podcast where you can hear all of these stories
52:07
Speaker 1: and big compilations located anywhere you listen to podcasts. I
52:12
Speaker 1: also have a true crime channel called Saturn Soul. All
52:15
Speaker 1: links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends. And remember,
52:20
Speaker 1: we all float down here Thank you.