Horror Stories

00:05 Hello everyone and welcome back to Horror Stories. I know many of you use these episodes to fall asleep, so before you drift off, I'd love it if you could leave a comment letting me know where you're listening from around the world. 00:17 Also, don't forget to like and subscribe if you're enjoying the episodes. 00:26 Story 1 October turns bitter quickly in Michigan, and by the time we arrived at the deserted Cook Motors plant that night, the temperature had fallen to just above freezing. 00:38 I was 22, back in the hometown I hadn't managed to escape after college, earning a paycheck at a hardware store while my engineering degree sat there doing me no good. 00:49 In our slowly collapsing industrial town, every vacant building came with its own history. 00:55 Cook, though, stood apart from the others. 00:58 It had been abandoned for 15 years and appeared to have remained entirely undisturbed, as if everything inside had stopped moving the moment the factory closed its doors. 01:08 My friends and I had spent months discussing the idea of going in. On that particular Friday, with cheap whiskey in our systems and nothing else to occupy us, we finally stopped talking and went. 01:20 There were four of us all together. 01:22 Jake worked at the body shop. Melissa was home for a visit from nursing school. Then there was her boyfriend Connor, who had apparently decided that watching Herbex's YouTube videos qualified him as an authority on exploring abandoned buildings. 01:36 We understood perfectly well that it was a foolish thing to do. We also understood that we were breaking the law, but being young and starved for something interesting in a town where one uneventful day followed another makes bad decisions feel more tempting than they should. 01:53 The plant occupied 40 acres of fractured pavement and weeds that had been left to grow unchecked. 01:59 A chain-link fence encircled the grounds, although people had sliced openings into it so often that it hardly kept anyone out anymore. 02:07 We left Jake's truck in the parking lot of a strip mall about half a mile from the factory, then followed the disused railway tracks as they bent around the rear of the property. 02:16 Connor had brought printed satellite photographs with a route marked in red. According to his plan, we would enter through a break in the fence beside the loading docks, then get into the main assembly building through an entrance he had spotted in an Instagram photograph someone had posted two years earlier. 02:33 The moon was nearly full. Its pale silver glow washed over the property and turned the shattered windows into rows of dark teeth. 02:42 As we worked our way through an opening in the fence, the silence was the first thing that caught my attention. 02:48 There was no traffic in the distance, no movement from animals, and not even a breath of wind. 02:54 The only noise came from our shoes grinding over loose gravel and fragments of glass. 02:59 The loading dock entrances were right where Connor had claimed they would be. 03:03 One door had partly slipped from its track and hung crookedly, leaving an opening wide enough for each of us to squeeze through. 03:11 Once we were inside, our flashlight beams picked out the scene Connor had described. An enormous manufacturing floor seemed to have been left suspended in 2008. 03:21 Partially assembled car bodies rested along the conveyor lines. their skeletal metal shapes buried beneath accumulated dust and pigeon droppings. 03:30 Workbenches still held scattered tools, giving the impression that the employees had walked away for their lunch break and simply failed to return. 03:39 The air had a stale metallic taste. Beneath it lingered the odor of corrosion and deterioration, strong enough that Melissa lifted the front of her shirt over her nose. 03:49 Jake let out a series of quiet, impressed whistles. 03:53 He trailed his hands over the machinery, mumbling about what certain pieces might sell for if we could somehow get them out of there. 04:00 For me, though, the strangest part was the way the building carried sound. 04:05 A single step came back to us three or four times. 04:08 Each echo struck the lofty ceiling and returned altered, as though something about the immense empty space bent the noise before giving it back. 04:16 Connor was already making his way toward a steel staircase that climbed to the overhead catwalks. 04:22 He held his phone in front of him, recording footage for his Instagram account. 04:27 The trouble began once we got onto those walkways. They stood 30 feet above the factory floor, forming a tangled network of metal passages between different parts of the building. 04:38 The guardrails came up to our chests and seemed reasonably strong. The panels beneath our feet were much less dependable. 04:45 Some sections consisted of intact steel grating that rang loudly whenever we stepped on it. 04:50 Other sections had no flooring at all, only open spaces that had to be jumped. 04:56 In the poor light, it was difficult to know whether the next stretch was solid until a flashlight beam happened to catch the rim of a missing panel. 05:03 Connor took the lead, advancing with the brisk assurance of someone who wanted us to believe he had done this countless times. 05:10 Jake stayed behind him, Alyssa followed Jake, and I walked last. 05:15 We were moving toward what Connor identified as the former executive offices. 05:19 He said the area had supposedly been left alone, with old computers and everything else still sitting on the desks. 05:26 Roughly halfway there, at a point where two catwalks crossed, Connor came to such an abrupt halt that Jake nearly collided with his back. 05:35 Three consecutive floor panels were missing from the walkway ahead. Together they formed an opening approximately eight feet long, We could take another way around, Melissa said. 05:47 Fear had tightened her voice, but Connor was already inspecting the space with his flashlight. 05:52 He angled the beam downward, examining the structural metal beneath the missing floor. 05:58 The supports were still in place, a pair of parallel I-beams separated by about a foot, extending beneath the area where the panel should have been. 06:07 Connor put a foot onto the first beam and stretched his arms to either side. His sneakers held against the corroded surface as he moved forward. 06:15 He made crossing it appear almost effortless. 06:18 One foot followed the other with the casual rhythm of somebody strolling along an ordinary sidewalk. 06:24 Jake crossed after him. He moved more cautiously but without losing his balance, then reached back from the far side to help Melissa over. 06:33 By the time my turn came, my heartbeat was hammering so loudly that I could hear it inside my ears. 06:39 The beam offered perhaps six inches of width. 06:42 Rust and bird waste coated the surface. Through the space between the two supports, I could look directly down at the concrete 30 feet below. 06:50 Discarded equipment and scattered debris protruded from the floor like waiting teeth. 06:56 I was halfway across when my shoe slid over something damp, most likely pigeon droppings. For one awful instant I was certain I was falling. My arms flailed as I fought to steady myself and somehow I recovered my balance. During that sudden burst of panic though, the flashlight flew out of my hand. 07:14 It spun through the blackness, turning over and over before striking the floor beneath us and breaking apart. 07:21 The others helped me finish the crossing. 07:23 Jake handed over his spare flashlight, a tiny LED model whose weak beam barely made an impression on the dark. 07:31 We continued, but the near fall had shaken me badly. 07:35 My legs still trembled from the adrenaline. and each step felt less secure than it had before. 07:40 The walkway stretched another 50 feet before ending at a door with administrative wing written across it in faded lettering. 07:47 Connor tested the handle. Naturally, it was locked. 07:52 The timber surrounding the deadbolt, however, had softened and rotted. 07:56 Jake delivered one forceful kick, and the door burst inward in splinters. Beyond it lay a corridor bordered by offices. This section bore little resemblance to the manufacturing floor. 08:07 It had carpeting and the finished appearance of an ordinary workplace, although dust and mold coated practically everything. 08:15 We went from office to office and found the things Connor had assured us would be there. Outdated computers, documents bearing dates from 2008, and coffee mugs with old dried stains circling their bottoms. 08:28 In one of the executive rooms, a calendar remained open to November 2008. Blue ink marked appointments that nobody would ever attend. 08:37 Jake opened a desk drawer and discovered a stack of advertising material for a vehicle that had never reached production. 08:44 The polished brochures offered promises of a future that had failed to arrive. We lingered in those offices for about 20 minutes, snapping pictures and trading jokes. 08:54 Gradually, the uneasiness from the catwalk crossing began to loosen its grip. 08:59 Inside a filing cabinet, Connor came across an old bottle of scotch. He drank from it, pulled a face at the flavor, and nevertheless handed it around for the rest of us to try. 09:11 Then Jake spotted a different door at the far end of the corridor. This one was made of metal and had a little window set into it. Peering through the dirt-clouded glass, we could make out another set of elevated walkways on the opposite side. They appeared to run above the main assembly area. Connor pushed through almost immediately, still eager to see what else the factory contained. 09:33 Like fools we went after him. The new catwalks were in poorer condition than the ones we had already crossed. They were slimmer, more floor panels had vanished, and stretches of railing shifted loosely beneath a hand. 09:47 The distance to the floor had increased too. 09:50 Here the drop looked closer to 40 feet. 09:54 Below us, enormous machines occupied the shadows, their shapes resembling monsters that had settled into sleep. 10:01 We proceeded in a single line, with Connor still out front, until we arrived at a meeting point between three walkways. The junction spread wider than the adjoining catwalks, perhaps ten feet from side to side. 10:13 Its central panel was missing, leaving only the steel framework bordering the opening. 10:19 Connor had begun figuring out how to cross along that frame when Jake caught him by the shoulder. 10:24 Wait a second, man. Let me see if it'll hold first. 10:28 Jake was larger than any of us, his body thick and strong from years of physical work. 10:33 The reasoning seemed straightforward. If the structure supported his weight, it ought to support everyone else. 10:40 He stepped onto the exposed frame, placing one foot down and then bringing the other after it. His arms extended outward to help him balance. 10:49 The steel complained beneath him but stayed in place. 10:52 He had nearly reached the opposite side when the sound rang out. 10:56 It was a sharp, heavy metallic snap, loud enough to resemble a gun firing. The frame itself remained intact. One of the bolts securing it to the catwalk had sheared, however, and the entire section tipped beneath Jake. 11:10 He hurled himself forward, trying to reach the stable flooring beyond it. Instead, his foot dropped into the opening. 11:17 His leg plunged through as far as his thigh. His body struck the metal rim with brutal force, and then he began slipping backward. 11:26 One hand clawed across the smooth surface, his fingernails scraping uselessly, before he managed to catch the edge of a beam. 11:34 He seized it with both hands. The rest of him hung through the missing floor, his legs thrashing over empty space, 40 feet above the concrete. 11:43 As he fell a jagged strip of metal had ripped through his jeans and cut into his thigh. 11:48 I could see the blood moving down his leg. 11:51 Under our feeble lights it looked almost black and it dripped steadily into the darkness beneath him. 11:58 Melissa screamed. The noise shot through the hollow building and returned in echoes that sounded like an alarm going off. Connor and I threw ourselves flat on our stomachs and reached into the opening, attempting to get hold of Jake's wrists. 12:11 His expression was contorted with terror and pain. His teeth were clenched, and the muscles in his arms had already started quivering under the effort of keeping himself suspended. 12:22 The steel lip was slicing into his palms. Blood spread beneath his hands, making the surface he clung to increasingly slick. 12:30 Get me up, he panted. 12:33 His voice had climbed into a frightened pleading register. 12:37 Connor caught one wrist, and I took the other. 12:40 We pulled as hard as we possibly could, but Jake weighed no less than 200 pounds, and our position gave us almost no useful leverage. 12:49 We raised him perhaps six inches before our own hands began to slip. 12:53 Melissa had her phone out and was trying to reach 911. This far inside the factory, though, she couldn't get a signal. 13:01 That was when another sound reached us. 13:03 Footsteps. They came from somewhere on the floor below, heavy and unhurried, each one carrying clearly through the building. 13:11 These weren't the tentative movements of people feeling their way through an unfamiliar abandoned place. 13:16 There was certainty in the stride, the steady pace of somebody who already knew the route. 13:22 Jake noticed them as well. His eyes widened. 13:25 There's somebody down there, he whispered. 13:28 He said it as though lowering his voice could somehow protect us, as though Melissa's scream hadn't already announced exactly where we were. 13:37 The steps approached, then a beam of light swept into view beneath us. 13:41 It was vastly stronger than any of the little flashlights we had brought, cutting across the production floor with an intensity ours couldn't begin to match. 13:50 The person carrying it moved the beam from side to side in a careful pattern. It looked like a deliberate search for something. Or for someone. 13:59 The light settled on the spots where Jake's blood was landing on the concrete. Then it traveled upward, slowly. 14:06 Purposefully. 14:08 It followed the falling blood until it illuminated Jake's body hanging beneath the catwalk. 14:13 For an instant, the glare overwhelmed our vision. Everything disappeared behind brilliant white light. 14:20 Then the beam climbed farther and found our faces as we leaned over the opening. 14:24 Whoever held the flashlight remained invisible to me. I could make out only a shadowed human shape behind its blinding glow. 14:32 For what seemed like an impossibly long time, nobody spoke. 14:36 Jake's strained breaths filled the silence. Beneath them, I could still hear the faint distant sound of blood dripping to the floor. 14:44 Then the person below began moving again. 14:47 There was no rush in it. No running, no sudden scramble. 14:51 Just that same controlled walking pace. The footsteps receded in another direction, and somewhere out of sight, a door slammed. 15:00 He's on his way up, Connor said. His words were scarcely louder than a breath. 15:06 He knows how this place is laid out. He's coming up here. 15:10 That possibility jolted us into renewed effort. 15:14 Connor and I pulled with everything we could summon. 15:17 Alyssa joined us, reaching beneath Jake's armpits, and all three of us strained to lift him. 15:22 Jake made low, pained grunts as we worked. His wounded hands continued to slide, streaking the steel with blood. 15:30 Now we could hear more doors banging shut. The sounds were coming nearer, carrying through the administrative corridor we had explored only minutes earlier. 15:39 Whoever was approaching it stopped making any effort to conceal himself. With one last frantic pull, we managed to bring Jake's chest level with the rim. He hooked a leg over the edge, rolled onto the walkway, and collapsed there, sucking in air. 15:53 Blood began collecting beneath his ripped thigh. There was no chance to examine the injury or work out how serious it was. 16:01 Connor was already hauling him upright and drawing Jake's arm across his shoulders. 16:06 We tried to run. 16:07 With Jake between us, it was hardly running at all. 16:11 He could put almost no weight on the damaged leg. He lurched and hopped, stumbling as we moved and blood marked the route behind us. 16:19 The pursuing footsteps reached the metal walkways. They were faster now. Whoever was following seemed to know precisely where to turn and which stretches of flooring were safe to step on. 16:30 We struggled back along the route we had taken in. Each time Jake's injured foot struck the surface, he cried out. 16:37 Melissa had moved to his other side and was helping hold him up. Then we arrived at the missing section with the two exposed I-beams. Earlier, that eight-foot crossing had seemed like something we could manage. Now it looked like the end of our escape. 16:51 Jake wasn't going to get across it on his own. His leg was torn open, and his bloodied hands were too damaged and exhausted to give him much help. 17:00 We were trapped. 17:01 The footsteps behind us went quiet. When we turned, the man was standing there. 17:07 He looked to be somewhere in his 60s. He wore a security uniform so filthy it seemed as though it hadn't seen a wash in years. 17:15 Deep lines cut across his weather-beaten face. His eyes were a pale shade of blue, and he blinked so rarely that looking into them made me uncomfortable. 17:24 In his hand was a police-style flashlight. One of those solid, heavy metal models that could serve as a weapon as easily as a source of light. 17:33 You kids have to get out, he said. 17:36 His voice was rough and dry as if he rarely had a reason to speak. 17:40 This property's private. You're trespassing. 17:44 Connor began telling him that Jake was injured, but the man interrupted before he could explain. 17:50 Doesn't matter to me. 17:52 Leave right now or I get the actual police out here. 17:55 If your buddy bleeds to death up on this walkway, that's your responsibility. 18:00 He shifted to one side and directed the flashlight toward the exposed beams. 18:05 Go ahead. Out the way you came in. 18:08 There was no other option available to us. 18:11 Connor crossed first, then returned to help get Jake over. 18:15 Between us, we more or less carried him across the opening. His shoes hardly touched the beams beneath him. 18:21 Every one of us was convinced that any second, we would lose our balance and fall. 18:26 Melissa crossed afterward crying as she went I followed last throughout the entire crossing the man remained where he was he watched every movement he never reached out to assist us and never took a step away from his position once all of us had finally reached the far side he raised his voice if I catch you in here another time the conversation's going to be a whole lot different this place ain't meant for you Story 2 The key to St. Augustine seemed strangely heavy in my pocket as I crossed the weed-choked parking lot that Tuesday afternoon. 19:09 Architecture students rarely received permission to wander through abandoned buildings by themselves for a thesis, but the County Historical Society had approved my application to document this Gothic Revival church. which had remained closed since 2006. 19:25 Most of the other students in my program were fixated on glass exteriors and environmentally friendly building materials. 19:32 For my final year, I had decided to concentrate on preserving historic structures instead. 19:38 The church rose against an overcast sky, its weathered limestone carrying the weight of promises that had never been fulfilled. 19:46 It stood about 40 minutes beyond the city, in a corner of the county that seemed to have slipped out of everyone's memory. 19:53 I had packed a tape measure, my Nikon camera, a pair of notebooks, and enough excitement to make that vacant sanctuary feel less empty. 20:02 When I turned the key and pushed open the enormous oak doors, the wood let out a long groan. 20:07 The sound traveled across the deserted parking area, almost as though the church were stirring after fifteen years of sleep. 20:14 Once I stepped inside, the main sanctuary took my breath away in a way contemporary architecture never had. 20:22 Light passed through stained glass windows that had somehow endured decades of neglect. Their colors spread over the dusty pews in angular patterns, laying patches of brightness across the rows. 20:33 Carved columns extended toward a vaulted ceiling that appeared to swallow noise instead of sending it back. 20:39 The resulting silence felt heavy and oppressive, making me conscious of every breath I took. 20:45 For the first two hours I remained on the upper level, recording everything I could. 20:50 I photographed the elaborate carving around the altar, examined the stone baptismal font, and documented the choir loft with its aging organ pipes. 21:00 A dense layer of dust covered every exposed surface. 21:04 Even the smallest disturbance sent it floating upward, leaving peculiar shapes suspended in the light and making me sneeze. 21:11 According to the Historical Society's background notes, the basement contained foundation stones dating to the 1890s. 21:19 Those original structural features would be ideal for the section of my research dealing with 19th century church construction. 21:26 At approximately 3 o'clock, I made my way to a slender door near the rear of the sanctuary. 21:32 A sign identified it as lower-level access. 21:35 The wooden steps complained beneath me as I descended. Their creaking made me tighten my hand around the railing more firmly than I really needed to. There was no power in the basement, but I had anticipated that and brought a reliable flashlight. 21:50 Its beam opened a narrow path through the darkness, exposing damp stone walls with moisture seeping along their surfaces. 21:57 The ceiling hung so low in certain spots that I had to bend beneath it, even though I stood only 5 feet 6 inches tall. 22:05 As I went farther down, the temperature fell by at least 15 degrees. The air was wet and dense, settling around my body with the unpleasant weight of a soaked blanket. 22:15 I first caught the odor about halfway down the staircase. Initially it was faint. 22:21 A sweet smell that didn't belong there mingled with the ordinary mustiness I had expected from an old basement. 22:27 I assumed raccoons might have found a way inside and died somewhere between the walls. 22:32 That sort of thing happened regularly in neglected buildings. The lower level covered more space than I had imagined. 22:39 Several rooms divided it up, likely areas that had once been used for storage in Sunday school lessons when the congregation still occupied the church. 22:48 As I moved my flashlight, the beam revealed aging folding tables, piles of hymnals spotted with mold, and children's pictures that remained pinned to a bulletin board. 22:58 The drawing's crayon colors had faded until the purple and yellow were little more than pale remnants. 23:04 I continued deeper, using my camera to record the stonework of the foundation. 23:09 With each room the odor grew stronger. Its sweetness became thick and suffocating, seeming to coat the inside of my nose until I started breathing through my mouth. 23:19 Without consciously deciding to, I began hurrying. 23:23 I took my measurements too quickly and captured fewer photographs than I should have. 23:28 All I wanted was to collect the essential material and finish the basement portion of the visit. 23:33 The most distant room seemed to sit directly beneath the altar. 23:37 By the time I reached it, the smell had become so overpowering that I pulled my shirt over my nose. 23:42 An old wooden door stood in the back corner. I guessed it led to a maintenance space or perhaps a former coal cellar. It wasn't fully closed. A gap of roughly three inches separated it from the frame, and there was no question that the odor was coming from beyond it. 23:58 For perhaps thirty seconds I remained where I was, keeping my flashlight aimed at that narrow opening. 24:05 I tried to persuade myself to walk over and investigate, but an instinct I couldn't account for held me still. 24:12 It was something deep and primitive, a warning that arrived without any explanation I could put into words. 24:18 The air drifting out of that space seemed different from the air in the rest of the basement, denser somehow. 24:25 Then all at once I felt absolutely certain that I needed to leave. The certainty was irrational, but it was immediate. 24:32 I hurried back through the basement so quickly that I was almost running, the beam of my flashlight jerking over the stone walls. 24:40 As I moved, my mind kept offering reasonable explanations for what I was doing. 24:45 I had already taken enough pictures. The odor was turning my stomach. 24:50 There was nothing stopping me from returning another day with somebody else. 24:54 Underneath those excuses, though, I knew the truth. I was frightened. Worse, I couldn't even explain what had scared me. 25:02 The staircase felt much longer on the way up. When I finally pushed through into the sanctuary, I drew in the ordinary air with a gasp, as if I had been holding my breath the entire time. 25:14 The late afternoon sunlight coming through the stained glass had never seemed so inviting. 25:19 My equipment bag was still on the front pew where I had left it. I snatched it up, dropped my camera and notebooks inside without arranging any of them, and went directly to the entrance. 25:30 My professor might deduct marks because my documentation wasn't complete. At that point I couldn't bring myself to care. Getting out of the church was the only thing that mattered. 25:40 The trip home felt odd. With every mile I put between myself and St. Augustine's, my reaction began to seem more embarrassing. 25:48 By the time I arrived at my apartment near campus, I had nearly talked myself into believing I had simply been dramatic. 25:56 Maybe my period was coming, or something like that. 25:59 Maybe that explained why an unpleasant odor in an aging basement had made me react so strongly. 26:05 I showered for a long time, ordered Chinese takeout, and devoted the evening to sorting through the photographs I had taken. 26:13 There was no denying the building's architectural importance, The foundation stones belonged to the original construction from the 1890s, and the sanctuary contained craftsmanship that had almost disappeared from newer buildings. 26:27 I wrote down a few reminders about returning the next week. 26:31 Perhaps I would ask my friend Bethany to accompany me. 26:34 She liked old buildings too. 26:36 I slept normally that night. The church didn't even appear in my dreams. 26:41 Wednesday went by with barely another thought about the visit. The only real exception was an email I sent to the Historical Society, thanking them for letting me inside and saying I would return their keys shortly. 26:53 Everything changed on Thursday morning. Around 9 I was waiting for a latte in the campus coffee shop, looking through my phone, when a local news notification appeared. 27:04 Human remains found in abandoned church, police investigation, and progress. 27:09 My pulse began racing before I had fully taken in the words. The report was short, but it included enough details to leave no uncertainty. 27:18 Workers carrying out maintenance at St. Exuston's Catholic Church in preparation for possible demolition had located severely decomposed human remains in a basement storage space. 27:30 Officials believed the body had been there for several weeks. 27:33 The article called the place where it had been discovered a concealed maintenance room. 27:38 Beneath the report was a photograph of the church. Yellow police tape stretched across the very same oak doors I had unlocked two days before. 27:47 I stood motionless in the coffee shop, my phone shaking in my hand. 27:51 Around me other students collected their drinks and talked about ordinary things, exams coming up, what they were doing over the weekend. 28:00 I went into the bathroom and threw up. There was nothing loud or dramatic about it. I simply emptied my stomach as quietly as I could, then sat on the floor inside the accessible stall, thinking about the wooden door in the room at the far end of the basement. 28:16 Three inches. 28:17 That was how far it had been open. The only thing that had kept me from pushing it farther was a surge of instinctive disgust and fear that I hadn't known how to describe. According to the article, the body had been there for weeks. That meant that while I had been photographing the foundation, measuring the stones and holding my shirt over my nose, someone's child or parent had been decomposing perhaps 20 feet from where I stood. 28:42 The maintenance crew had apparently opened the door while trying to locate what they described as an intolerable smell. 28:48 The same odor I had explained away as raccoons dying inside the walls. 28:53 I stayed on that bathroom floor for what must have been 20 minutes. I went back over every moment I had spent below the church. Had the person still been alive when the building was locked? Had they died while struggling to find a way out? 29:06 Had they called for help inside a structure that seemed built to consume sound? 29:11 The police contacted me that afternoon. The Historical Society had apparently supplied investigators with the names of everyone who had recently been permitted inside. 29:21 My name was the last one on the record for borrowing the key. 29:25 A detective named Hawkins called. She was a woman and exhaustion seemed to weigh on her voice. 29:31 She asked me to come down to the station so she could speak with me. 29:35 I drove there feeling strangely detached as though part of me had gone numb. 29:39 Somewhere beneath that numbness I was still holding on to the possibility that the remains were old. 29:45 Maybe they had been there for decades. Maybe they had no real connection to what I had experienced during my visit. 29:52 Detective Hawkins took that possibility away almost immediately. 29:56 The man they had found was Gregory Vance. He was 63. 30:01 His daughter had reported him missing three weeks earlier. 30:04 After losing both his job and his home, he had spent approximately a year living on the streets. 30:10 His daughter told the police that he occasionally stayed in vacant buildings to get out of the weather. 30:16 The detective placed a photograph of him in front of me. He looked like an ordinary man. His hair was turning gray and there was kindness in his eyes. He wore a flannel shirt and the setting behind him looked like a family barbecue. 30:30 He had probably entered St. Augustine's hoping to find somewhere secure to sleep. Somehow he had become trapped in the maintenance room. 30:38 Detective Hawkins asked whether I had observed anything out of place. Had I noticed evidence that someone had forced an entrance? Had I examined every part of the basement? 30:49 I explained the odor. 30:50 I told her about reaching the wooden door and standing near it. 30:54 Then I admitted that I had left without opening it or looking any farther. 30:58 She nodded as she listened and wrote down what I said. 31:02 Still, there was something in her face that I couldn't stop watching. 31:05 It didn't quite look like criticism. Perhaps it was disappointment. 31:10 If I had opened that door on Tuesday, if I had discovered Gregory Vance and called 911, his daughter might have been able to begin mourning two days earlier. 31:20 Instead, she had spent those days still wondering where her father was. 31:24 The detective explained that the maintenance room had a defective locking mechanism. Sometimes it stuck when someone tried to operate it from inside. 31:33 Gregory had most likely shut the door because he wanted privacy, then discovered that he couldn't open it again. 31:39 There were no windows in the basement. 31:42 There was no alternate way out. 31:44 And in a church that had stood abandoned for years, There was nobody around to hear him asking for help. 31:50 Based on the state of decomposition, Detective Hawkins estimated that he had already been dead for roughly two weeks when I visited. 31:57 Two weeks lying in complete darkness. 32:00 Two weeks during which his daughter had been putting up notices about her missing father, calling hospitals, and trying to believe he might simply be staying with someone she hadn't met. 32:11 I left the station at about 5.30. 32:13 Instead of returning to my apartment, I went straight to my parents' house. I needed to be in a place that felt removed from everything I had just learned. 32:22 Somewhere filled with familiar noises and the smell of food cooking. 32:26 Somewhere my mother would ask how school was going. But when I got there, I couldn't make myself eat dinner. I couldn't concentrate on their questions about my thesis. 32:36 My thoughts kept returning to Gregory Vance, gradually dying in that locked room. 32:41 Dehydration. Hypothermia. Panic. 32:46 I couldn't stop imagining any of them. My father has always been able to tell when something is wrong with me. 32:52 Eventually he asked what was really going on. 32:55 I told my parents the whole story. My mother put her arms around me while I cried. It wasn't controlled or graceful crying. 33:03 It was the messy kind with a running nose and a face I couldn't keep composed, brought on by the realization that I had been inches from something terrible without understanding what was there. 33:14 She told me repeatedly that none of it was my fault. I couldn't have known. 33:19 Leaving hadn't been wrong, but I had watched enough true crime programs to understand what finding a body sooner could mean. 33:27 More evidence preserved. Identification happening earlier. A family receiving answers instead of waiting. 33:34 There had been two more days for decomposition to continue. Two more days for evidence to deteriorate. Two more days in which his daughter had no idea where he was. And I kept thinking those days existed because I had been too afraid to open a door. 33:50 I never went back to retrieve the photographs from my camera's memory card for the thesis. 33:55 Instead, I chose a different subject. A new community center was going up downtown, and I made that my project. 34:02 It was modern and clean, brightly lit, and had no basement. 34:06 I mailed the key to the Historical Society with a note explaining that I couldn't carry on documenting St. Augustine's. 34:13 They understood. A week later, Gregory Vance's obituary appeared in the newspaper. For 30 years, he had worked as a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility. He had three grandchildren. Fishing was something he loved. His daughter raised money through GoFundMe and used it to arrange a proper funeral. 34:33 I had never known him, but I attended anyway. 34:36 I took a seat in the back row of another church. This one had functioning heat and electric lights. 34:42 I listened as people spoke about their memories of a man who had died by himself in the darkness because a lock had malfunctioned. 34:49 Four months have passed now. I still can't go by a deserted building without thinking about who could be inside. 34:56 I wonder which door might be stuck shut. 34:58 I wonder what odor could be rising from a room everyone has forgotten. 35:03 My roommate says I'm being dramatic because every night I insist on checking all the doors in our apartment to make certain none of them can lock from the inside. 35:12 But she never went down into that basement. 35:15 She never stood three inches from death and decided to leave. 35:23 Story 3 In the summer of 2016, I was 17 and foolish enough to believe exploring storm drains was a reasonable way to spend an afternoon. 35:34 We lived in a suburb outside Denver, where finding something entertaining to do often required a little imagination. 35:42 My friends Brandon and Nate were willing to go along with just about any bad idea one of us suggested. 35:47 Both of my parents worked 12-hour shifts at the hospital. That meant I had far more freedom than I knew what to do with, and our house sat empty through most days. 35:57 Brandon had recently inherited a battered Ford Ranger from his uncle. It was practically held together by rust, but having a vehicle of our own made us feel untouchable. 36:07 Suddenly, it seemed as though we could go wherever we wanted and do whatever we liked without anything catching up to us. 36:14 Summer break had only been underway for about two weeks when the boredom started getting serious. 36:20 That Thursday in June, we were hanging around Nate's garage, sharing a bag of chips and looking through our phones. 36:27 Brandon mentioned something his older brother had told him about a network of abandoned storm drains near the old rail yard. 36:33 Apparently, kids had been going down there for years. They drank, threw parties, covered the walls with graffiti, and did all the other things that would get the police called on them if they tried doing them above ground. 36:48 The rail yard occupied the eastern edge of town, beyond the industrial area. 36:53 Most of the warehouses out there looked as though nobody had used them since the 90s. 36:58 We left the truck behind a loading dock that had partly collapsed, then pushed through weeds reaching our knees until we located the opening. 37:05 It was an enormous concrete pipe, roughly eight feet in diameter. 37:10 A mess of dead oak limbs and rubbish washed down from the road concealed part of it. 37:15 Before we even reached it, the odor hit us. Wet metal, mixed with the smell of something organic that had been decomposing for weeks. 37:23 Brandon brought out the heavy-duty flashlights he had taken from his father's workshop. They were the sort security guards carried, big solid things that must have weighed five pounds apiece. 37:34 Graffiti covered the entrance in overlapping layers. Recently sprayed bubble lettering sat over older tags, and beneath those were markings so old they almost appeared to have been scratched directly into the concrete. 37:47 A shallow ribbon of brown water flowed along the middle of the pipe. 37:51 It continued into darkness that stretched beyond the reach of our lights. 37:55 Nate kept making uneasy jokes about catching some horrible infection or accidentally finding a meth lab. 38:02 None of us doubted that we were going inside though. That was how our little group operated. 38:07 Nobody wanted to be the first person to admit they were scared and turn around. 38:12 We entered one at a time, ducking beneath the opening with Brandon in front. His flashlight carved a bright strip through the blackness. The concrete curved above us. 38:22 Streaks of mineral buildup ran down the walls, resembling waterfalls that had frozen in place whenever the beam passed over them. 38:30 Our steps returned in an odd repeating rhythm. The echoes seemed to come from farther inside the drainage system, overlapping until it sounded like six people were moving through the tunnel instead of three. 38:42 About 50 feet from the entrance, we reached the first split. The large pipe divided into two smaller tunnels. 38:49 The passage on the left descended at a steep angle, and we could hear water moving quickly somewhere beneath it. 38:56 The one on the right remained flat, although it became much narrower. 39:00 Anyone taller than 5 feet 8 inches would have had to stoop to continue. 39:05 Brandon took the right-hand route without discussing it. I assumed he had made that choice, because the other passage looked like an excellent place to lose your footing and smash your head open. 39:15 The markings along this tunnel were older. There were fewer elaborate designs, mostly names and dates stretching back to the 80s, telephone numbers that probably no longer belonged to anyone, and strange symbols that reminded me vaguely of hobo code. The deeper we traveled, the colder it became. Before long, our breath was forming small clouds in front of our faces, even though the temperature outside was probably around 90 degrees. 39:41 We had been walking for perhaps ten minutes when the passage widened into a chamber where several pipes joined. That was where we found it. 39:49 In one corner illuminated by three candles that were still burning, someone had arranged an entire living area. 39:56 A sleeping bag rested on a foam mattress. 39:59 Plastic milk crates had been stacked and positioned to serve as furniture. 40:04 Garbage bags stood nearby, filled with what appeared to be clothing or blankets. 40:09 Empty food tins lined the wall in carefully ordered rows. Every label turned in the same direction. 40:15 A battery-operated radio sat on one crate. It wasn't playing, but beside it lay an unopened package of fresh batteries. 40:23 The candle flames cast strange shifting shadows across the chamber, making the belongings seem to move even when they were still. 40:31 What unsettled me most was the notebook. It lay open on the sleeping bag, with a pen positioned neatly across the page. 40:39 The placement made it look as though whoever had been writing had paused in the middle of a sentence and expected to return at any moment. 40:45 Everything was too orderly. Too intentionally arranged. 40:50 This wasn't simply a place where someone without a home had stopped for the night. Somebody had made a home down there. And with those candles still lit, it seemed unlikely they had been away longer than an hour or two. 41:02 Nate started reaching toward the notebook. Before his fingers touched it, Brandon caught him by the wrist. 41:09 For a moment, none of us did anything. 41:12 We stood there moving our flashlight beams across this stranger's underground living space, trying to understand what we had walked into. 41:19 Newspaper clippings covered the walls surrounding the bed. Duct tape held them in place, and they had been lined up with almost perfect precision. 41:28 Most concerned animals that had disappeared from nearby neighborhoods over the previous several months. There must have been at least 40. Missing cats, missing dogs, even a rabbit somebody was trying to find. 41:42 Every clipping had handwritten comments in its margins. all in the same blue ballpoint ink, found on Elm, collar removed. 41:50 Sometimes there was nothing except a date followed by a question mark. 41:54 One of the crates contained pet collars, fifteen or twenty of them perhaps in different sizes and collars. 42:01 Some still had identification tags attached. 42:05 I remember Brandon saying very quietly that we needed to get out immediately. 42:10 Before any of us could take a step, another sound reached the chamber, footsteps splashing through shallow water. 42:18 They were coming from the left-hand passage we had passed earlier. 42:21 Whoever was approaching wasn't running. They moved at an even, deliberate pace, as if they knew the route completely and felt no need to hurry. 42:31 The footsteps stopped just beyond the chamber entrance. 42:34 For about three seconds, everything went silent apart from the faint flickering of the candles. 42:39 Then someone filled the opening. 42:42 They were tall and dressed in what appeared to be a maintenance worker's coveralls. 42:46 The garment was much too large, its lower edges dragging. Their face remained hidden in shadow. Their hands, however, were plainly visible in the beams of our flashlights. 42:57 Long fingernails curved from their fingertips, with something dark packed underneath them. 43:03 One hand held what looked like a fabric sack. The sack shifted. 43:07 Something inside it was twisting and struggling. Something alive. No one spoke. The person angled their head in a way that looked unnatural, as though they were trying to get a clearer view of us, or perhaps listening to a sound the rest of us couldn't hear. 43:23 Then they advanced one step into the room. Candlelight reached their face. Their cheeks were sunken. 43:29 In the dim glow, their eyes had an almost yellow appearance. What frightened me most was how calm they looked. There was no visible surprise, no anger, no embarrassment. 43:41 Finding three teenage boys standing in their hidden home beneath the ground seemed to strike them as entirely ordinary. 43:48 They lowered the sack to the floor with care, keeping their eyes fixed on us the whole time. 43:53 That was when we heard the soft, muffled whimpering from inside. Brandon was the first to move. He spun around and ran back into the tunnel we had used, his flashlight throwing frantic streaks across the walls. 44:06 Nate and I followed without needing him to say a word. We scrambled along the narrow passage, our shoes sliding over damp concrete as we tried to keep up. 44:15 Behind us, I could hear the person moving. 44:18 They weren't sprinting. They were walking. 44:21 But their strides were long and purposeful, and somehow they seemed able to stay close while we ran in blind panic. 44:28 Their breathing carried through the pipes. 44:31 A rough wheezing sound rebounded from the concrete until they seemed to be directly behind us, even at moments when they weren't. 44:39 When we reached the junction, Brandon kept going straight. 44:42 He should have turned left to return to the entrance. Instead, he led us farther into the drains. 44:48 There was nothing for Nate and me to do except follow. 44:51 This section looked older and more damaged. Pieces of concrete had fallen away from the ceiling. 44:58 Rust-colored water dripped steadily from exposed lengths of rebar. Our lights began flickering. 45:04 I figured the constant jolting as we ran was making them lose contact, but whatever the reason, their beams kept cutting out and leaving us completely blind for several seconds at a time. 45:15 During one of those stretches of darkness, I ran face first into a pipe hanging low across the passage. 45:22 The impact split my lip. 45:24 Blood filled my mouth, mixing with the metallic taste of rust. 45:28 Then we reached the end. 45:30 A metal grate sealed the tunnel from side to side. The spaces between its bars were too narrow to force ourselves through, and the grate itself was far too sturdy to break. 45:40 Brandon seized it and pulled desperately. The sharp edges were already cutting his fingers, leaving them bloody. 45:47 Nate kept facing the passage behind us, gripping his flashlight in both hands in an effort to stop the beam from shaking. 45:54 The footsteps had gone quiet. The breathing hadn't. 45:58 It was coming nearer slowly with no sign of urgency. 46:02 Then the person began to speak. They didn't shout. They didn't threaten us. 46:08 Their voice had the casual ease of someone chatting over a cup of coffee. They were reciting names. 46:14 Whiskers. 46:16 Buddy. Princess. 46:19 Max. 46:20 After each one, they clicked their tongue. They must have brought the sack along because between the names we could hear scratching and subdued whimpers. 46:29 They talked about the animals trusting them. 46:32 about how simple it was to befriend a creature that was hungry, about how they had been collecting for months and nobody ever thought to search the tunnels. 46:41 The voice continued approaching. 46:43 By then they sounded perhaps 30 feet away. 46:46 Our remaining lights were growing weaker as their batteries ran down. Nate began crying. 46:52 He stood there trembling, tears running down his face, while Brandon kept wrenching at the grate with the frantic determination of an animal caught in a trap. 47:01 The person stepped out of the darkness just as Brandon's flashlight went completely dead. 47:07 In the dwindling light from Nate's, we could finally see them properly. They appeared to be in their forties. 47:13 Uneven patches of gray hair fell in oily strands beyond their shoulders. 47:18 They were smiling. 47:19 Their teeth were unexpectedly straight and white. For some reason, that detail made the whole situation even more horrible. 47:27 They carefully placed the moving sack on the ground, then reached into a pocket and brought out what appeared to be a leash. It was a retractable one. 47:36 As they fiddled with its mechanism, it made a little zipping noise. 47:40 You three make me think of Cooper, they said. 47:44 They gestured toward a golden retriever's collar hanging from their belt. 47:48 He was curious too. Walked right over to me behind the grocery store. Such a good boy. 47:54 They moved another step closer. 47:57 Now their smell reached me. 47:59 Wet dog mixed with a sharp chemical odor. Something like bleach. Or ammonia. 48:05 Nate had retreated into the corner formed by the wall and the grate. He was making tiny frightened whimpering noises that sounded far too much like whatever was moving inside the sack. 48:16 The person heard him. Then they laughed. It was an ordinary laugh. A warm natural laugh, the sort you would hear from someone responding to a co-worker's joke. That was the moment Brandon lost it. He took his useless flashlight and hurled it with all the strength he had. 48:33 It struck the person directly in the forehead. They staggered backward, apparently more startled than injured. 48:40 Brandon screamed for us to run. We shoved our way past while they were still trying to regain their balance. 48:46 In the scramble, Nate dropped his flashlight. 48:49 The tunnel became utterly dark. This time though, Brandon remembered the route. 48:54 right at the junction, then straight ahead. 48:58 We followed the dripping water and the faint scent of air from outside. Behind us, the person still didn't run. 49:05 They walked after us, calling the way someone might call to an animal they wanted to lure closer. 49:10 Here, kitty, kitty. 49:12 Come on, boy. 49:13 That's a good girl. 49:15 Ahead of us a tiny point of brightness appeared. 49:19 Sunlight. 49:20 Actual daylight. 49:22 We rushed toward it as though our lives depended on reaching it. They probably did. As we fought our way up the gentle slope toward the opening, the concrete scraped our palms and knees. Somewhere in the distance I heard sirens. We later learned that somebody had noticed Brandon's truck near the abandoned rail yard and reported it as suspicious. 49:42 We spilled out of the pipe into the fierce afternoon sun. All three of us were crying. All three were bleeding. 49:49 We must have looked completely out of our minds to the two police officers climbing out of their patrol car. 49:55 We tried to tell them what had happened. The home inside the tunnels. The articles about missing pets. The person carrying the sack. But we were so hysterical that the explanation came out in broken pieces, none of it sounding the way we meant it to. 50:11 One officer remained with us. 50:13 The other approached the opening and went inside to have a look. 50:17 He returned after going only about 20 feet, saying it wasn't safe to continue without the right equipment and additional help. 50:25 They radioed for assistance. Within an hour, fire trucks and animal control vehicles had arrived. 50:31 A news van was setting up at the rail yard, too. The fire department sent a crew into the drainage system equipped with strong lights and proper safety gear. 50:40 They found nothing. 50:42 The sleeping bag was gone. So were the milk crates. There were no newspaper clippings on the walls. 50:48 No person and oversized maintenance coveralls. 50:52 Even the open notebook had disappeared. 50:55 The only item they recovered was a pet collar snagged on a length of rebar about 50 yards inside. 51:01 It was red. 51:02 A heart-shaped tag attached to it bore the name Bailey. The officers recorded our statements and called our parents. 51:10 Mostly, they told us we ought to consider ourselves fortunate that we had only been frightened. 51:15 They suggested we might have discovered a homeless person's camp and let our imaginations get away from us in the darkness. 51:21 Brandon's father grounded him for the remainder of the summer. 51:25 Nate's parents arranged for him to begin seeing a therapist. 51:29 My parents put a tracking app on my phone and refused to let me remove it until my 18th birthday. 51:35 That ought to have been the end of it. 51:37 Three foolish teenagers frightening themselves in a drainage tunnel. Nothing more. But two weeks later, while I was walking home from my job at the grocery store, I saw the person again. They were standing at the bus stop across the street from my house. 51:52 This time they had on ordinary clothing. 51:55 Jeans. 51:57 A polo shirt. 51:58 They were reading a newspaper and looked exactly like anyone else waiting for public transportation. 52:04 Then they glanced up and noticed me. They smiled. They waved. 52:10 And they raised the newspaper so I could see the headline. 52:13 Another report about a missing pet. This one concerned a tabby named Oliver that had disappeared from our neighborhood. 52:20 They folded the paper neatly and placed it beneath their arm. 52:24 When the bus pulled up, they stepped aboard. They kept looking directly at me until the doors slid shut. 52:30 That was the last time I ever saw them. For the next year though, until we graduated and I moved away for college, notices about missing animals continued appearing around town. 52:41 The police never uncovered anything. 52:43 After what happened to us, concrete barriers were used to seal the tunnels. 52:48 Eventually, everyone seemed to let the incident fade from memory. Everyone except Brandon, Nate, and me. We didn't discuss it. Not with other people. 52:58 not even among ourselves. 53:00 But every so often I would notice one of them lingering in front of a missing pet poster, staring at it longer than anyone normally would. 53:08 And I knew exactly what was going through their mind. 53:11 It was the same thought that kept going through mine. 53:15 Somewhere nearby that person was still collecting, still winning the trust of hungry animals, still carrying on with their profoundly disturbed life where anyone could see them in full daylight. 53:28 And there wasn't a damn thing any of us could do to stop it. 53:36 Story 4 I had spent roughly two months sleeping in deserted houses around Philadelphia when I came across the Victorian on Allegheny Street. 53:46 That was my life at the beginning of 2018. 53:49 23 years old, out of college without finishing, picking up whatever temporary work I could find, most of it paying barely enough to keep me fed. 54:00 My car had been repossessed in January, and getting a bed through the shelters meant facing waiting lists that seemed hopeless. 54:07 So I taught myself how to recognize a place where I might be able to stay. 54:11 A broken padlock that remained unreplaced was a promising sign. So was a yard so overgrown that it looked as though the city had stopped paying attention. 54:21 Above all, I looked for belongings already inside. If other people were staying there, the building was probably safe enough. At the very least, I wouldn't be by myself if something went wrong. 54:32 I met Sophia outside the library one afternoon while we were both taking advantage of the Wi-Fi. Her thick dreadlocks ended in purple tips, and a space between her front teeth gave her a younger appearance than her actual age probably warranted. 54:47 She was the person who first mentioned the house. 54:50 Seven people were already sleeping there, she told me. and they had electricity that actually worked. 54:56 She also said the property had once belonged to a dealer named Rico, who had been in prison since 2013. 55:03 That information should have made me hesitate. Instead, I focused on the prospect of warmth and having other people nearby. 55:10 It sounded a lot better than spending another night alone in an icy warehouse. 55:15 Even among the vacant buildings lining the street, that house drew attention. It was three floors of deteriorating Victorian elegance, with faded green trim curling away from the wood like dead skin. 55:27 The center of the porch sagged. Wooden supports held it up, though they looked as if they might split under the next heavy load. 55:35 Every street-facing window was covered with plywood that years of rain had softened and turned to gray. 55:41 Sophia took me around to the side entrance. Someone had loosened the board over it just far enough to leave a gap a person could squeeze through. 55:49 Before going in, she tapped out a particular sequence, four knocks, a pause, then two more. 55:56 The interior surprised me. It was far more organized than I expected, as though the people staying there had made a serious effort to turn it into a home. 56:05 Walter was a white man in his sixties whose hands trembled after years of drinking. 56:10 He had improvised an electrical connection from the streetlight outside and placed space heaters in three separate rooms. 56:17 Janet and Paul, an African-American couple in their 40s, had lost everything because of medical bills. 56:24 They slept in the room that had once been used for dining. 56:27 Destiny and Carlos had taken the smallest upstairs bedroom. Neither looked older than 20. 56:33 The living room still contained Rico's furniture. There was a dreadful gold velvet sofa riddled with cigarette burns. 56:40 A glass coffee table had one corner smashed out, with duct tape holding the damaged section together. 56:47 The oddest thing was an empty aquarium. 56:50 Blue gravel still covered its bottom, and a little deep-sea diver ornament stood among the stones. 56:56 It looked as though someone had intended to fill the tank, forgotten the water, and never thought about it again. 57:03 For the next three weeks, we settled into a peculiar routine that came surprisingly close to feeling normal. 57:09 Walter got up at five every morning and prepared instant coffee on the hot plate. The smell traveled through the house before most of us were awake. 57:18 Janet had a part-time position at a dollar store. She brought home food they couldn't sell anymore. Expired items, dented soup cans, bread that had gone stale. 57:29 Occasionally, she managed to bring back frozen food that was still perfectly usable. 57:34 Paul spent his days at the library submitting job applications online. 57:38 He always wore the same navy suit, somehow keeping it remarkably clean despite the way we were living. 57:45 Destiny and Carlos vanished during the daytime and returned with an assortment of things they had scavenged or stolen. 57:51 Rolls of toilet paper taken from restaurant restrooms. 57:55 partly eaten pizzas pulled from dumpsters behind college buildings. 57:59 One time they even came back with an entire rotisserie chicken from Giant Eagle, still warm. 58:05 Most evenings we shared dinner. We sat on the hideous gold couch or balanced on milk crates around the damaged coffee table, dividing up whatever food we had between us. 58:15 Sophia entertained us with extraordinary accounts of hitchhiking all over the country. She talked about a commune in New Mexico where she had lived with people who grew their own food. 58:26 She told us about spending a summer working aboard a fishing boat in Alaska. 58:30 The building was falling apart. It smelled of mold and stale cigarette smoke. Police sirens sounded practically every hour, and passing trains rattled along the tracks nearby. 58:42 Even with all of that, being there felt safer than being alone. 58:46 Things changed on a Monday evening in February. I remember the day clearly because Janet had just received her paycheck and brought home several cans of chili. 58:55 We were enjoying ourselves for once, laughing about starting a restaurant and calling it the Rock Bottom Cafe. 59:02 At around 11, when most of us were getting ready to sleep, a car stopped outside. 59:07 That alone wouldn't have been strange. 59:09 The fact that its engine kept running was. 59:13 Then someone stepped onto the porch. The footsteps were heavy and purposeful. 59:18 Whoever it was made no attempt to move quietly the way we thought police might. 59:23 Every one of us stopped talking. The house fell into the kind of silence where each person's breathing becomes audible. The steps ended directly in front of the main door. 59:33 We never used that entrance because anyone passing on the street could see it. 59:37 For perhaps 30 seconds there was nothing. 59:40 Then came a noise I still haven't forgotten. 59:43 Metal dragging against wood. 59:45 Immediately afterward, an enormous thud made the whole doorframe shake. The scraping repeated. 59:51 Another impact followed. We understood then that someone outside was forcing something straight through the door. 59:58 Walter picked up a flashlight and edged into the front hall. The rest of us stayed close together in the living room. When he returned, all the color had drained from his face. 60:08 He told us a machete was protruding through the front door. 60:12 Not a knife. 60:13 A machete. 60:15 It had been driven in so deeply that about six inches of blade extended through the wood on our side. 60:21 For what felt like an endless stretch of time, none of us spoke. 60:25 We looked from one face to another while the idling engine continued rumbling beyond the walls. 60:31 Then a car door slammed. The vehicle pulled away as abruptly as it had arrived, its tires screeching when it rounded the corner. 60:39 Carlos started toward the entrance. 60:41 He wanted to see the car perhaps catch its license plate. 60:45 Walter caught his arm and told him not to do anything stupid. 60:48 Janet murmured prayers while Paul held her close. 60:52 Sophia had an expression that suggested none of this was entirely unfamiliar to her. 60:57 Destiny began gathering her possessions immediately. 61:01 She stuffed her clothes into a trash bag and announced that she wouldn't remain in the house another minute. 61:06 Walter persuaded us to stay until daylight. 61:09 The streets were more dangerous after dark, he said, and the person who had left the weapon could still be somewhere nearby watching. 61:17 We dragged the sofa against the front door, then added every other heavy object we could move. 61:22 After that, we kept watching pairs, taking turns staying awake and monitoring the windows. 61:27 Sophia and I had the shift from 3 until 6. 61:31 While we sat together, she said the incident probably had something to do with Rico's former business. 61:36 Someone might believe there were drugs or cash still concealed inside the property. 61:41 Her ex-boyfriend had dealt, she explained. Leaving a weapon behind like that was a way of sending a message. 61:48 Sometimes it was meant to frighten someone. Sometimes it was a claim on territory. The machete remained embedded in the door throughout the night. 61:57 Whenever a truck passed and made the building tremble, the blade shifted slightly. 62:02 Daylight let us see just how much force had been used. The weapon was larger than we had first imagined, probably two feet long. Its black rubber grip had been wound with duct tape. 62:13 The solid wooden door might as well have been cardboard, judging by how easily the blade had penetrated it. 62:19 Fresh gouges marked the frame. 62:22 They looked as if whoever had done it had used the machete to haul themselves upward, putting their entire body weight behind the thrust. 62:30 Paul said we should contact the police. Everyone else rejected the idea almost before he finished speaking. 62:36 We were occupying the house illegally. Half the people there had outstanding warrants or criminal histories that could send them to jail. 62:44 Walter mentioned some men he knew from his construction work who might be willing to buy the weapon as scrap, but no one wanted to lay a hand on it. 62:53 By noon I couldn't stand being inside anymore. 62:56 I walked to the corner shop to buy cigarettes and get some air. 63:00 When I returned about 20 minutes later, Everyone was gathered on the sidewalk with their belongings. The front door stood completely open. The machete had vanished. Before I could step inside, Sophia seized my arm. 63:14 About five minutes after I left, she said, three men wearing ski masks had entered through the side opening. 63:20 They had come in without hesitation, as though they already knew exactly where to find it. 63:26 They hadn't spoken. They simply began tearing through the rooms. Mattresses were thrown aside, bags were emptied. 63:34 In the kitchen, they had even started lifting loose floorboards. Everyone had fled through the main entrance. The men hadn't tried to prevent them from leaving. They hadn't even bothered to look at them. 63:45 They had just continued searching. 63:47 We spent perhaps ten minutes on the pavement, arguing over what to do next. 63:52 Janet wanted to get away immediately. 63:55 Paul insisted we ought to wait so we could go back for our possessions. Walter was certain they were searching for Rico's hidden supply, though he doubted there was anything left to find. 64:05 Then something crashed inside. It sounded like a piece of furniture being overturned. 64:11 Afterward came a series of heavy blows against what seemed to be the walls, from the sound someone might have been using a sledgehammer. That was when I realized Carlos wasn't standing with us. 64:22 Destiny began screaming his name. She was frantic, telling us he had gone upstairs for his backpack just before the men arrived. 64:30 Before anyone could intervene, she rushed toward the house. 64:34 Sophia and I caught her as she reached the porch. Then we heard a voice from inside. 64:39 A man speaking quietly, almost calmly. 64:43 Where is it? 64:44 He asked the same question again and again. 64:48 Another voice answered, younger and crying. 64:51 I don't know what you mean. 64:54 It was Carlos. 64:55 The calm man said something in Spanish that I couldn't understand. 64:59 Then there was a wet, heavy noise like a blow landing on meat. 65:03 Carlos screamed. It didn't sound anything like the screaming you hear in a movie. There was nothing performed or controlled about it. It was naked animal terror. 65:14 Destiny struggled against us trying to force her way through the entrance. Walter ended up practically carrying her across the road while she sobbed and swore at us for holding her back. 65:24 For about five more minutes the noises continued. Furniture splintering. 65:29 That steady voice asking questions. Carlos trying to answer, his voice becoming fainter. 65:35 Then the house went silent. 65:37 From the opposite side of the street, we watched the three men come out through the front entrance. They behaved as though there was no reason in the world to hurry. 65:46 Two carried black duffel bags that appeared heavily loaded. The third was the largest of them. Blood stained one sleeve of his jacket. None of them ran. None acknowledged us even though we were standing in full view. They climbed into a black SUV with darkened windows that had been left around the corner. 66:05 Then they drove off at an ordinary speed. They even stopped at the stop sign. 66:10 Destiny pulled free and raced into the house before any of us could catch her. 66:15 A moment later we heard her screaming upstairs. It was a shattered, awful sound that seemed to go on without a breath. 66:22 Sophia and I followed her inside. The place had been wrecked. Every piece of furniture was either overturned or broken. 66:30 Holes had been smashed into the walls. 66:32 Even the kitchen ceiling tiles had been torn away. 66:36 We found Destiny in the little upstairs bedroom, kneeling beside Carlos. 66:40 He was still conscious. Barely. 66:43 His body was curled tightly on the floor and his face was so swollen that it hardly looked like him. 66:49 Blood from a cut in his scalp had collected beneath his head. His left arm bent in a direction that made my stomach turn. Small whimpers escaped him, like the sounds of an injured dog. 67:01 Paul went to a payphone farther down the street and called 911. 67:05 The rest of us did what we could for Carlos. Sophia had learned a little first aid during her time at the commune. She tore strips from the sheets and pressed them against the wound on his head. 67:16 Carlos kept trying to speak through his swollen lips. He said they had asked him about the package over and over. 67:23 When he told them he had no idea what they meant, they refused to believe him. 67:28 Walter found the duffel bags the men had been carrying. They had been concealed inside the walls behind loose basement panels none of us had noticed. 67:36 Small amounts of white powder remained in the bag's corners. 67:40 On the floor were marks from rubber bands where bundled money had apparently been kept. 67:45 Rico's stash had been there all along. Probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs and cash. 67:51 Hidden just behind the walls while we slept 20 feet away. 67:55 The ambulance took approximately 15 minutes to arrive. 67:59 The emergency medical technicians didn't waste time asking us to explain. They seem to have dealt with situations like this before. 68:07 As they lifted Carlos onto the stretcher, one quietly told Destiny that the sensible thing would be for us to leave before the police came to investigate. 68:16 People from the surrounding houses were beginning to come outside. 68:20 I overheard an elderly woman telling another neighbor that she had expected something like this. 68:25 Rico's cousins, she said, had been coming through the area and asking questions for weeks. 68:30 Within an hour, we had all gone our separate ways. Janet and Paul headed to her sister's place in Jersey. 68:37 Walter said he knew someone with a warehouse where he could stay. 68:40 Destiny rode in the ambulance with Carlos, refusing to be separated from him. That left Sofia and me on the sidewalk, holding the garbage bags that contained what we owned and trying to decide where to go. 68:52 She knew a friend in Fishtown who might let us sleep there for a few nights. The problem was getting across the city. 68:59 Neither of us could afford bus fare. We began walking. 69:03 Before we got far, I made the mistake of looking back. 69:07 A new padlock had already appeared on the side entrance, and I swear someone was watching from a third floor window. 69:14 I only caught a shadow. It withdrew when I focused directly on it. 69:18 Sophia noticed it as well. 69:21 She took my hand and urged me forward more quickly. 69:24 We walked without stopping for two straight hours, continuing until we reached the bridge over the Delaware. 69:30 Only then did she finally say something. 69:33 In all the years she had spent on the streets, she told me, she had never come so close to being killed. 69:39 Those men hadn't cared who happened to be occupying the house. If they had believed any of us knew where the money was hidden, we would have suffered the same treatment Carlos had, possibly worse. What frightened us most was how practiced they had seemed, how confidently they moved. how they knew precisely where to search. 69:59 It was as though someone had explained exactly where Rico had concealed everything. 70:04 Three days later, I was staying in a women's shelter in South Philly when the story appeared on television. 70:09 Two bodies had been discovered in a house on Allegheny Street. 70:13 It wasn't the building we had occupied. It was three doors away. 70:18 The reporter described the deaths as drug-related and said both victims were known associates of a dealer who had gone to prison years earlier. 70:25 They put photographs of the men on the screen. 70:28 My heart seemed to stop. I had never seen either of them before. 70:33 Later, Sophia told me she knew their faces from the neighborhood. They had occasionally come around our house and asked Walter questions. 70:41 Had anyone been inside recently? 70:43 Had we discovered anything interesting? 70:46 They were Rico's cousins, the same men the elderly neighbor had mentioned. Most likely, they had been killed by the people who had tortured Carlos. 70:55 According to the report, the bodies had been there for at least a week. That meant the cousins were already dead before the machete appeared, before the masked men entered the house. They had probably been tortured until they revealed the location of Rico's stash. 71:09 Then even after giving up what they knew, they had been killed. 71:13 All that time we had been living in the house without the slightest idea what lay behind the walls. 71:19 We were sleeping on top of a fortune that people were prepared to murder for. 71:23 If the men had arrived only a few days earlier, or if we had discovered the concealed panels ourselves, we probably would have ended up dead as well. 71:32 About a month later I saw Sophia again at a food bank in Center City. 71:37 She told me Carlos had survived. He had lost some of the function in his left arm though. He and Destiny had left Philadelphia altogether. 71:45 They might have gone to Florida where her family lived. 71:48 Walter had entered a program and was making an effort to stop drinking. 71:52 Janet and Paul remained with her sister, trying to put aside enough money for an apartment of their own. 71:58 Sophia had also seen the house again. She said curiosity had brought her past it the week before. It had been stripped from the inside out. 72:07 The windows were gone. The doors had been removed. 72:11 Sections of the walls had even been torn apart. 72:14 Official condemnation notices were posted by the city, and metal barriers covered every entrance. 72:21 But what disturbed her most was something she had heard from people still living on the streets nearby. 72:26 They said vehicles sometimes continued to stop outside after dark. People would climb out and circle the property, behaving as though they wanted to confirm that nobody had moved back in. 72:37 No one used it as a squat anymore. That remained true even with winter approaching and people becoming desperate for somewhere to get out of the cold. 72:45 Among the homeless community, the building had turned into a sort of urban legend. 72:50 A warning about what could happen when you chose the wrong place to sleep. 72:54 When I think about it now, I understand how astonishingly fortunate we were. For three weeks we had made our home inside something waiting to explode. 73:04 Drug money lay hidden around us. 73:07 Rico's associates were circling the property like vultures. We survived because of luck. Nothing more. To those men we were nobodies. They saw no reason to question us or kill us. 73:19 We were simply people in the way. Obstacles to shove aside while they took back what they believed belonged to them. 73:31 Story 5 Photography has been my way of getting away from everything since college. 73:37 Last April I finally found myself with a Saturday free to visit the abandoned Riverside Paper Mill, roughly 40 minutes outside town. 73:46 I was 28, teaching biology at a high school during the week and using my weekends to search for deserted places worth photographing. 73:55 The mill had closed sometime in the early 90s. According to the information I had found online, it had once provided jobs for half the county, until the work was transferred overseas to cheaper operations. 74:08 That morning I loaded extra batteries into my camera bag, took a flashlight and some water, and headed out by myself. 74:15 Going alone was something I generally tried to avoid. My usual exploring companion Jason was in Ohio visiting relatives though, so this time I made an exception. The factory stood apart from everything else, surrounded by an overgrown chain-link fence. Vines and graffiti covered the red brick exterior. 74:35 Some windows had been boarded shut, others had shattered, leaving sharp remnants that looked like teeth. 74:42 Finding a way inside proved easier than I expected. 74:45 Near the loading dock, somebody had cut an opening in the fence large enough for a person to pass through. 74:51 One of the dock doors had rusted loose from its tracks and remained partly open. 74:56 Beyond it, the main production floor unfolded like an immense cathedral left to decay. 75:01 Huge paper-rolling machines stood motionless, coated in dust and bird waste. 75:06 Sunlight entered through the holes in the roof, laying bright shafts across the gloom. 75:11 The contrast was extraordinary, exactly the kind of thing that makes a photographer forget everything except the next shot. 75:19 For the first hour, I concentrated on the machinery, the layers of paint peeling from the walls. and the plants beginning to reclaim the interior through fractures in the concrete. 75:31 Metal staircases linked the building several levels. My original plan was to move upward in order, photographing each floor before continuing to the next. 75:40 Then I spotted a doorway toward the rear. 75:43 It opened into what appeared to be a much older part of the mill, possibly a surviving section of the original structure built in the 1920s. 75:52 The atmosphere changed as soon as I entered. 75:55 The corridors were narrower. The ceilings hung lower. A suffocating dampness filled the space, making even ordinary breathing unpleasant. 76:04 My steps sounded different there, too. The echoes were subdued, as though the walls took in the noise instead of throwing it back. 76:12 The dust lay more heavily in this section. 76:15 Most of it appeared untouched apart from a clearly defined trail running down the center of the hallway where somebody had passed recently. 76:23 I assumed other urban explorers had been through. 76:26 Still, I hadn't noticed the fresh graffiti or discarded beer cans that usually accompanied their visits. 76:32 I continued past several little offices. Their doors stood crookedly open, exposing overturned desks and loose sheets of paper that had yellowed with age. 76:42 At the corridor's far end, wooden stairs descended into what I guessed was a storage basement. 76:47 Every sensible part of me said remain upstairs, where daylight reached the rooms. 76:52 But the chance to photograph areas that might not have been documented in decades was too tempting. 76:58 I went down. The basement consisted of a confusing arrangement of concrete support columns and pipes hanging close to the floor. 77:06 Old chemical drums had been stacked along the walls. 77:10 The biting fumes of industrial solvents left there for decades brought tears to my eyes. 77:15 I needed the flashlight continuously. 77:18 I kept moving its beam from side to side, checking for debris beneath my feet and pipes low enough to strike my head. 77:25 Approximately 50 feet into the room, I found a remarkable composition. 77:30 Part of the ceiling had collapsed, creating something like a natural skylight. 77:34 A single column of light, thick with drifting dust, fell onto one patch of floor as though it were illuminating a stage. 77:42 I positioned my tripod with care, adjusting each leg to compensate for the uneven surface. 77:48 While I was composing the photograph, something caught my attention. 77:52 Marks crossed the dust. 77:54 Two parallel tracks spaced about the width of someone's shoulders, extended from the darkness beyond the pillars toward another part of the floor. 78:02 That section had given way completely, leaving a jagged opening about six feet wide. 78:08 My first thought was that someone had dragged a piece of equipment or some scrap metal over there and thrown it down. But there was something odd about the tracks. They were too consistent, too purposeful. 78:20 At the same time, their pattern suggested resistance, as though whoever had made them had struggled or stopped repeatedly along the way. 78:28 I left the camera mounted on the tripod and approached the collapsed area. 78:32 Pointing my flashlight downward, I tried to see what lay beneath the opening. It appeared to drop into a sub-basement, or perhaps an old drainage passage, another fifteen feet below. 78:44 Broken concrete and bent lengths of rebar projected into the space at dangerous angles. 78:49 The odor rising from it was different from the chemical fumes surrounding me. It was earthier. 78:55 Organic. 78:57 Beneath that was a sweetness that made me think of leaves breaking down in a compost pile. 79:02 Except something about it was wrong, spoiled in a way that went beyond ordinary decay. 79:08 I was about to move away when the flashlight picked out a pale object entangled in the rebar roughly halfway down. 79:15 Fabric. Light blue, perhaps denim or the cotton of work clothes. It was torn with dark patches that could have been mud or rust. But those patches had a reddish-brown color, and they were concentrated in a way that didn't seem accidental. 79:30 I lowered myself onto my stomach, paying no attention to the dirt or broken glass. 79:35 Then I extended the flashlight over the edge, reaching downward to change the angle. 79:40 More pieces of cloth came into view. They were snagged on different sections of exposed metal. 79:46 Below them, partly covered by fallen slabs of concrete, other objects were visible. 79:52 Something that looked like a work boot, its sole coming away from the leather. 79:56 Something else that might have been a tool belt or a strap from a bag. 80:00 Worst of all were the stains on the concrete fragments. Dark patches that had pooled and dried into shapes that absolutely weren't caused by rust. 80:09 My entire body stiffened as I began to understand what I might be seeing. Then I pushed myself backwards so quickly that I struck a paint can and knocked it over. 80:19 The crash of metal against the floor rang through the basement with the sharpness of a gunshot. Before the echo had finished fading, another sound reached me. 80:27 Footsteps overhead. 80:29 heavy intentional steps moving across the main factory floor. 80:34 I rushed back to my camera and fumbled with the tripod, trying to fold its legs while keeping the flashlight directed toward the staircase. 80:41 The footsteps stopped directly above me. Dust sifted through gaps between the floorboards and floated through my beam like falling snow. 80:49 Whoever was upstairs knew precisely where I was, and they no longer seemed concerned about letting me hear them. 80:56 I listened as they moved toward the corridor leading to the basement steps. 81:00 There was no urgency in their pace. They sounded certain of themselves, as if they already knew there was nowhere else for me to go. 81:09 My thoughts raced through the possibilities. 81:12 The opening in the floor was a death trap. I hadn't seen another way out of the basement, and meeting whoever was coming down the staircase felt like the worst option of all. 81:22 I switched off my flashlight. 81:24 Moving as quietly as I could, I slipped behind one of the concrete columns and held the camera bag tightly against my chest so the equipment wouldn't knock together. 81:34 Apart from the single beam entering through the damaged ceiling, the basement was completely black. 81:40 I fixed my eyes on that patch of light. 81:42 I watched it with the feeling that my survival might depend on noticing a shadow cross it. 81:47 The steps reached the top of the wooden staircase. Every creak of the aging board sent another shock through me. 81:54 The person came down slowly. 81:57 Every few steps, they paused as though listening for some movement that would reveal where I was. 82:02 I held my breath until my lungs began to ache. 82:05 Once they reached the bottom, they walked straight toward the collapsed floor. 82:09 Glass and debris crunched beneath their boots, including the pieces I had disturbed only moments earlier. 82:16 They stopped there. 82:17 It felt like they stood over the opening for hours. 82:20 In reality, it was probably a minute or two. Then I heard something that seemed to turn my insides to liquid. 82:27 A heavy object being dragged across the floor. It scraped over the rough concrete, catching and resisting as it moved. 82:35 The sound was heading directly toward the hole. 82:38 At the edge, the dragging ceased. A strained grunt followed. 82:42 Then came the sickening noise of something substantial being sent over the side, striking metal and broken concrete as it fell into the space below. 82:51 The person muttered a few words I couldn't distinguish. The voice was low and gravelly, definitely a man's. 82:58 Afterward, he began kicking loose fragments down into the opening after whatever he had dropped. 83:04 Every falling piece made me recoil. Just minutes earlier, I had been lying in that exact place. My face had been inches from the evidence of what the mill was really being used for. 83:15 Through a narrow space between the pipes, I could just make out his outline in the shaft of daylight. 83:21 Tall, broad across the shoulders, dressed in what looked like coveralls and heavy work boots. 83:28 He took something from a pocket. 83:30 I heard the unmistakable snap of a lighter, followed by the smell of cigarette smoke joining the other poisonous odors in the basement. 83:38 For several minutes he simply stood there smoking. 83:41 Now and then he pushed another piece of rubble into the opening with his boot. 83:45 He behaved with complete ease, as though he were carrying out an ordinary maintenance task. 83:51 I remained motionless behind the pillar. My legs began to cramp from staying in the same position, but I was terrified that even the smallest adjustment would expose me. 84:01 When he inhaled, the cigarette tip brightened orange in the dark. As he used the lighter to start a second cigarette, I saw him glance at his watch in the brief glow. 84:10 Eventually, he tossed the cigarette butt into the hole and began heading back toward the stairs. 84:16 Then he stopped. He turned his head, apparently listening. 84:20 A moment later, his steps carried him toward the place where I had set up my tripod. 84:25 In my panic, I had managed to take only the camera. The expensive carbon fiber tripod was still standing there, an unmistakable announcement that someone else had been in the basement. 84:36 He lifted it. 84:37 With the efficiency of someone familiar with the equipment, he folded it down and took it with him. 84:43 His footsteps were different as he returned to the staircase, faster, more directed. 84:49 After they had faded completely, I stayed hidden for another two hours. 84:54 By the time I considered moving, my phone showed four o'clock, and the angle of the sunlight entering through the ceiling had changed. 85:02 Every minor noise convinced me he was returning. 85:05 Or that he had remained upstairs waiting. Or that he knew exactly which pillar I was crouched behind. 85:11 When I finally forced myself to stand, my joints had stiffened so much that I almost lost my balance. 85:17 I bit my tongue to stop myself from making a sound. 85:21 I climbed the staircase a step at a time. At the top, I stopped and listened for any movement elsewhere in the building. 85:28 The production floor appeared deserted. 85:30 Fresh boot prints crossed the dust, though, leading toward the loading dock where I had entered. 85:36 Outside, my car was still in place. Nobody seemed to have damaged it. 85:40 But a folded slip of paper had been tucked beneath a windshield wiper. 85:44 My fingers shook as I opened it. It was a hardware store receipt bearing that morning's date. 85:50 On the reverse, somebody had written a message. 85:53 Beautiful equipment. It would be a shame for anything to happen to it. Or to you. 85:59 I drove directly to the police station in town. 86:03 I showed the officers the pictures I had taken before noticing the marks in the dust and tried to describe everything I had found. 86:10 Two officers went to the mill that evening. When they returned, they told me the basement floor had been completely covered with newly poured concrete. 86:18 Someone had put what must have amounted to several truckloads down there. 86:22 Everything had been sealed beneath it. 86:25 They recorded my statement and said they would investigate, but their expressions made it clear that they thought I had either invented the story or allowed my imagination to get carried away. 86:35 The officer handling the matter reminded me that exploring abandoned buildings was both dangerous and illegal. 86:41 He said I ought to be grateful that nothing more serious had happened. I never returned to see the mill for myself. I never uploaded those photographs. Eventually, I erase them altogether. 86:53 The hardware store receipt is still with me, though. I keep it tucked inside a drawer. It reminds me that there are abandoned places that ought to remain undisturbed, that certain secrets have been buried deliberately, and that somewhere someone knows I understand what that old mill truly is, a tomb wearing the appearance of ruins. 87:17 Story 6 Westfield Elementary had stood abandoned along Route 49 for nearly 15 years by the time we decided to force our way inside one Friday night in 2017. 87:30 I was 17, spending another summer in a small Indiana town and counting the days until college would finally give me a reason to leave. 87:39 My parents owned the only hardware store in town. I had been helping there since I was big enough to carry a can of paint without letting it slip out of my hands. 87:48 After we closed for the evening, I usually met the same friends behind the deserted gas station on Miller Road. 87:55 Our other option was a 40-minute drive to the closest mall. That night, five of us were there. Me. 88:02 Tommy, my best friend, and the kid who had lived next door since third grade. His girlfriend Ashley, who worked at the Main Street Diner. 88:09 Kevin, a recent arrival from Chicago who never seemed to run out of things to say about how much better life was in the city. 88:16 And his cousin Daniela, who was visiting for a couple of weeks and hardly said anything to the rest of us. 88:22 We were sharing a bag of chips from the gas station and debating whether our town's one movie theater would ever put on something besides children's films when Kevin mentioned the school. 88:32 He said his older brother had tried exploring it the previous year. 88:36 According to Kevin, his brother had turned around after spotting shadows moving behind the boarded second floor windows. 88:43 Tommy laughed so hard that he almost inhaled his energy drink. Then he launched into every insult he could think of about Kevin's brother being afraid. 88:52 Before I quite understood how the conversation had gone that far, Tommy was on his feet. 88:57 He crushed his empty can against the brick wall and announced that we were going to demonstrate that a burned-out elementary school couldn't scare us. 89:05 Ashley pretended the whole idea was too boring to interest her. Still, I could tell she had no intention of being the first one to refuse. 89:13 Daniela barely lifted her eyes from her phone. She muttered that if the rest of us were going, she would come along. 89:20 Kevin looked as though he wished he had never mentioned the place. By then, though, his pride wouldn't allow him to change his mind. 89:27 Less than ten minutes later, all five of us were crammed into Tommy's old Corolla. 89:33 The passenger door couldn't be opened from inside and the radio would only receive the Christian station. 89:39 The school was about 20 minutes beyond town. We passed the corn processing plant and continued along a section of road where the streetlights had been dead for years. 89:49 Instead of leaving the car beside the building, we parked behind a group of dead trees approximately a hundred yards away. 89:56 Walking the remaining distance seemed smarter than risking somebody driving past and noticing the Corolla. 90:02 As soon as we climbed out, the summer warmth seemed to fade into an unnatural chill. 90:07 It was the sort of cold you associate with abandoned buildings, as though even the air understood that people no longer belong there. 90:15 The school had two floors and a brick exterior. From the flat roof and narrow windows, I guessed it had been built during the 60s. 90:23 Fire had blackened an entire half of the structure, and the roof over the east wing had fallen inward. 90:29 The remaining side appeared largely undamaged from outside. except every window was concealed behind plywood. 90:36 Across the main entrance, somebody had painted Keep Out in red. The paint had run downward in long streaks that looked like blood from a cheap horror movie. 90:45 At least three openings had been cut into the chain-link fence surrounding the grounds. 90:50 We chose the largest and slipped through. 90:53 Tommy went ahead with his phone's flashlight switched on. He was doing his best to look fearless, although I saw him slow down and hesitate every few steps. 91:02 The front entrance wasn't going to be an option. 91:05 Huge plywood sheets covered the double doors, secured with what looked like a hundred nails. 91:11 Some nails were rusty and bent, as if previous visitors had tried removing them and quit halfway through. 91:17 We went around the building instead. Broken glass and years of accumulated leaves crackled beneath our shoes. 91:24 At the rear, Kevin spotted a ground floor window in the undamaged section. 91:29 Part of its plywood covering had been pulled away. The gap was just wide enough to crawl through, provided you were willing to lose a little skin doing it. 91:38 Splinters lined the opening and fresh scratches marked the surrounding paint. 91:43 We clearly weren't the first people to discover it. 91:46 Naturally, Tommy climbed in ahead of everyone else. He grunted as he dragged himself through, then landed inside with a heavy thump and several swear words. 91:55 A moment later he called out that it was safe. Ashley followed him. 91:59 Then I went. 92:01 Kevin came after me. and Daniella was last. We had to reassure her twice that the gap was big enough for her to fit. 92:08 We had entered the former cafeteria kitchen. Stainless steel worktops remained fastened to the walls, their surfaces marked with rust and graffiti. 92:18 Old lunch trays shattered ceiling tiles, and puddles from roof leaks covered the floor. 92:23 The odor reached us immediately. Mildew mixed with a chemical smell that probably came from cleaning products left behind to deteriorate. 92:32 As our phones moved, their lights threw distorted shadows across the room. 92:36 Every dark corner seemed to contain something waiting just beyond the beams. 92:41 We left the kitchen and stepped into the cafeteria itself. Long tables still occupied rows across the room. 92:48 Some had tipped over. 92:50 Others remained upright, as though children might enter at any moment carrying their lunches. 92:55 Graffiti layered the walls. Tags from different years covered one another, with dates reaching back to 2005 and declarations of love from couples who had likely separated long ago. 93:08 Tommy was already moving toward the double doors leading into the main corridor. He walked as though the building belonged to him. 93:15 Beyond the doors, the hallway extended in both directions. 93:19 Classrooms lined its length, most of their doors hanging open at awkward angles. 93:24 Water had twisted and swollen the wood. Several sections of suspended ceiling had fallen away, exposing bundles of wiring and insulation that dangled like entrails. 93:34 We turned left first. At each classroom, we leaned inside and looked around. Some rooms had no desks at all. In others, they had been piled against the walls. 93:44 It was exactly the scene you would expect after more than a decade of abandonment. Dust. Rot. 93:51 The occasional furnishing too heavy for anyone scavenging the place to bother taking. 93:56 Then we reached the final room at the end of that corridor. 94:00 Room 108. 94:01 That was where everything stopped feeling ordinary. 94:04 Its door was shut, although the handle turned freely. 94:08 Tommy pushed it inward. All five of us stood at the entrance and stared. The desks were set out with precise care. Five across, six rows deep. 94:19 Everyone faced the blackboard at the front. They hadn't been shoved into corners or knocked over. 94:25 The classroom looked ready for a lesson to begin. 94:28 but the writing on the walls was what really disturbed us elsewhere the graffiti was old and faded accumulated in messy layers here the lettering was new so new that when you approached it you could still smell the chemicals from the black marker the same tidy handwriting covered every available inch from the floor to approximately shoulder height there were no familiar gang tags no strings of swear words Instead, strange sentences appeared again and again. 94:57 They watched from the ceiling tiles. 94:59 That phrase ran along one wall, perhaps 50 times. 95:03 Don't trust the janitor's closet. 95:06 Those words covered another section in carefully formed cursive. 95:10 Near the windows, block lettering announced, class never ended for Rebecca. 95:15 Ashley caught hold of my arm when she noticed the dates mixed into the writing. 95:20 Some had been put there only a week earlier. 95:22 Others were three days old. 95:25 Beside the frame of the doorway we had just passed through, the newest date was yesterday's. 95:30 Tommy tried to dismiss it. 95:32 Obviously, he said, somebody was playing a joke on people who broke in. 95:37 But his voice cracked while he was explaining. 95:40 Kevin approached one of the desks and lifted its lid. 95:43 Inside was a mathematics textbook from 2002. The paper had yellowed but otherwise the book was in excellent condition. 95:51 Beside it sat a pencil box with its contents still carefully ordered. 95:56 Daniela noticed that the teacher's desk contained things as well. A gradebook lay open on its surface. 96:02 When she moved closer and directed her phone toward the pages, we could read the names. 96:08 These weren't old entries dating back to when the school had operated. They were recent. 96:13 Only first names had been recorded. 96:16 Anthony, absent. Megan, present. Louise, present. 96:21 Rebecca, present. 96:23 After Rebecca's name, there was no attendance mark, only a dark blot where ink had leaked across the paper. 96:29 The dates heading the columns extended back roughly a month, recording attendance with meticulous care for children who weren't there. 96:37 Tommy took the book and started turning pages. The same thing continued throughout, page after page of attendance for a non-existent class, with records reaching back months. 96:49 That was when we first heard the footsteps. They were directly overhead. Slow. 96:55 Measured. 96:56 Like someone pacing across a room. 96:59 It wasn't the irregular settling or creaking of an old structure. There was a distinct walking rhythm. 97:05 Someone traveled from one end of the room above us to the other, stopped briefly and came back. 97:11 We all raised our eyes. Our gazes followed the sound across the ceiling. 97:16 Kevin immediately opened his phone's camera and began recording. 97:20 He whispered that, without evidence, nobody would ever believe what we told them. 97:24 The pacing continued. Eight steps in one direction. 97:29 A pause. Eight steps returning. 97:32 The pattern was too exact to come from an animal. 97:35 The impacts were too heavy to be something shifting in the wind. 97:39 Tommy, apparently determined to recover the fearless image he had been presenting all night, announced that he was going upstairs. 97:46 Ashley told him he had lost his mind. He was already walking toward the hallway. The rest of us went after him. 97:53 We didn't want to investigate. We simply thought separating would be worse. 97:58 The stairs were near the middle of the building behind a heavy metal door. 98:02 When we pushed it open, the hinges let out a shriek. 98:06 Our phone lights did little to illuminate the stairwell. Plaster fragments and old papers covered the steps. Bundles that looked like clothing had been pushed into the corners. 98:16 The instant we opened that door, the pacing above us stopped. 98:20 Somehow the silence was more frightening than the sound had been. 98:23 We climbed cautiously. 98:25 Tommy went first. I followed. 98:28 Ashley and Daniela stayed between me and Kevin, who came last and continued filming. 98:33 Partway up, Daniela took Ashley's hand. She whispered that we ought to leave, but Tommy had already reached the landing and was pushing through the next door. 98:43 The second floor corridor was in even worse condition than the one below. 98:47 Signs of the fire were everywhere. Black burns spread across the walls and fallen ceiling beams completely blocked several classroom entrances. 98:56 The scent of old smoke lingered. 98:58 Something else was mixed with it. Something I couldn't identify. Organic. 99:03 Wrong. 99:05 We gathered close together at the top of the stairs and listened. There was nothing to hear beyond our own breathing and wind passing through broken windows somewhere farther away. 99:15 Then Tommy's flashlight caught a detail that made all of us recoil. Footprints. Fresh ones. 99:21 They crossed the dust from the stairwell toward the classrooms that remained intact. These weren't the blurred impressions of visitors from years earlier. The shapes were crisp and recent, with the dust clearly disturbed around each shoe. 99:35 They were adult-sized boot prints. A distinctive tread suggested work boots. 99:40 The marks traveled in both directions, crossing over one another in places as though somebody had been making that trip repeatedly. 99:47 Ashley whispered that we should return downstairs and get out. Tommy had already begun following the prince, and somehow, despite everything, we followed him again. 99:57 Our moving lights created a small pocket of visibility surrounded by blackness. 100:02 The trail ended at a classroom with its door slightly open. A faded number plate identified it as room 204. 100:09 Tommy reached toward the handle. 100:12 The footsteps began again. This time, nobody was pacing. Heavy boots struck the floor to run somewhere farther along the corridor. 100:20 The sound was approaching. We swung our lights toward it. For a fraction of a second, I swear there was a person standing at the end of the hall, tall, dressed in what looked like a maintenance uniform. Then every phone light flickered. 100:35 All five at the same instant. When the beams returned, there was no figure in the corridor. But the running continued. 100:43 It grew louder. 100:44 Whoever was making those footsteps was definitely coming toward us. 100:49 Tommy pulled open room 204 and shoved everyone through. Then he closed the door behind us. 100:55 We stood in total darkness. Our phones had died. Not merely their flashlight functions. The devices themselves wouldn't switch on. 101:04 Outside, the approaching steps stopped at our door. We heard breathing, rough and irregular. 101:11 Then the doorknob began turning. 101:14 Ashley gave a small scream. 101:16 Immediately, the footsteps started again. 101:19 This time they raced away from the room, retreating along the hallway. 101:23 At the same moment, all our phones came back on. Their screen shone brightly. 101:28 Nothing about them suggested they had ever stopped working. There was no conversation about what to do next. 101:35 We ran. Not a cautious retreat. Not a jog. 101:39 We sprinted through the corridor and plunged down the stairs, taking three steps at a time and nearly falling. 101:46 Tommy reached the lower floor first and headed for the cafeteria. The rest of us stayed right behind him. 101:52 But when we entered the kitchen, the window wasn't the way we had left it. 101:56 The loose plywood covering our entrance had been secured completely. 102:00 New-looking nails held it in place, their heads shining beneath our phone lights. 102:05 Kevin began pulling at the board with frantic strength. 102:09 Tommy rushed away to examine the front doors. When he returned, his face was pale. The main entrance had changed too. The old boards held by rusty nails now had new boards fastened across them. It looked as though somebody had just finished closing everything up. 102:25 Then the footsteps returned. They were downstairs now, coming along the same hallway we had just fled. 102:32 Daniela found an emergency exit near the gymnasium. 102:35 A fallen locker had concealed it. The door had rusted shut. 102:40 All five of us pulled at it together, forcing it open until there was finally enough room to squeeze outside. We ran for the Corolla without turning around. Tommy pulled away so violently that flying gravel struck the car windows. 102:54 For the first 10 minutes of the return journey, nobody spoke. We sat trying to recover our breathing and make sense of what had just happened. 103:02 Eventually, Kevin took out his phone. He wanted to see what his recording had captured. The video file was still there, but almost all the footage had been corrupted. 103:12 Static. 103:13 Strange distortions. Broken images. 103:17 Except for one clear frame showing the second floor hallway. 103:21 In that image, the rest of us were gathered close together with our backs toward the camera. Someone else stood among us, directly behind Ashley, close enough to reach out and touch her. 103:32 It was a man wearing a janitor's uniform. 103:35 A name tag was attached to it, although we couldn't read it clearly. 103:39 Ashley began crying as soon as she saw him. 103:42 We never told the authorities. We couldn't imagine how to explain any of it. 103:47 We had illegally entered an abandoned school and become frightened. That was how it would sound. 103:53 Afterward, though, I started looking into the place. I spent hours at the library searching old newspaper editions on microfilm. 104:01 Eventually, I found a report from 2003. 104:05 It concerned a janitor named Robert Henley who had refused to leave after the fire forced the school to close. 104:11 Security personnel had discovered him living in a second floor supply closet. 104:16 According to the article, he had continued maintaining deserted classrooms and marking attendance for pupils who didn't exist. 104:24 He had been removed against his will and committed to a psychiatric institution. 104:29 The detail that still makes it difficult to sleep was something I discovered later in a more recent news report. 104:36 He had been released in 2016, only a year before our visit. 104:41 Last month I drove past the school again. This time I went in daylight. The building no longer exists. 104:49 Demolition has left an empty lot. With a sign announcing it as the future site of Westfield Shopping Center, I spoke to the construction foreman. What he told me made my skin crawl. 105:00 During the demolition work, the crew had discovered an improvised living area in the basement. 105:05 Recent food packaging, water bottles, a sleeping bag, and notebooks. 105:11 Dozens of them. 105:13 Their pages contained attendance lists, lesson plans, and the same sentences we had found repeated across the classroom walls. 105:21 The final entry was dated the day after we entered the school. It consisted of one short statement. 105:27 Five new students enrolled. They left before dismissal. 105:32 The foreman said the workers had handed everything over to the police. Nothing had come of it. 105:37 Robert Henley was never located. 105:40 Sometimes I think he might have found a different abandoned school. 105:43 Another empty building where he can keep recording attendance, keep waiting for children who will never arrive. And on nights when I lie awake, I find myself imagining the emergency exit refusing to move. STORY SEVEN I never expected to put this experience into words, but it has stayed with me for years. 106:20 When I was in high school my friends and I regularly slipped into places we had no business entering. 106:26 A few miles beyond town there was an abandoned warehouse complex that nearly everyone knew about. 106:31 Its windows were shattered. Layers of graffiti covered the walls. 106:36 Rusted doors let out long, shrill complaints whenever the wind moved through them. 106:41 The property contained more than a single building. 106:44 Several halls connected to one another, and each seemed darker and more choked with debris than the one before it. 106:50 To us, it was an ideal place to waste a weekend. 106:53 We challenged one another to venture deeper, always trying to reach some section we hadn't explored on our previous visit. 107:01 There were five of us there that particular night. Ethan, Mariah, Caleb, Danielle, and me. We had brought flashlights and a Bluetooth speaker, doing our best to behave as though nothing about the place bothered us. 107:13 But that wasn't the truth. There was a weight to the atmosphere inside those buildings. The air carried the smell of wet concrete and scorched plastic. 107:23 Old wooden pallets sat piled in corners, looking as though nobody had disturbed them in decades. We kept laughing louder than anything actually warranted. It was the sort of strained laughter people use to fill a silence they don't want to acknowledge, with everyone pretending not to notice how uncomfortable the others are. 107:41 Eventually, we settled onto a ledge above the main floor of the largest hall. 107:45 Moonlight filtered through openings in the damaged roof, laying pale strips across the dust below. 107:51 Ethan was talking when he suddenly stopped. He raised a hand and pointed toward the far side of the warehouse. 107:58 He said somebody was standing beside the wall, looking at us. 108:02 According to him, the person was tall and perfectly still. 108:06 They appeared to be wearing a crude mask, something uneven and homemade. 108:10 He described it as resembling cardboard or plaster that had been shattered and assembled again. 108:16 Where the eyes should have been, there were only black openings. Those openings, he said, were aimed directly at us. 108:22 The rest of us didn't see anyone. 108:24 By the time our flashlight beams reached the area he indicated, there was nothing to illuminate except long shadows between fallen beams. 108:33 Caleb was the first to laugh. He accused Ethan of making it up to frighten us. 108:38 Danielle joined him, joking that Ethan needed to stop watching so many horror films. 108:43 Mariah rolled her eyes. I remember feeling relieved and uncertain at the same time. 108:49 Ethan wouldn't let it go. He insisted he had seen someone. 108:53 His voice broke in a way that didn't sound like part of a prank, but every time he tried to explain himself, the others seemed less willing to believe him. 109:02 In the end, we dismissed it. 109:04 We turned the music up, went back to what we had been doing, and acted as though nothing unusual had occurred. 109:11 Over the following weeks, the warehouse returned to being just another setting for our boredom. 109:16 Ethan mentioned the figure occasionally. Each time he did, we found another reason to make fun of him. 109:23 Later I would feel ashamed of that. 109:25 I hadn't witnessed anything myself, but his description had been remarkably precise. He never changed it. 109:32 The same broken-looking mask. The same place beside the wall. The same empty fixed stair. 109:39 Nevertheless, our lives went on. Classes, part-time work, trying to gather enough cash to put gas in our cars. 109:47 Like so many foolish places we spent time as teenagers, the warehouse gradually became something we hardly thought about. 109:54 Then winter arrived, and a news story changed the way all of us remembered that night. 110:00 A man had been assaulted inside the warehouse complex. This wasn't another story being passed around town without proof. It was on the local news. Police vehicles stood outside and warning tape had been stretched across entrances we had once crawled through ourselves. 110:16 The report said the victims had survived, though only just. It also suggested that more than one person might have been involved, possibly squatters who had occupied the buildings for months. 110:27 That information settled in my chest like a weight. Months. 110:31 I couldn't stop thinking about that word. While we were inside laughing and ridiculing Ethan, there could have been people concealed around us. People living in the very darkness we had treated as a playground. When I saw Ethan afterward, he didn't seem pleased to have been right. He didn't deliver an I told you so. 110:50 He just looked exhausted like someone who had spent a long time carrying a memory nobody believed and had finally received confirmation that he hadn't imagined everything. 111:00 Once more he described what he had seen. The jagged mask. The figure's absolute stillness. 111:06 The way it had simply remained there staring. 111:09 Knowing that people had actually been living in those halls changed the story completely. 111:14 It no longer sounded like something supernatural. 111:18 It sounded like a warning we had refused to take seriously. 111:22 Suddenly, remembering our laughter made me feel sick. We had brushed aside the one person who might have noticed an attacker well before the assault occurred. The police shared very little about the arrests or what investigators discovered inside. 111:36 What we learned was limited. The squatters had occupied the complex for a considerable time. 111:42 After the attack, the warehouses were finally boarded shut. 111:46 Whenever I drove past, I found myself looking toward the sealed openings. 111:50 I wondered how often those people had remained hidden only feet away while we joked and played music. 111:56 And I wondered something worse. Had the figure Ethan described merely been observing us? Or had it been waiting? 112:03 The most difficult part wasn't seeing the report on television. It wasn't the tape stretched around the buildings. 112:10 It was understanding how oblivious we had been. 112:13 We had turned Ethan's fear into a joke, even though he might have been the only person among us who recognized the danger nearby. 112:20 The night after the news broke I lay awake going over the sounds I remembered from the warehouse. 112:26 Loose pieces of metal rattling. Drafts that had seemed strangely purposeful, the stretches of quiet between our forced laughter, details that had once meant nothing suddenly seemed like signs we should have paid attention to. 112:39 I even approached one of the officers stationed outside the complex. 112:43 I asked whether they had discovered any masks or anything resembling one. 112:48 He dismissed the question and told me he wasn't permitted to discuss the investigation. 112:54 That response gave me nothing to settle my thoughts. Instead, it left me circling the same possibilities. 113:00 If Ethan had really seen a masked person, perhaps it hadn't been someone simply occupying an empty building and trying to remain unnoticed. 113:08 Perhaps that person had already been preparing for something much worse. Perhaps they had been practicing while we stood nearby, unaware of what we were witnessing. 113:17 Even now the thought of someone holding perfectly still while a group of teenagers laughed only yards away turns my stomach. 113:24 Eventually the entire complex was torn down. An empty patch of gravel occupies the site now, with weeds pushing up through it. 113:32 Looking at it, you would never know what had happened there. You would never understand what that ground still means to the few of us who spent our teenage evenings inside those walls. 113:42 We rarely discuss it these days. Most of us have left town and gone on to separate lives. 113:48 Every so often, though, Ethan gets in touch. 113:51 He still recalls the face he saw, or more accurately, the mask covering it. He remembers it with the same clarity he had that night. 114:00 And he has never allowed us to forget that he tried to warn us. 114:04 I no longer explore abandoned buildings. Superstition isn't what keeps me away. It's the knowledge of how badly we misread that situation. 114:13 We chose to laugh when we should have paid attention. Months afterwards, somebody else suffered. I have no way to prove that the masked figure Ethan noticed was responsible for the assault. 114:24 But somewhere deep down, I believe there was a connection. 114:27 That belief has never left me. 114:30 Sometimes danger is already standing in front of you. Quiet, patient, waiting for its moment.