There is always an eerie charm to abandoned buildings, no matter what they used to be. The older they are the better, because as a ghost hunter, this gives it that much more chance that there is a haunting spirit lurking around. The buildings that have been around for centuries have generations of possible deaths in the house, poltergeists, or spirits who have missed the boat and wandered back to their home.

Plus abandoned buildings are creepy regardless of the possibility of spooks and specters. There was this old red brick building three stories tall on a busy but wooded road in a kind of boon docks neighborhood. The entire first floor was completely boarded up and sealed which meant the only entry was through the basement and there would be absolutely no light on the first floor. This was all it took to get us hooked on the idea of investigating. We were definitely going in.

The idea that the small basement window on the side of the house was the only entrance (and exit) made it that much scarier. If something were to spook the hell out of us, there was nothing to do but egress the entire building down to the cold dark cellar to climb out of a tiny portal. So the only thing to do was crawl in and see what we could see.

You never know what you’ll find in these places. Besides seeing a ghost real world dangers loom such as rusty nails sticking up, floor boards that can barely hold themselves up let alone three big adventure seekers, and the possibility of structure collapse that is all too prevalent in a condemned building, not to mention unfriendly squatters. There was nothing of value there, so the place being boarded up meant one thing: imminent danger. All right!

The first day we went in with a couple of flashlights and explored what we could. In the cellar we didn’t find much but an old filing cabinet with what looked like the personal records of a business or medical service, so we ventured upstairs. As always I volunteered to be point man and slowly made my way up those creaky steps. The basement steps were the worst, very unsturdy.

The first floor was pretty interesting. Being completely boarded up, we relied on our flashlights to see, frantically pointing it around corners and whatnot. It looked like the house’s demise was that it was partially burnt out. Half the building was inaccessible and falling apart, the other half wasn’t in much better shape, with vines coming in all over the place. It had a really old stove and not much to look at. Although there was a fairly new potted plant in the kitchen, which was odd.

So we continued upstairs to the second floor where there was actually light. This was where I had the most fun. We creeped slowly up the old staircase cautiously. When I got to the top I turned the corner and screamed, “Oh shit” and jumped back towards the other two. I have never seen a guy jump down a whole flight of stairs in two steps before this day. It was then I bust out laughing, and they realized I pulled a prank on them. This is the perk of going first.

The top two floors where in pretty bad shape too. The bathroom was destroyed with the wall falling in and vines everywhere. The floor looked about to give out. We finally reached the third and top floor and looked out the window of the front bedroom. The room had an old mattress on the floor and nothing else. Of course we cut the mattress to see if somebody had squirreled a bunch of cash in it, to no avail.

It was then that we either got kicked out by some strange energy or we spooked ourselves, because some gust of wind slammed a door somewhere in the house below us and we jolted. The scary part was we had to go down the entire house, through where we heard the noise and down to the cellar to squeeze out the window.

Very scary experience. I think we went once or twice again and probably didn’t go all the way up again, but looked around the basement. These days, the fear of getting arrested outweighs the thrill of adventure, so I haven’t been there in years. But it’s still there and there might be a day when I have better ghost hunting equipement that I’ll return.

Next time: the abandoned slaughterhouse!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 11:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.