There it is, Kalamazoo's own little version of Shutter Island. Which actually isn't all that much of an exaggeration. You can't tell from the pictures really, but the whole thing is on a hill, surrounded by a forest, the perimeter of which is surrounded by barbed wire and a lot of scary signs. The only difference is that it's surrounded by a poorly maintained and rarely occupied street and a small-town ghetto instead of raging waters. Also, there is a legitimate corpse incinerator in the basement's morgue. Anyway, those pictures are what it looks like in the day... but at night, it is a totally different place. As in, I'm pretty sure I spied the silhouettes of walking corpses wearing hospital gowns creeping around the grounds and bloody chainsaws strung up in the windows. And scary background music.
Before I get to the actual story, here's some historical background for ya:
In the 1950's it was opened as a Tuberculosis Sanitarium. Which was pretty successful, since they began curing everyone and sending them home. By 1966, there were only 69 patients. So, 108 long time care, elderly patients, who no longer needed to be treated for mental illness were transferred from the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital to spend the rest of their years under the care of this facility. Tuberculosis care was shut down in 1969 and began serving completely as a mental hospital until 1990 when the number of patients was too low to keep it running. It could have been turned into something cool, had it not developed an enormous asbestos problem that no one wanted to pay to fix. The property belongs to Western Michigan University now, and I heard it was scheduled to be torn down in June, but I'm not so sure that actually happened.
My brother told me about the time he explored this place a couple years ago, and I've wondered where it was since then. But it wasn't until sometime in late May that one of my best friends, Shawn, actually showed me where it was. My "challenge accepted" alert went off in my brain the second I saw it. And so, we started planning. First, we had to find a way to get through the fence. Fortunately, a group of 8th graders on youtube found it for us. The video briefly shows a hole in a certain part of the fence, so we studied it enough to figure out where along the ten acres of fence it was exactly. It had been patched, but no work had been done that we couldn't undo. So, after turning the hole back into a hole and scoping around that afternoon, we got one of our other friends, Sam, to come back with us at night.
We drove back into the ghetto neighborhood where the asylum is located (it's in a super random part of town), and just as we began approaching the block where the building sat, we met our first predicament. The block directly next-door to the one on which the asylum sat, was lined with cop cars... they were sitting, lights flashing, in a way that led as to believe they were looking for someone. See, you would think that 15 cop cars might make one feel a bit uneasy about breaking into abandoned buildings right next to them, but my thinking was that they must be so distracted with hunting whoever it was that they wouldn't even notice us. Yeah, that's not exactly what happened.
We found the hole in the fence, but it was still a long shot up the hill through the woods, which was full of thorn bushes and death. Eventually we made it up there, though... now I could describe a bunch of details that happened here where Sam was stupid and got these kid's attention that were on the street, but this blog is already going to be way too long, so I will just skip to the highlights.
See, the building is cemented off on the first and second stories (it's like they think people are going to try and break in or something), so in order to get inside you have to find a way to reach the third level. At one point, Shawn and Sam waited by the edge of the woods while I ran around to see if there was any way onto a certain part of the roof in the front. Well, I got around to the front and immediately something caught the corner of my eye. From where I was, I could see what used to be the entrance from the road, so instead of woods there were a bunch of cracked slabs of cement where the parking lot had been. And just inside the fence by the entrance, two figures stood silhouetted against the flickering, yellow street light.
My heart stopped. I took a step back, and as soon as I moved, the figures - who, judging by their mag-lights and uniforms, I had now figured out were cops - began moving my direction.
I broke into a sprint and grabbed Shawn and Sam, explaining to them in a rushed whisper what I'd seen, and we all jumped into the woods. The problem was, we weren't entirely sure how to get back to the hole since we'd walked at such an angle away from it, and even if we were, there is no way we could have trekked through the thorns and weeds before the police heard and found us. Our only chance was to sit on the edge of the woods and be as silent as possible.
The cops searched for us for about a half hour. Towards the end, they neared so closely that I could hear them whispering amongst themselves and the beam of their flashlight shot right over my shoulder. In that moment, I was trying to decide who I was going to call with my one phone call. But, miraculously (literally), they somehow missed us and eventually drove away.
And thus concluded night one.
But I wasn't about to get that close and come out of it without seeing the inside of that building. It was no longer just a challenge. It was a need.
So, night two: This time my other best friend, Reina, came instead of Sam. And this time we decided to go at 5:00am on a Sunday morning, so that we would still have the cover of darkness to get through the fence, but it would be light enough once we figured out a way inside the building that we didn't need flashlights. Also, cops aren't so watchful early in the morning.
This time Shawn wanted to stay in the car, since he had forgotten to pay a speeding ticket and there was a bench warrant out for his arrest already so he didn't want to risk another close encounter with the law.
And so, Reina and I traipsed up through the ferocious jungle, fighting thorn bushes taller than ourselves and mosquitoes the size of velociraptors. We circled the asylum looking for a way up. We managed to find a way onto one of roofs (and almost died getting down), but no luck there. But no matter, we kept looking.
It was nearing 6:00 when I found our route. Someone had leaned part of a chain link fence against a wall that led to a wire-rope-thing that you could climb to reach a ledge on the second story. And on top of that surface sat a very old filing cabinet, on top of which balanced a very broken desk, above which was another wire-rope-thing that you could climb to reach the third story ledge, which was right beneath a window. If you followed that, you should be picturing something extremely precarious. Which is a mass understatement. Looking back, I am truly quite baffled as to how we didn't at least get paralyzed in the process. But, if I could sum up the theme of mine and Reina's relationship in one word, it would be, "Determination." When she and I decide to do something, no matter how outrageous, there very literally is not a question about it. We both just know that whatever it is, it is going to happen, and it is going to be great. This situation was no different.
By roughly 6:30am, just in time for sunrise, we had reached the third story. The room we entered into looked to be some sort of reception room. Broken glass covered the floor and graffiti plastered the walls. As there was light shining into this room, it wasn't so bad. It was the hallways beyond that very closely resembled a scene in any given horror movie which results in two girls being murdered. But there was no turning back at that point, so we gathered our courage and began inching down the dank hallway. The patient rooms each had a window, so as long as we were brave enough to travel in the hallway between patient rooms, we could regulate our breathing easily enough.
You know how sometimes you picture something in your head that SOUNDS like it would look creepy, but you know that in real life, that thing probably wouldn't be as creepy as your mind is imagining it? Well, this was not like that. If you are picturing what the inside of an abandoned insane asylum would like it, and it looks pretty stinkin' scary, then it is exactly how you are imagining it. There was glass and wreckage everywhere, the remains of disintegrating curtains flowed eerily in the windows, the wall-paper was shredded on every wall, and there were old shoes laying everywhere. The shoes might not be part of your initial imagination, but I promise they added to the creepy aspect.
These were the only pictures that turned out light enough... I wish it would have been possible to capture the darker areas where it was more intense scenery.
Finally, Reina and I made it to the end of hallway one, managed to force ourselves up the dark flight of stairs, and made it all the way to the middle of the next hallway. That was when we were just starting to feel really good about ourselves and our bravery. Actually, I was seriously in the middle of saying, "This isn't so bad, we're-" when I was cut off by the sound of an army coming to kill us from the ceiling tiles. I'm not really sure how to describe the sound, other than it literally sounded like a person crawling extremely fast and aggressively in the ceiling. There was one missing ceiling tile right above our heads, and the sound was traveling towards that opening. At first it was brief and we just stopped in our tracks and looked at each other. Then it happened again, only this time louder and getting closer to the gap in the ceiling above us. At that, we darted over to the nearest window and just stared at the space where we'd just been standing. We were both just waiting to see two, scrawny legs drop down, or maybe the white hairs from the top of a head dangling through the gap, before a little, psychotic man in a hospital gown hopped down. He would look much like the old man that Jafar impersonated when he tricked Aladdin into giving him the lamp - long, scraggly beard, rotted teeth, knobby knees, hunched over like a monkey, fast like a freak... "Finally, fresh meat!" he would screech in his deranged voice as he came charging at us, blood-stained knife extended.
As you can see, my mind had come up with all the details about how we were going to die right then. Like, truly, for a second there I was convinced it would happen. I mean, you know how sometimes you'll get kinda freaked out and be like, "Man, what if I died right now..." but logically you know that is unlikely? Well in that moment, logic was out the window and I was full out preparing myself for the inevitable death that WAS about to befall me.
Fortunately, that feeling wore off as I began to realize that rationally, there was probably not a manic, 90-year-old man living in the ceiling tiles of an abandoned asylum waiting to cannibalize unsuspecting teenagers. And after thinking about it, the sound of "clambering crazed cripple" could have also sounded like a stampede of bats. Still, we were a tad shaken up. That's when we called Shawn.
Shawn was still driving around being our "street eyes" to make sure there were no cops around. It took a bit of convincing to get him to risk a criminal record by joining us, but I decided to go the "This is so awesome, you are going to regret it sooo much if you miss out on it" route, rather than the "This is scarier than I'm willing to admit and would feel safer with a 6"4' guy with us." Eventually, he made the better decision and about a half hour later, all three of us were inside.
We made it up to the fifth story and even found a way to get on the roof. We really wanted to try and get all the way to the basement to see the morgue, and we made it pretty close, buuut then at the bottom of the stairwell (where it was completely pitch black and we only had Shawn's IPhone for a source of light) we found another missing ceiling tile, inside of which there was some bedding and some recently opened boxes of cereal, and a shelf that seemed to be serving as a ladder had been moved underneath it. Probably not a psycho ex-patient, but quite probably a hobo that, for all we knew, was standing just around the corner waiting to mug some stupid teens. At that, we decided we'd had our fill of the place, and high-tailed it back to level three.
Getting down might have been more difficult than getting up. It might not have been so bad, had it not been for one of us (yours truly) accidentally dropping one of the ropes over the edge while we were still two stories high. The combination of not sleeping all night, feeling a little tense after experiencing high levels of anxiety, and now the prospect that we might be stranded on the ledge of this asylum until we either died or were arrested, put us a liiitttle on edge with each other for a minute there. But I believe that the good Lord blessed me with similar abilities to a monkey for that moment right there, because if I hadn't been able to find a different way down and throw the rope back up to Shawn and Reina, I feel like it could have turned into "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: Asylum Edition" pretty easily there. Fortunately, we all made it to the ground and were still friends.
Then Reina and I went to breakfast and then straight to Church. The end.
Good gracious, my darling. I am so thankful I didn't know you were there during the time, because I probably would have been freaking out...or I would have ended up coming after you, and then things would have surely turned messy.
ReplyDeleteI will say, however, from now on I want to know when you are doing things like this. Someone needs to know where to search for you...or your remains ::cue cheesy horror music::
Have you ever seen the movie "Session 9"? I'm not saying you should see it, I am just asking. It is about these guys cleaning up asbestos in an insane asylum, and things get real creepy real quick... ::shudder::