Breaking In, the first night

It felt like this was the riskiest part of the adventure, at least in turns of being stopped by the police. The two cars the group of us brought were parked the darkest part of the parking lot, but there was still too much light for my liking. This was illegal, but to my high school mind didn't feel that wrong. We couldn't park in the driveway of the abandoned house without drawing unwanted attention.

The excitement was high. Like we were on the edge of a cliff. We didn't really care about the abandoned house, we were here for the tunnels.

The Northville Tunnels were legend in my school. This winding maze of catacombs were used to connect the dozens of buildings on the campus of an insane asylum. None of us had been inside, but we had heard the stories. Graffiti on the walks, a ruined library, a bowling alley. This was an underground ghost town.

Around the buildings with broken out windows was a tall fence that clearly said no trespassing. Also, it was known cops patrolled that fence. None of us was brave enough to get to the tunnels by crossing it. On the other hand, it was known that some of the neighboring houses, where the staff lived, had access to the tunnels. The dark building across the busy street from us we thought might be such a house.

When the traffic cleared we bolted over the pavement and to the side of the house. Behind some overgrown bushes we found the door unlocked and already open. Quiet as I could I gave instructions. Don't be loud, be careful where you step and no flashlights on the main floor.

My heart was pounding.

The floor was thick with dust and every room smelled like mold. This place had been out of use for a long time. It felt like it could fall in on us. A small stained mattress was in one of the rooms. Someone took a lone ace of hearts from the floor of the kitchen. Not much here even for souvenirs and definitely no mystery doors to the tunnels.

Time was ticking, so I quietly rounded everybody up. Before we went back to our cars, we decided to check out the back. A big, almost industrial, pole barn was back there. In we went.

The place had a concrete floor. It was mostly empty. A few unmarked 55 gallon drums. I would suspect this place could have been used for a large tractor or bulldozer, but there were no signs of them. Strangely, what there was, was a four foot by four foot hole in the middle of the floor.

Soon the group of stood around this hole speculating. Had we found it? What ever was down there was big. There was a room down there, but you couldn't see the walls. It had a dirty concrete floor, like a basement or a tunnel entrance. There was a structural pole beside the hole down, but there would be no way to get back up. None of us had a rope.

Around that hole, that fall night, we agreed to ourselves, this was one stone we couldn't leave unturned. We would come back with a rope.