Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Letchworth

I’m panicking as we walk up the stairs from my basement to the kitchen. My parents are in the process of getting dinner together and we break the news that Nicky isn’t feeling good. Asthma attack. My blood turned to ice for the second time in two hours when she mentioned it to me.

I made record time getting her home to her inhaler, and a steam bath.

To make a long story short, she felt better soon thereafter, but missed dinner with my family and our evening meal was considerably lonelier without her.

After an hour or so, I went and picked her up again, finding that she was back to normal and eager to talk about what transpired at our most recent trip to the Village. Letchworth Village.

It was memorable for the amount of ground we covered in such a short amount of time, the encounters we had with ‘something’, and that I brought my good buddy Dave along for the trip.

After dishing out the flashlights to everybody, we got to the first building, a dormitory by the looks of it, with the front door wide open. Dave led the way, and we got a good tour of the ground floor of the building. The familiar smell of decay and must permeated the air. Venturing into unknown territory, we poked our heads in and out of the rooms along the hallway and were impressed with the lack of graffiti along them. Sure, it was there, but it looks like this building doesn’t appeal much to the vandals.

Perhaps it’s because as soon as we got ten feet away from the front door, it slammed behind us. And the same with the exit door. Wham!

Maybe it was drafty.

We walk around the property near the powerhouse for a bit and decide to venture into the largest building I’d yet seen. From the outside, it looked rather small, but appearances are deceiving and the large airplane-hanger-sized building, dark and odd, was pretty cool on the inside. I stepped on a metal sheet on the floor and saw that there was a space under it. Shining the beam from my light into a small hole, the cavern below looked to be about thirty feet deep with what looked like a forklift down there. Whatever it was, it was yellow and looked like it said HILTI on the top of it. Maybe this is the entrance to the tunnels I keep hearing about, sealed off by the local DPW so no one gets stuck down there.

So we continued into the neighboring power-plant and began checking out the mechanical system when we heard a painfully loud BOOM! Followed by two more as we slunk out of the building.

Walking along the exterior of the building, we entered the lower portion of the building, in the basement area for the life of me, I heard two men’s voices whispering softly. I shout

“Who’s there?”

Nothing. Then BANG!

“If someone is there, make that noise again.” I spoke clearly, like I was talking to someone who wasn’t familiar with English, or, as I look back on it, the way I speak to people with apparent intellectual deficiencies.

“Alex, there’s nothing here, it might have been the wind or-”

BANG!

“Did you work here?”

Nothing.

“Were you a patient here?”

A five second pause than BANG!

“Do you want to talk to us?”

Nothing.

“Do you want us to leave?”

Nothing.

“Alex, the banging is coming from that way, we best head in that direction.”

So we did, and entered another part of the basement.

“I’m back!”

Nothing.

“Were you a patient here?”

This time, the bang was fainter, like the striker was loosing enthusiasm.

“Do you want to talk to us?”

Nothing.

“Do you want us to leave?”

This time, I heard a very soft thud. Taking it’s advice, we the area and poked around some buildings used for storage and maintenance equipment, all razed and tattooed with graffiti. I don’t have too many good-quality pics to show, mainly because of bad lighting and a shaky hand, we focused more on simply exploring this time, rather than documenting our trip.

For Dave’s first trip to a place like this, I think he had a good time and his eagerness to walk headlong into darkness with his light off shows bravery that few I explore with possess.

Be Legendary,

-AK






Creeeeeepy place.



I just want my phone call. -The Joker


I think this one came out pretty good.


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Would that include us?



I'm starting to think of this place as like the place from the song Hotel California:
You can check-out any time you like... but you can never leave

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love finding places like that. We don't have many places like that in the deep south. Just a few, but the few we have are normally a little more intact.

How common is that stuff up North?

AK The Jefe said...

theres places like this literally everywhere. A lot have been torn down or are too heavily patrolled to go to, but within a half hour drive of my house, theres probably 4 or 5 places like this.

-AK