Creator: plaidrussel
☀this was taken from reddit credit goes to the original author
. []
Like the title says, I just re-purchased my childhood home from the previous owners, who bought it from my folks when I was in college. My folks passed away a few years ago (basically one after the other, we figured as much) but I feel close to them here. Overall the experience has been awesome. That being said, there's an unavoidable issue and that's the attic tunnel.
My little brother and I were fucking around up there one day and stumbled across this door tucked in a really weird spot in the floor by the back eaves. It's weird because you have to literally crawl to get to it. There's less than two feet of clearance between it and the ceiling. We tried to open it but it was stuck shut, so we got our parents and they couldn't figure it out either. They'd never seen it before or even known that it was there. It was definitely hollow underneath, but it was stuck shut so we couldn't open it to verify. From the outside there's absolutely no sign that anything is weird about the house. We even went as far as to unearth the blueprints to see if maybe it was a hidden crawlspace but nope, nothing. It was a real curiosity for a few days but eventually other stuff just kind of took precedence and we all forgot about it except when we were up there for whatever. I'm sure my dad tried to open it a few times, just can't remember exactly when or how. Either way, it passed out of memory and when the house was sold we never had any questions from the new owners.
I graduated college and was lucky enough to almost instantly land a really good job that set me up well. Parents passed away, and about six months ago I got a call from a friend who still lived in the area that my old house was up for sale. I had enough to comfortably buy it (not outright but a good portion) so I put in an offer without even seeing what shape it was in. Maybe a stupid move but I figured that I could always hire someone to put it back in order. Turns out I was the only bidder, and I got it! I was SUPER fucking excited, and since my job is remote it wasn't a problem to move. I did ask to speak to the previous owners just to get a sense of what their experience with the house was like, but the realtor said that they had already relocated and didn't want to be contacted. A little weird but again, whatever. I figured maybe someone in their family had died or something and the circumstances weren't the best. Sucks for them, but AWESOME for me. I got to move back into the house I grew up in- and not only do that but decorate it the way I always wanted it to be. I.e lots of furniture with cushions for building forts, always-stocked junk cupboards, etc. It's been a pretty emotional thing for me, but my God does it feel good to have my old house back.
I was actually having so much fun I totally forgot about the weird attic until about a week ago when I was chucking some stuff up there. It's one of those attics with a pull-down ladder, and it's a large area, basically spanning the length of the house. Pretty much like every horror movie attic ever. I was up there moving some stuff around and I noticed that door. All those memories came flooding back.
I was a little nervous but after some internal manning up I thoroughly checked it out and the thing was definitely sealed with some kind of rubber cement or epoxy. Not well, either. I got some solvent and got through it quick. The door doesn't open all the way, it's too close to the ceiling, and the space is almost too small to fit through. I can't tell if the design is stupidity or some kind of deterrent to anyone trying to go down it. Maybe both? Anyway, I'm a big enough dude that I couldn't squeeze into the space the door provided. So, naturally, I took the damn thing off. Not with elegance, mind you, but I got it off. After getting a flashlight and lowering it about a foot down this thing here's what I can tell you as of right now:
It's a square 'tunnel' going straight down, and is just wide enough for a person, about three-and-a-half feet on almost all sides. One side is slightly shorter for some reason, not by much but noticeably enough. Seems intentional but I can't imagine why. There appears to be a set of wooden rails running down one side, however I'd have to actually lower myself in there to know if it's a ladder. For some reason they don't start until about five feet down. Basically, you have to hang off the edge to get your feet on what I assume must be a top step. Weird right? My best guess is it's some kind of like, air conditioning duct? It would have to have been installed by the new owners if that's the case, since the house wasn't built with anything like that. My other thought was that maybe it was a laundry shoot but again, it's not in the original blueprints.
My current plan is to check out the basement for any sign of an exit. Failing that, I'll probably just get in there and see where it goes. Maybe not the smartest thing but what the hell, it's my house so I can kill myself with it if I want.
It's pretty weird, even I'll admit that. But I don't feel unsafe here or anything. No matter what, it's still my safe childhood house. Nothing can change that.
Alright, so with everyone telling me that going into it was a bad idea I decided to try and explore the house first to rule out something like a dumbwaiter or an Underground Railroad type situation. I started by going into the attic and dropping a small aquarium marble down into it (my fish have plenty more so no worries). It banged off the side once, and I can say with mostly certainty that the shaft is paneled with wood, which to me rules out any kind of duct system. I couldn't hear it hit anything at the bottom, though, so I suspect it's probably going into the basement, maybe to some kind of storage space or something. Again, a laundry shoot seems most likely. I had kind of a stroke of inspiration and decided to try contacting my realtor about the house to see if maybe he knows anything about it. I'm still waiting on a response but hopefully he'll get back to me tomorrow or Monday. Either way, it'll be interesting to see what he says.
So I dropped the marble in there and then decided to try and 'follow' it down into the basement. Along the way I tapped on the walls but it must be behind them because they're not hollow at all. Because of where they are there's only two rooms that might connect to it, and neither of those have a space for accessing it. The walls are definitely solid, and always have been. That, for me, conclusively ruled out the dumbwaiter theory. What would be the point of having a chute that's only accessible on two floors?
Right about then is when I started reading a lot of the comments and succeeded in scaring the shit out of myself. I act like I'm fine with it but I REALLY do not want to find a fucking body in this thing. That would suck on a bunch of levels. I know a lot of people are convinced that's what it is though, so I'm trying to brace myself for it.
Anyway I was 100% too freaked out to even attempt to go into this thing until I know for a fact what's down there so I limited the rest of my search to the basement. Which is where I noticed that the room isn't a perfect square. It's ALSO short on one side, by just a bit. If you stand in the middle and look around you can actually tell that there's something a little wonk about the way the angles and stuff are. My best guess is that the foundations have shifted, but it's interesting to have the two be similar that way. Old house, probably old carpentry. Handmade, that whole thing.
So the basement is mostly finished but it's not aesthetically pleasing or meant to be. There's an old bathroom down here that doesn't do much except exist, the water doesn't run to it so it's not usable. It's on the opposite wall from the tunnel though, so it's not related I'd assume. The wall where the tunnel is is solid, just like the other floors. The basement is underground so I can't exactly go busting through the wall to try and see if maybe there was an access hatch at one point. But after using a flashlight and going over just about every inch of that wall I can safely say that there is no access to it, and never has been. This, to me, means one of two things: The tunnel is either a failed attempt at installing some kind of laundry hatch, or it's just some weird quirk of the house.
My next steps are to get the glowsticks and drop those down in there to see where it goes. After that, I'll get a broom or something and test to see if there is in fact a ladder in there. I won't go in it until I'm sure it's reasonably safe, and I'll get a friend to come over and spot me just in case.
I did spend some time checking the tunnel out just lying on my stomach and looking in, and here's what I can say about it: the sides as far down as I can see are wood paneled, which I expected. No writing on the sides, and more importantly no brackets or mounting plates for equipment. The air in there is pretty much the same temperature as the house but it almost feels pressurized? I don't know if maybe it's the closeness of the space that makes the air feel denser but you can definitely tell. I also listened in there and can't hear anything. Shined my phone down but there's no light at all so I can't really say much about depth or anything. Once the glowsticks get here we can finally see what's at the bottom!
It's unrelated, but while I was going through things in the process of checking the tunnel out I found a really cool hand-crank flashlight in my parents' stuff. It looks really beat up but it works, it's pretty cool! I found that, some rope (from Christmas trees past I assume), and I bought one of those old-person grabber hooks so I can lower a flashlight in there to see what's going on if the glowsticks don't work for whatever reason. It's pretty insane having something like this in my house, to be honest. Now that I'm spending time thinking about it I can't seem to get it out of my mind. Like what is it for?? It's like finding a safe behind a painting and having it be full of feathers. Just totally nonsensical. Old houses have quirks but this just seems... excessive. I was thinking of all those stories you hear of people finding mourning jewelry in their walls, or worse. I did a little snooping around online and couldn't find anything quite like my situation. It did remind me of something though.
After my brother and I found the door, my Dad was really adamant about us not fucking around with it. Which I found odd, because how did he know what was inside it? He'd warn us that it was really dangerous and that we didn't know where it led. At the time I brushed it off but now I'm wondering if my Dad actually got it open and knew it was just a shute to nowhere? If so, why wouldn't he just tell us that? Maybe because he didn't want us to know it COULD be opened? I really wish I could ask them.
This whole thing really makes me miss them.
Cue today.
Right off the bat, there's something fucking weird going on with this tunnel. Like it was weird to begin with but I could really use some advice on what to do next. I'm like, 100% out of my league.
So I got the glowsticks, and I also found some Christmas tree lights. Some of the ones on the end were broken but luckily it still worked. I didn't know what all I'd need, so I brought up a bunch of stuff. I can't believe I'm saying it but I even had my fucking handgun in case some rabid bats or whatever flew out. Stupid but I'm so freaked out about dead bodies and rats and shit that I had to do it. Thanks a lot for that. The other stuff was just things I figured I'd need, like a first aid kit and a few more marbles. I used a book to brace the door open and I tried to be pretty systematic with my tests.
First was the marble. I did one and listened REALLY carefully but I still couldn't hear it hit anything. Then I broke a glowstick and dropped it in there. It fell.
And fell.
It didn't hit bottom. It just kept falling until I couldn't see anything. Now I'm not a fucking genius but I should be able to see that even if it's in the basement, right? The house is two stories, with the attic as maybe a half story. There's no way it can be deep enough to lose the glowstick in. I dropped the entire fucking pack down there. Nothing. Wherever they're going it's not visible from the attic. I broke out the Christmas lights and got them working. I lowered them in to see what would happen. With the added light, I could see that the walls are panelled with wood most of the way down. At what I'd guess is basement-level, it appears to stop. I don't know what it's made of after that. What I DO know is that I had about 20 feet of light in there before the lowest bulbs blew out.
I hauled the string back up and saw that they literally BLEW OUT. The bulbs were shattered and while the string WAS admittedly very cold it's winter and I imagine that space isn't heated. Possibly a faulty wire or something in there but it's just another weird thing in this chain of weird things.
Which leads me back to something I noticed the first time I really examined it. The short side of the tunnel isn't that noticeable at first, but it looks like as the tunnel goes down it gets much more pronouced. But the width stays the same. I think it's curving, but I still can't decide if that's intentional or not. Again, no markings of any kind, no nails or brackets inside. I DID confirm that it is a ladder that I can see, it goes down as far as I could get my light to go. I think the time for me to go down is fast approaching but that begs the question of how to do it without killing myself. Should I use rope? Get a harness of some kind? I'll have to do more research. Maybe ask my friend who's more outdoorsy than me.
Oh, I got some private messages asking about my parents, and if I think that they might have gotten killed by something in there. I'd like to clarify a few things about that.
My parents were really great people even though we had some hard times. Things got especially tough when I was little, maybe in the sixth grade. My Dad lost his job and things were tight. His relationship with Mom really suffered. It seemed like he got very distant and... not cold, really, just kind of distant. Things got better once he got a job at a construction site, but he and my mom didn't seem to really 'click' the same way anymore. That's not to say that they weren't happy, but I'm sure the emotional toll of not providing for us was a big blow to him. I left for college and after that I didn't hear much about their relationship. I'd go home for the holidays and stuff but everything seemed mostly fine.
Then my mom got sick, and Dad COMPLETELY turned a corner. He wanted to be by her side constantly, was always checking up on her and making sure she was okay. Her cancer, unfortunately, was very wide-spread and there was very little the doctors could do for her. Once it was obvious we were looking at paliative care instead of a cure, Dad's health started to take a turn for the worst. He was very close-mouthed about his own illness, probably because he didn't want us to worry. The only time he ever even hinted at it was when he made it clear that if something happened to him, he wanted us to move on and not mourn for him.
It was a really hard time. Both of my parents were basically dying and there was jack shit I could do. My mom passed away about a year after getting diagnosed, and in her will she made it clear she didn't want us to see her body. I'm sure people will think it's some kind of way for us to prevent seeing the 'real' her but the truth is that she wanted us to remember her alive, not as a body. We had her cremated and spread the ashes in her garden. Shortly after, I got a call at school from my brother letting me know that Dad had passed as well. Same deal, cremation and spreading the ashes where we spread Mom's.
Maybe it was melodramatic but I couldn't help but think, like, 'I'm an orphan now.' That's why I don't like to talk about it much. My Dad wasn't be best person but I loved him and he never did anything to hurt me or my brother. Everything he did, I know he did out of love for us. The only time he ever got mad at us was when we really fucked up. Like when he warned us not to play around the tunnel. We ended up ignoring him at first but when he caught us he was LIVID. He probably knew that we could have really hurt ourselves. He was really caring like that. He took care of Mom to the end, and died right behind her. I remember once, after we knew that the cancer was fatal, he did all this research to try and find out EXACTLY how much time she had left. I asked him why and he said he wanted to know, down to the minute, how long he had with her so that he could be by her side the entire time. In the end he was pretty close, off by a couple weeks but still. That's how well he knew her. That's why I say none of us were really surprised when he got sick.
I think I am gonna go down it, though. The more I think about it the more I kind of just want to solve it so I can stop thinking about all this. There's so much emotional stuff tied up in it that I really just want to solve it once and for all so that I can go back to my normal life. For some reason it feels like I'm just spriraling downward into these memories and it's kind of overwhelming. Maybe I never really grieved for them. I dunno.
I'll probably go down tomorrow night. I'll call a friend and tell them to hang out with me in case I fall and kill myself or something. Or fall into a pile of corpses. Either way, it'll be good to have someone there.
Alright. So. Huh. I guess I'll just tell this in chronological order.
So first off I heard from the realtor. They contacted the people I bought it from and acted like they were just curious if they'd ever had any poor experiences with the house. The owners told him that they just didn't really feel that the neighborhood suited them. No ghostly experiences or anything like that. I asked that my realtor give them my number but I haven't heard from them. However, I did a little digging and here's what I know:
So the house was built by a family about a hundred-fifty years ago. Like I said, we're in an OLD area. So the family that built it lived in it and passed it down until the last few members died out. I guess no one had any kids so the bank took ownership. I found all this out through public record, but I don't really know the details of the sale to my parents. I assume they bought it from the bank.
My buddy came over around five after work and I basically gave him a rundown of everything I know so far. He agreed for the most part, but I could tell he thought it was some prank I was pulling. I had asked him to bring over some climbing stuff and even though he didn't know why I wanted him to he came through. One of the things he brought was a little flashlight, and he said the first thing to do was lower something brighter than a glowstick in there. The rope was about 90', and we got just about two-thirds of it in there before it started getting pulled to the left. The tunnel was curving, like a spiral.
That's the best way I can describe it. Reminded me of how a magnet on a string acts when it's being attracted to another one. The light also flickered and we thought it would go out but it was tougher than the other lights and stayed on. By that point my buddy was 100% in agreement that shit was really not normal. That must explain why the glowsticks never hit bottom. They got sucked into and beyond that curve.
We lowered the light in as far as we could, and lost sight of it. By our estimate the curve becomes really noticeable around 75 feet down. I was all for going down right away but my buddy is smarter than me and insisted that we do a few more checks. He sort of rigged a system up that was tied to one of the bigger beams and attached a harness to it. He was VERY insisted on it being just a piece of shit thing that would never be as totally safe but I have to admit my adrenaline was going and I NEEDED to know what was in there.
He got the thing all rigged up but when I asked for the harness he wouldn't give it to me. I said, give me the damn thing, and he refused. He kept saying no, it's not safe, I'm the only one trained to do this, all that stuff. And I tried to be respectful about it but we started arguing pretty bad. Then he threatened to take his entire set up down and out and I VERY reluctantly agreed to let him go down first to check it out.
He put on some kind of respirator thing like I've seen constriction workers wear and got himself all rigged up in the harness. He's a bigger dude so it was a tight fucking fit for him under that roof. So much so that I thought maybe he wasn't gonna fit at all. But he managed to cram himself inside and test his weight down on the ladder. It was fine, totally solid, and he started down with me holding a really big camping flashlight to give him as much light as possible.
Everything was fine until he got about 30 feet down. We'd been talking and then suddenly his voice cut off. It scared the shit out of me. I could see him but it was like he was behind a wall, no sound at all. Afterward, he said he couldn't hear me either, and he came back up, calling the whole time. From my end, he was totally silent until a very specific height, when suddenly I could hear him again. We narrowed it down to just about where we figured the basement would be. 32 feet, give or take. Which means that this tunnel is going WELL below the basement.
He got almost triple that before he had to stop and come back up. His voice was really shaky. He said, it's fucking cold down there. I didn't really realize what he meant at the time so I just asked if he was gonna stop. At first he said no, but then he went back down and it seemed like he got stuck going around that curve. He tried a few different ways but because of the angle he didn't have enough clearance. The tunnel doesn't exactly get narrower but my friend was having some trouble anyway (he's a BIG fucking dude) and for some reason just couldn't seem to get the right angle to make that curve. It seemed like it took him forever to get back up. We regrouped.
He said at that specific point a little over 30 feet down, it was like going into ice water. Freezing cold, no sound. He couldn't even really hear himself, he was super muffled. He said it wasn't like anything he'd ever experienced before, and did I really want to go down? Of course I said yes, and he got me all strapped in to the harness. I'm small, it runs in my family, so I had no problem getting down inside.
The ladder is made of the same wood as the rest of the house, and is basically just blocks of wood hammered into the side. As you go down the curve is VERY noticeable, much more so than if you were just looking at it. At the point where you hit the basement, the panelling gives way to dirt that's shored up with some occasional planks. At around the same point, you go through that barrier and it's shocking to the system. Takes your breath away. There's also a pressure change- my ears popped really painfully.
Since I was going down feet first I couldn't really see what was below me. I felt the curve more than saw it. I gave my friend a thumbs-up and started the turn.
I went down for over five minutes, guys. I timed it. Now admittedly I was going slow but I can't even express how wrong it felt to just keep going down into this fucking endless hole. There was a point where I really seriously started getting scared that I was never gonna find the end of this thing. It was that long. Then all of a sudden I went to take another step and my foot landed in something that rolled under me and almost send me on my ass. I kicked it all aside and got my feet under me. Solid ground. Cold through my shoes. I pointed the smaller flashlight at the ground.
The glowsticks. Still glowing. And farther away in what was basically a closet-sized room, the marbles. Holy shit.
The room is small, like I said, and open at one end, where it appears to continue downward in that same circular way. There is no natural light, and the air is INCREDIBLY cold. I only spent a few minutes down there but I was frozen by the time I left, which was quickly. I was nervous being down too long without my friend knowing what was going on.
Needless to say he was pissed that he couldn't get in but neither of us was willing to call it quits. Communication down there was an issue, though, since after a few failed attempts at my calling from the room, we concluded that electronics didn't seem to like working down there. We decided we'd do things on a time limit instead. I'd go down for half an hour at the most and come right back when time was up. If I didn't show, he'd call the cops. He wasn't crazy on it but by then he was dying to know what it was just as much as me.
In total, I spent about two hours down in what I just started thinking of as the sub-basement. The walls are some kind of grey rock. They're smooth, no markings or seams. Completely dark, no lights of any kind. I didn't have the balls to turn off my light to verify that though. The ground is dirt, and there's no sign of prior traffic except a place that's scuffed right by the edge of the ladder, near where my own marks are. The hallway leading down, out of the room, is wider than the tunnel coming down. I followed that for a ways, but it seemed like the space was getting wider and I didn't want to risk getting lost. Everything looks the same down there.
The entire time I was going down this hallway, farther into the ground, it kept getting colder and colder. The walls were almost painful to touch. My nose hairs were freezing together, and about then is when I turned back. That second time through I noticed something I'd missed coming in. It was lying out of my line of sight, near the right wall. Something green.
A piece of a string of Christmas tree lights. It must have fallen off when I lowered it and gotten stuck to my shoe. I don't know how else it would have gotten there.
Up top, I was so cold my buddy had to help me out. I had no use of my hands. It was like I'd been in a deep freezer. I got into the shower and stayed there for almost and hour trying to warm up. My buddy agreed to stay the night in case i needed help or something.
He has tomorrow off, and I've agreed to wait until he comes over again to do anything else. I'm going to buy some heavy winter gear to take down with me, as well as some fishing line and chalk to mark my way. I'm also bringing a tape measure and some paper so I can draw out what this place looks like roughly. If there's anything else I should bring let me know.
I don't really know what else to say about it. It's beyond strange. Impossible. I don't know what to think. I had no idea this thing was under my house and I want to know why it's there. Why there's ZERO record of anyone even knowing about it. I'm gonna look around in the attic to see if maybe there's stuff up there from the previous owners that they forgot or something.
I feel really sick today for some reason, though, so I'm not feeling up to much. I'll do it tomorrow first thing.The night I posted the last update, I went to bed aching with a fever. I've been running it basically ever since. I feel absolutely awful. Everything aches. I've got a couple of kanker sores too. Didn't stop me from doing things, but made it a little more difficult. Don't try to scare me with radiation poisoning, by the way, I have a geiger counter coming but until then the last thing I need is to be freaking out about that.
The previous owner got in touch with me, first off. She was very nice, answered all my questions.
She and her husband grew up in the area (they're the age my parents would be, maybe older) and I guess the family that built this place was kind of notorious for being pretty weird. They stayed at home basically constantly, no one seemed to work outside the house and they didn't talk much except amongst themselves. Someone spread a rumor once that the girls- the last kids who lived there- had made some comments about being expected to be at home all the time. That they were 'in charge' of it, and that they weren't allowed to leave for too long in case something happened. We talked a little more but that's basically the only useful information I got from her aside from her apologizing for my mother's death. Turns out she HAD met them a few times in the course of the sale, and really liked them. I thanked her and said that I was just happy to be back in my house. She said she was sure my dad would be very happy for me, and I said I was sure he would too.
My dad has been on my mind a lot lately. Probably with good reason. He lied to me.
While I was super sick, I wasn't able to do much except lie in bed and suffer. But I had a lot of time to think, and maybe you guys will have already put this together but I guess I'm stupid and it took me longer. Mostly I thought about the Christmas lights. Remember that piece I found last time I went down? Well, as soon as I could physically drag myself up to the attic, I found the string I'd used and checked the end of it. It was frayed. Like it had been broken at some point. I don't know how it still worked and frankly it doesn't really matter. I can say with almost 100% certainty that they matched. I didn't bring the piece up with me, but you can bet I'll do it next time. And if it's true, that means those lights have been down there before. Which means I'm not the first person in there. And the only person I can think of who WOULD have been- in my family anyway- is my dad.
I mentioned before that my dad had gotten PISSED the day he caught me and my brother fucking around with the entrance. I can't remember what we were doing exactly but it involved crawling around in the corners looking for stuff, probably change we thought we might find or something. I found it first, and I got my brother to try and help me open it, but it was glued shut. We were in the process of trying to use a ruler we found to pry part of it up when Dad caught us. He didn't just scream at us, I remember that now. He actually dragged our asses downstairs and threatened to ban us from the upstairs if we ever did that again. This was after he'd lost his job, and had started acting so much more hostile than he had before. It was a complete overreaction that I chalked up to him being stressed about work.
But what if he wasn't? What if he KNEW there was something down there and didn't want us to find it? It makes sense that he'd use the lights to go explore down there, and why I found that flashlight so easily. Did something attack him while he was down there? What happened that scared him so bad he yelled at us like that? What if that's why he lost his job? Like it sounds ridiculous but if he was so stressed about the tunnel that he stopped working well and lost his job? What sucks is that I have NO way to verify any of it. It's not like I can just ask him.
Later that same night that he caught us, I noticed my hands were sticky. At the time I didn't connect the two things but now I'm almost positive they were connected. That glue was fresh, around the door. He had to have resealed it. And he wouldn't have had to do that unless he'd opened it himself in the first place. What the fuck was going on? How much did he know?
I felt well enough this morning to go back down for a bit. I've been feeling really hot so it actually felt pretty nice down there. The pressure change was hell on my ears but once you get down inside it it's not bad. And yes, I went alone. If there's anything in there that could hurt me I don't want my friend being involved. It's not his fault my house is completely fucked. I didn't go far enough to find the light segment, I was too exhausted, but I got to the first room and just sort of sat in there listening. Guys, I cannot even stress how cold it is down there. The stone or concrete or whatever the place is made of is like sitting on ice. There's also a weird feeling to the place that's harder to explain. It's like, you know when you're in a tall building you're aware that you're high up? It's sort of like that. Like there's all this space under me. God willing I can go down farther soon and finally see where it leads to.
It's so quiet down there. Just sitting in there, made me think of another memory.
Like I said before, Dad lost his job and started to change. Got much more angry with us, much more hostile toward Mom, etc. If he knew what was under our house, he probably hated himself for moving us there and endangering us. Then Mom got sick. And he was SO totally different. Always hovering around her and making sure she was okay. Sometimes it felt a little different than that, though. Like he KNEW what was happening to her and felt... guilty? I don't know.
One day, when the chemo was getting stronger and she was feeling really bad, I got a call from him at school, which was weird because he wasn't the type to do that. I asked him what was up, and he said, 'well I just need to know what it is your mother is asking for.' That's exactly how he said it too, 'your mother'. The guy was absolutely out of it from worrying and staying up so late every night. I said sure, okay, what did he need? And he asked me, 'she keeps talking about Scooter, how she wishes Scooter was around. What is she talking about?' Well that just about made my heart stop. Scooter is the nickname she gave me when I was really little because I didn't learn to crawl right, I'd just scoot around on my butt everywhere. He KNEW that. That's when I really started to think that something was wrong, that maybe he was getting sick too. How could he forget something like that?
My plan for my next trip down is this: I'll bring the geiger counter, which is coming today. I'm also bringing a pen and paper so I can sketch out the room, and a level to see if anything is sloped. I'll bring a thermometer, some food, and water. I'm gonna figure this thing out. I am NOT going to sit around like my dad did and pretend it doesn't exist.
Maybe that original family knew it to. Maybe they felt like they had to protect everyone from getting hurt. I guess maybe that's why they all died out. Maybe they got tired of having to sit around in a fucked up house. Or maybe the stress killed them. I don't know.
I feel so fucking sick. The inside of my mouth is starting to peel.
I'm really starting to regret buying this house.
Like the title says, this will be my last update. There's nothing left to say besides what I'm writing here. I've done all I can.
I got an old camping backpack out of my dad's things. Took his crank flashlight, a measuring tape, energy bars, water, rope, Christmas lights, stuffed it all in there with the geiger counter and planned as if I wasn't coming back. I didn't know. I wrote my buddy a text but he never responded. Maybe he's mad at me for involving him. I know I would be if I were him. I'm glad he's the only one I have to be guilty about. Imagine if I'd taken up some of the offers to come and help me out.
The counter I used is the GQ GMC-300. Since it's so small I just had it looped around my wrist and was checking it periodically. It was totally normal until I hit that barrier. I thought it would shut off like everything else. The display died in a few places and then kept going. There were a few dead places in the screen but it surprisingly kept running. Sometimes it would fuck up, though, glitch out a little, so maybe my numbers won't be 100% accurate. They don't really need to be though. It was pretty obvious when the change happened.
As SOON as we passed that barrier, the reading jumped to almost .21 mr/m. Now I went down there totally ignorant of what the readings meant. Call me stupid, call me whatever. The fact of the matter is that I've already been down enough that nothing I do from here out matters. I didn't want to risk getting freaked out too much to continue. The reading stayed around that through the tunnel and into the first room. Fluctuated a bit but not enough to note. I figured, okay, that's definitely not normal but certainly not enough to worry about, surely. As I made my way down to the other room, the reading slowly crept up. .25. .34. By the time I was down in the largest room it was at 2. I took a break there and gathered myself. I pulled out the string of lights and compared it to the scrap I found last time. It's a 100% match. You can see where it was torn off the larger string, and pretty much match up the individual strands. I pocketed the strand, I don't really know why, and kept moving.
In addition to the counter I also brought a handheld mercury thermometer. At the start of the slope down out of the second room, the temp was holding steady at about 15F. Now anything beyond that was unexplored, so I prepped myself. I had a permanant marker and I made a little 'tick' on the wall in case it branched out from there on and I got lost or something. While I was doing that I noticed a little imperfection in the wall. A little gouge mark. Now of course that's not normally anything amazing but in this case, the walls were PERFECTLY smooth, no cracks or anything, so whatever did that did it intentionally. My guess? My dad had the same idea. Like father like son. Haha.
From this point, the hallway dipped down into a gradual slope downward in a spiral. Up until this point I wasn't sure if that was intentional or not. It is. I'm not gonna bother posting all the measurements I took but suffice it to say I measured every wall of both rooms, the tunnel entrance, and a bunch of other places. I worked it out, looked up the sequence to verify my suspicions. Without getting too much ahead, the measurements are consistent all the way down. The house, the tunnel, EVERYTHING, they are all on the same sequence. I'm sorry, I'm so scattered. I'll come back to this in a bit. Keep it in mind, though.
So the hall sloping down went on for a long, long time. Not like 'oh this is kind of a long walk' long. Like, 'I have been walking for hours and my feet are tired' long. I didn't bother timing it. Maybe I should have. I was too preoccupied with the counter and thermometer. For every, I want to say fifth of a mile I went, the temp dropped and the geiger counter rose. 10F, 2F, -5F. 21mr/m, 37, 58. Most of you are shitting yourselves, I'm sure. I had the benefit of ignorance. I assumed those numbers worked like temperatures. I'm sure you guys know better.
I walked. And walked. And walked. I had a watch but down there time was meaningless. I sort of kept pace of things by my thoughts. I thought about my dad. About how he changed so suddenly. How strange he acted before mom got sick. Do you know what it's like to have every memory of your parents called into question? Every motive, every sentence? I keep trying to remember anything I can. What did he say about us, how did he say it, was he always forgetful afterward? What happened to him down here? I'll be honest, I had no intention of ever leaving. I figured I'd go down and never come back. I left a letter taped to the front door in case I vanished. My buddy still hasn't answered, but I left him a detailed message about where I was. I told him under NO circumstances should he send anyone after me. Just seal the entrance and tell the cops I died in an accident. Whatever it took to keep them out. This place is bad. It doesn't feel evil, but it isn't cozy either.
I reached another room after a long, long time. Maybe double the size of the last. The hall was widening out, too. The place was getting bigger the farther I went. By now it was about -32F, and the walls were coated with frost. A mist hung in the air. Don't ask me how I was breathing down there, maybe oxygen seeped in after so many years of this place being around. I took a break to eat a quick snack. The counter was holding between 85 and 100. I was starting to feel sick again. Like the last one, the room was bare, stark. The floor was so cold it seeped through my three layers and chilled me to the bone. Even my parka wasn't helping much at that point. I'd looked up the symptoms of frostbite, and my nose and cheeks were starting to show the early stages of it. I'd brought one of those biking balaclavas and I put it on.
You know how if you sit in a really quiet room, you can hear your heart? It was like that, almost like the whole area was soundproofed, muffled. I could hear my blood in my ears. There's some room in a studio somewhere that is the quietest place on Earth, so quiet you go crazy if you stay too long. That's how it felt down there. I tried singing while I was resting but it was worse, somehow. I don't think that place was built to have noise in it. It just sounded wrong.
I knew if I stayed put too long I would eventually just not be able to get up, like the climbers who die on Everest because they stop and rest. So I forced myself up and kept going. I can't give an accurate depiction of the loneliness and non-life of this place. As the passage widened out, it started getting echoey. I lost track of the ceiling but kept one hand against a wall to keep my bearings. I found a few more of those tick marks, but they don't seem necessary really. It's just one long hall, no mazes or anything. I don't get the sense it was built to be a trap. Both numbers kept rising and falling, respectively. I didn't know what the numbers meant but even I was smart enough to know the ones on the counter were getting serious. They were rising MUCH faster now. Skipping entire decimal places. 200. 400. 800. It seemed like every few feet I went, it just got worse and worse.
The process of going, finding a new room, and passing through it repeated I don't know how many times. I'm so stupid, I should have been more careful about recording exact distance. But I had this horrible sense of... futility? Like nothing I did would matter anyway. Whatever this place was built for, it wasn't being used anymore. It felt abandoned. I was accutely aware that I was the only one down here.
Then, a little farther on, I found a glove. I recognized it as my Dad's, it was distinctive because of the fur lining. I remember when he stopped using them, we all asked about it. He loved those gloves, and he never even talked about losing one. Just said he must have lost it somewhere, and that was that. Above it on the wall, something scratched into the wall. It was hard to read, but I think it said '4m'. Maybe that's a reference to distance. Four fucking miles. This thing goes FOUR MILES under my god damn house. It makes me angry. Why my house? Why here? WHY ALL OF IT?? Couldn't they have put it somewhere where no one would find it? Why HERE????
I'll spare you the rest of the walk. It's just more of the same. More hallway, more rooms, more cold. God it was so cold. I've never experienced anything like that. I walked for, God. Days? Weeks? Years? It feels like I've been gone my entire life. Maybe it's so cold time freezes down there too. I don't know. Anything is possible. The geiger counter had long passed the hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Even I knew what that had to mean.
The last room came abruptly. The hall led into it and stopped. There was no other exit. No two walls were the same length. I measured. 8x13x34x21. I wasn't surprised. Maybe you're smart enough to have figured it out. The entire house, the tunnel, the halls, the rooms. It's all Fibonacci's numbers. I had to do some Googling but it all checks out. The entire fucking thing is built in a perfect Fibonacci spiral. I looked that up too. It's a sacred shape. It's life, it's found in nature of all kinds. I can only guess why it was so important to build it that way.
That last room, the ceiling was so high I couldn't see it even with the flashlight. It was snowing. Did you know it can snow underground? Maybe it can't. Maybe by then I was so utterly fucked that nothing was the way it seemed. Temperature: -89. Geiger counter: 377,000. I threw up as soon as I entered the room and couldn't stop. I felt weak, dizzy. My skin prickled. The snow felt electrically charged. It had no shape. The snowflakes themselves, the little crystals were all wrong. Not pretty like they should have been. Mutated. Points in all directions. Even the snow knew it didn't belong down there.
I don't even know if the floor was really the floor. It was all snow. For all I know, it just kept going down forever. Take it away, maybe I would have fallen forever. In the corner was a hump of snow, the only thing in the room that didn't belong.
I think I knew by then what it was. I guess somewhere along that long walk I put it all together and just didn't want to admit it. Who would want to?
I bent and brushed the layers of snow away. I'd uncovered the slope of one shoulder. The parka was faded and stiff, frozen solid. I set the flashlight down and dug the entire thing out. Didn't let myself see it as a whole until I was done. Just saw the pieces of it. A familiar boot. Hair. Hands curled at the chest. The bruised neck. Like someone had tied a rope around it and yanked it tight.
I sat down, recranked the flashlight, and threw up again. Was too weak to get up, so I just sat looking at him and trying to decide what to do.
He'd had been there for so long he was frozen solid as rock. Curled on one side. Perfectly preserved. I could see the familiar mustache, the scraggly hair, the scar on one thumb from when he almost chopped it off working on the trees one summer. It was horrible to find him there but so good to see him, even in that state. I didn't realize how much I'd missed him. He was long gone but just to be next to him, to see and touch him was wonderful, in a way. A relief to finally know what had happened. He made it so far.
That's the kind of guy Dad was.
He made it farther than I ever would have. Even if he was freezing and sick, he would have seen it to the end. Made sure that nothing could hurt us. I wanted to get him out of there, but I couldn't even budge him. I was too weak. The inside of my mouth was raw and I kept spitting up blood. So I just sat there with him and thought about the good times we'd had while I was growing up. The snow was falling lightly but steady. I let it cover his face back up. I stayed as long as I could, but I knew if I waited too long I'd never get back up, and I'd end up the same way. I left the flashlight cranked until the spring was too stiff to move anymore so he didn't have to be in the dark, and walked out in the pitch black.
I had to go slow. I was so weak. My legs didn't want to work, and I'd lost all sense of balance. I must have been in shock because I remember almost none of the trip. It was all in absolute darkness, and it was impossible to know when I was lucid. I do remember climbing the ladder back to the attic and almost passing out. God only knows how I managed to do it, but I did. I took off all my gear and dropped everything back down inside. I didn't think it was a good idea to bring it back up to the surface. I have neighbors, after all.
I took a long bath. A lot of my skin is blistered, like a sunburn, but it felt wonderful. While I was in there I called and left my buddy one more message, letting him know that he needed to go to the hospital ASAP and tell them he was exposed to radiation. I don't know if they can help him or not but he shouldn't have been exposed to too much. I'd love to wait to talk to him in person but I don't think I have the luxury of time anymore. There's an open sore near my bottom gum line that I think is going into the bone, any air on it is excrutiating. So talking is kind of hard.
The other call I made after I got out was to the previous owner. She sounded surprised to hear from me. I told her I just needed to ask a quick question, and she was very nice about answering it. She said Dad came by when they listed the house, asked about the price, but never called her back. She figured that's why I bought the house, some kind of gift to him. I asked, was she sure? She said of course, she even got his full name from him. He gave her the entire thing, even though I remember his middle name being somewhat of a hot topic with him growing up due to its family history (he wasn't fond of his father, who also had that name). She said Dad and I looked a lot alike. That he looked great for his age. I thanked her and hung up.
It all makes sense to me now. Hindsight is 20/20, of course. I probably could have figured it out sooner but I guess I didn't want to believe it could have been true. Maybe I don't have it all exactly right but I can put the pieces together into a decent picture. I don't know if the family who owned the house brought whatever was down there with them. Maybe they were intending to build a cellar and stumbled on the system. Maybe they built it to hide their secret. I don't know. But they got tired of taking care of it, the thing that lived in the bottom of the spiral, of constantly playing keeper. They died out, and the house passed on to my parents. I guess we sort of inherited the responsibility. But of course, how would we have known?
Dad probably went down thinking he'd come up with a great story to tell. He took the lights with him, maybe just because he didn't want to turn around once he got in there. Maybe he wouldn't have died as quickly if he'd left them behind. I don't know. Maybe when whatever was living in there was around the radiation was higher, sent Dad into a delirium. Maybe he never even saw it coming. I'd like to think it killed him quickly. That he didn't suffer. Those bruises, whatever wrapped the lights around his neck did it so hard he couldn't have had any chance of getting away. So hard a piece broke off and the thing carried it until realizing it would be too incriminating to have around. Maybe whatever it was was just trying to escape.
For years, it lived with us and poisoned us all. It gave my mom cancer, and it waited for her to die so it could slip away. It was smart enough to know that we'd come looking for it if it just up and disappeared. It. Whatever it is. A shape-shifter, a monster. I don't really care. It's out there, wearing my Dad's appearance like a second skin. Maybe it's gone far away now that it knows the house is back in the family. It doesn't want to be sent back down. It has what it wants. It's free.
I'm leaving a letter for my brother, instructing him to sell the house as soon as it's passed to him. I'm leaving it and everything else to him. I'm not going to tell him anything. I'll say I got tired of living and went somewhere quiet to die. I'll say they'll never find my body. I'll sign the letter, make sure they know it's me. I don't want them searching too hard.
I'm bringing a blanket, my favorite pillow, and some water. I doubt it will take long, but I don't want to die thirsty. I'm also bringing a small thing of epoxy, to seal the entrance shut behind me. A padlock, too, so even if the epoxy is dissolved they still won't be able to get in. The door is almost invisible anyway. Sealed shut, it'll be like it was never there. I checked the house, the radiation levels are a little high, but maybe they'll go down once I leave. I won't be staying long. I don't want to contaminate anything any more than I have.
Somewhere out in the world right now, my Dad is walking around. But it's not my Dad. It's something else. Maybe it doesn't know what effect it has on people. Maybe it does. But there's nothing I can do about it either way.
I'll go back down, seal myself inside, and go sit with my Dad until my body gives out. Like I said, it won't be long. I can feel myself coming undone inside. My chest hurts. My lungs are all soupy. A couple of my teeth have fallen out, too. Whatever cancer I have is spreading like fire. Hopefully I'll die of the cold before it can kill me first.
Please don't try to look for me. Just tell my story and make sure people know that I tried my best not to bring anyone else into this.
Brian, I love you. Please forgive me for what I've done, if you ever see this. I really tried my best to be a good brother. Please get yourself checked out as soon as possible. It's not too late for you.
Mom, I love you. I don't know why any of this happened to us. I wish I could take it all back and never find that door. I wish I could go back and do everything again. I got the answers, that's all I could do. I did my best. When I see you, I hope you won't hate me for what I did to us.
Dad, I'll see you soon. I'm coming to meet you. I'll make sure you're not alone anymore.
I love you all. I'm so sorry.