Speaker 1: Back then, I was in my early twenties and had
a relatively small group of friends. It was mainly just me, Andrew,
and David. Most of the time we spent together was
just walking around in the nearby forest and talking, or
going off and exploring random things. But one night Andrew
came over to my place and told me about this
creepy abandoned building one of his friends had told him about.
He said it was off a trail in a woody
area not too far from here. Of course, I asked
him what the place was, to which Andrew replied that
he didn't know, and his friend didn't even go near it.
This actually got me pretty excited, and we both called
up David to tell him about it as well, and
he seemed pretty pumped about it too. It was already
five o'clock, but the sun didn't set until seven, and
the darkness would only make it more exciting anyways, So
Andrew and I packed up some basic stuff like flashlights
and some snacks, and then we headed over to David's
apartment and picked him up. I parked the car next
to a local grocery store that was just a couple
of minutes walk from the edge of the woods. Supposedly
there was a half mile trail that led to a
small lookout, but if you continue past the end of
the path for a few minutes, you'll find the abandoned building.
Knowing this, we found the trailhead and continued down, passing
several other people as they were heading back. Honestly, I
started to lose the excitement a bit because I began
feeling like this was just a prank. The trail seemed
pretty populated, so how could we have not known about
this place before? Anyway, we continued and eventually made it
to the lookout. The sun was still partially up at
this point, but the woods began to darken gradually every minute.
We took a quick break at the lookout to get
the flashlights out, then we continued past the area and
into the trees. It wasn't until maybe fifteen minutes in
that we all started to get annoyed. We'd been navigating
between thick trees and bushes and the partial darkness for
a while now and hadn't seen a single thing.
Speaker 2: You sure this isn't just some stupid joke.
Speaker 1: Andrew David passive aggressively asked.
Speaker 2: No, this guy was serious.
Speaker 1: Trust me, he responded, trying to assure us the best
he could. Just a second later, we heard a bush
nearby rustling around, and immediately we all flicked our flashlights
towards the sound. It made me jump a bit, seeing
the bush moving around as if an animal had jumped
out of it or something. But right behind it, in
the distance we could make out an old structure. That
rush of excitement filled my body again, and we all
made our way towards it. The building was very strange, though,
in the way that it just didn't seem like it
belonged alone in a forest. It looked like a small
work building, maybe used to be a woodworking station or something.
I don't know. The old wooden front door was laying
on the ground right in front of the structure, though,
as we all made our way inside, immediately upon entering,
the most awful and disgusting smell hit us. We glanced
at each other, all clearly nervous, but even more curious.
The first floor consisted of three rooms. The first was
an open room with a large wooden table or work bench.
There was a ton of trash lying around and really
rusty tools that had been left behind. I followed David
into the hallway that led to the other two rooms,
both with closed doors. The smell was even more potent
the closer we got to the door, so much so
that Andrew backed away and put his shirt over his nose. Guys,
we should just leave that smells unbearable, Andrew muttered to
us as he moved his flashlight around. We both ignored him,
though I did start getting a really bad feeling.
Speaker 2: I shined my.
Speaker 1: Flashlight over to the other door and took a few
steps towards it, while David opened the other and stepped
inside the room. Almost instantly, David screamed and quickly backed
out of the room, making both me and Andrew jump.
This was followed by multiple loud thuds echoing through the
building from behind the third room's closed door. We sprinted
out frantically, not stopping until we were completely out of breath.
What the fuck just happened, Andrew said, in between his breaths. Guy,
there was a body on the ground in that room.
I swear to god, there was a body there. David
was freaking out, looking all around. I could see in
his eyes that he was seriously traumatized by what he'd
just seen. I mentioned that we needed to keep moving
and that I thought there was someone else in that
third room hiding. We were able to make it out
relatively quickly, basically just running in the direction that we
knew led to the road. When we got back to
the car, I drove us all down to the police
station a couple blocks away, where we explained the encounter.
The officer that took our account honestly looked ashamed of us,
as if we were stupid for having even gone there.
I mean, sure, it may have been a dumb idea,
but we also had just explained that we may have
encountered a murder scene, and this cop was just giving
us an annoyed attitude. Anyway, they sent a couple officers down.
We actually stayed in our car outside the police station
waiting to get an update for over two hours, until
finally I got a call and we all went back
inside to talk to a group of cops. They found
spots of blood, as well as signs of someone having
been there recently, but nobody. They did seem to take
the situation more seriously now, though, and questioned all of
us more thoroughly. Fast forward a couple weeks later, they
found what was likely the body that David had seen
poorly buried several hundred feet away from the abandoned building.
I believe they determined that the person had been dead
before being brought to the building, so I guess it
was just where they hid the body before dumping it.
As far as I'm aware, the case didn't end up
going very far, and I don't know if they ever
even found any real suspects. It was a crazy experience, though,
and the fact that we were all so close to
a possible murderer is still unnerving for me to think
about today. I live in Detroit, Michigan. If you aren't
already aware, Detroit has some of the largest amounts of
abandoned buildings in the United States. I'm not sure why
it is exactly. I've always grown up living in towns
that were neighboring these old, worn down buildings, so I
was used to it. A lot of people would hang
out in them or explore them for fun. It was
just a regular thing. When I was in middle school,
I had a best friend who I'll call Philip. During
our middle school years, both of us began to find
interest in these abandoned buildings. Thinking about what had happened
before they were abandoned, and what could still be inside
of them. Obviously, we knew it was somewhat dangerous to
go exploring them, but having just become teenagers, we felt
like badasses for some reason, and so we kind of
forced ourselves not to be scared of them. We knew
gangs would sometimes hang out in the abandoned neighborhoods with
all the buildings next to each other, so we did
at least avoid those places. But there were a lot
of other buildings nearby that were mostly isolated in the
forested areas, so we began exploring those. Over the next
few months, we had gone to maybe three or four.
It would make each one our designated hangout spot for
a few weeks before finding a new place. And that's
when things got bad. Philip and I were traveling down
an overgrown and cracked cement road that led to several
abandoned homes that we'd already been to. We continued further
down this time, however, in search of a new and
interesting place. Most of the homes were just a short
minutes walk between each other, but as we got further
along the path, we noticed that we'd been walking for
almost five minutes and hadn't seen another house. With this
in mind, we continued, unsure of what to expect. The
thing was, there was still a concrete path, so it
had to lead to something eventually. Maybe another five minutes later,
we reached the end of the concrete portion of the path. However,
there was a faint gravel trail that continued. As far
as we could see. It was just trees, but we
were sure it had to lead somewhere, so we kept
going forward. Only one or two minutes later we finally
reached a house. It was odd looking, kind of like
a townhouse, but a random townhouse this far out wouldn't
make much sense. All of the windows were borded up
up and the front door was closed, but the garage
was cracked open, leaving a few feet of space at
the bottom for us to crawl under. Philip banged on
the metal garage door a few times to make sure
it was gonna hold, then we both knelt under it.
Inside the garage was pretty much nothing, a bit of
garbage and dirt, but the door leading into the house
was closed. I pressed up against it, turning the knob
and pushing hard, but it wouldn't budge.
Speaker 2: Hey, can you give me a hand with us?
Speaker 1: Both of us pushed and we were able to get
it open enough for us to squeeze through. The first
thing we noticed was a huge dresser that was pressed
up against the door. I gave Philip a confused look.
Then we both climbed over it and made our way
into the kitchen. From where we were standing, we could
see down a hallway that led to some stairs going up,
as well as what looked like the living room. Oddly, though,
the place wasn't in very bad shape, not much trash
inside and relatively clean. We could tell people had been
there before, though, as there were a bunch of footprints
on the dusty wooden floors. As we started walking through
the hallway, a sudden, soft bank came from the other
side of the house. It sounded as if something small
had dropped on the floor. We exchanged glances and stood
quietly in the hallway, listening for anything else. I don't
know about Philip, but I was definitely getting pretty worried.
The front door was just ahead of us, though, so
after a few seconds of silence, I slowly started toward it.
A little over halfway there, in ear piercing loud, metal
scraping sound vibrated through the house, followed by an enormous
crashing bank from the garage. I swung the front door
open and we sprinted out of there. My heart was
beating out of my chest, and I could feel my
adrenaline rushing through me. As we got back on the path,
I looked back, seeing the garage was fully closed. Now
we pretty much ran all the way to Philip's house.
Neither of us were sure what happened. Philip thought it
was just the coincidence that the garage happened to have
fallen while we were there, but I wasn't so sure.
I believe someone may have set the place up as
a trap, waiting for people to go in through the
garage and then closing them in. Why else would the
door have been blocked by a dresser while the non
functional garage was dangling open. I don't know if they
thought we were still in there and that's why they
closed it, or maybe it was just to scare us,
having already known we escaped. We never went back to
find out, though, and we since decided to only explore
the places that were nearby and not deep in forests.
My best friend Jack and I always had our little
places where we would hide from the rest of the world,
whether it was a corner in the school yard or
the skate park nearby. When we were tired of the
grown ups around us or our siblings, we just took
our comics and left.
Speaker 2: For a while.
Speaker 1: After a few years, we built a treehouse in Jack's
backyard and spent a lot of time in there, But
whenever his younger brother came up to join us and
we were unable to kick him out because of their
mother being around, we often left for the woods instead.
With our books and flashlights. We stayed out all day,
and over time the treehouse became more often occupied by
Jack's brother and his friends. His mother said we were
getting too old for it anyways, which we fullheartily disagreed on. Still,
we were forced to find a new hideout, so one
day we grabbed our stuff and went into the woods again,
going farther than we'd ever been before. We tried to
build a new shelter, but it didn't even get near
to the greatness of the tree house, and we got
home disappointed. My mother sent us into the woods again
the next day to walk our dogs Sammy, and we
went even farther than before, determined to give the search
a second try. Sammy, however, wasn't very keen on sniffing
out the best possible places, and he never even waited
for us while we judged a certain spot on its potential.
One time, even when he dashed off again, he didn't
come back. Jack was the one who noticed, and after
thirty minutes of calling, searching, and whistling, I called my
mom in a panic. She quickly dispelled my worries and
assured me that I would probably find him soon. It
wasn't the first time he'd done that, and every time
he'd come running back. So Jack and I walked on.
Even when twilight began to fall. We put on our flashlights,
and Jack suddenly signaled for me to stop. He said
he heard barking, and standing in silence, I heard it too.
We hastened to where it came from and found Sammy
in front of a small stone building, barking at seemingly nothing.
Speaker 2: What you got there, bud, We've been looking all over
for you.
Speaker 1: I got the leash and Sammy began growling at something.
I connected the leash back to Sammy's collar and we
both started heading out. We took one last look at
the building, though, agreeing that Sammy had helped us find
a hideout after all, and we came back the next day.
It was already twilight by then. Having finished our school
work and dinner first, we left Sammy home and only
took our flashlights, phones and batteries with us, ready for
the dark. The stone building turned out to be an
almost square, singular structure with a creaking metal door as
well as a corrugated iron roof and no windows. There
was nothing inside, and the floor was made of the
same cold stone. We took the next day to bring
over some old blankets and cushions, and even a lamp
that worked on batteries. The tree house was all forgotten,
and we spent the last semi summer days with the
metal door open while we sat reading in the little building.
We closed it when fall came along. It didn't really
bother us. It was dark outside now too, so it
didn't really matter. Our interior had gotten some updates as well.
We hung a garland with little lights above our heads
and put posters on the walls. This hideout, so we thought,
was going to last forever. We went there every day
by default, even when it rained, especially when it rained. Actually,
the sound of the drops on the iron room had
to be the best thing to exist, ticking calmly in
the background while we both listened to our own music
with headphones. On one day, we were listening to the
same music on my phone, lying lazily on the cushions
with our schoolwork untouched in the corner. It rained pretty heavily,
the winds howling around the building. After a while, my
phone died and we had no more music to listen to.
Jack hummed a little instead, prepared to do anything to
avoid his homework. He flinched when the door creaked suddenly
and his humming stopped. We stared at the entrance before
looking at each other. I shrugged it off, and as
I reached for my notebook, footsteps were heard around the
back of the building. I remember both of us being
pretty shaken. I was just hoping it was someone harmlessly
exploring the woods or something, but it was pouring outside
and we were fairly deep in the forest. Jack, I
think we should leave, But before he could answer, we
heard running footsteps going around the building, followed by the
door slamming open. Wind and rain violently blew into the room.
Jack screamed and I was just as shaken as he was.
Both unable to move, We watched into the darkness of
the woods until we realized that no one was there,
at least not anymore. Eventually, I found the strength to
stand up and close the door. We agreed to leave
soon after, and when we came home soaking wet, we
decided not to visit the hideout during the dark again
because we didn't know who had opened the door and
we didn't want to stay another night to find out.
As a matter of fact, we still don't