Week 7: Terror In The Depths Of The Fog

An unusual amount of fog clouded the dim and dreary night. Pushing through it, I enter the diner we frequent, then round the corner to meet my partners. They were sat in the section rarely used this time of night. Good. Nobody needed to hear what we were plotting.

I took a seat in the only open chair at the table. A guy with strawberry blonde hair looked up from his plate of fries and greeted me before I had a chance to say anything. The rather stout man's face was red, despite being out of the cold for some time, and it smiled at me. My friend Ryan. The other two - Paker and Sean - didn't say much. I didn't have much to say to them, either, I didn't know them very well. Ryan and I chatted for only a moment longer. Before I realized it, the rest of the table rose to depart for our destination.

We took a car there, seemingly twisting and turning through a maze of dark roadways until we turned into an apartment complex. Sean, who acted as our guide, directed Parker there and told us that we had to park away from, then walk to our actual objective. We parked in a lot at the bottom of a hill with intimidatingly dark woods at the top. Ryan and I got out of the car first.

"Where's your stuff?" Ryan asked me upon meeting me near the trunk of the car.

"My what?" I responded.

"Your flashlight and knife. You didn't bring them?"

"Oh. No." I was invited rather last-minute, so I wasn't given the full details of what I should and shouldn't bring. But they were the type of people who didn't want to hear excuses. Didn't help me from feeling stupid, of course I would need some form of protection.

Once everyone was out of the car, Sean briefed us on the short list of rules.

- He would be leading us through the venue. Acting as our guide and lookout.
- Keep your lights down low, do not shine them in windows because we do not want to attract attention.
- Keep your knife open and in your hand.
- Watch your step, don't make a lot of noise.
- Stay in the same vicinity of each other.
- If he says "lights out," turn off your light and freeze.

With that, we set on our way up the hill. We walked through the woods along a railroad track, our footsteps creating a chorus of crunching as it patted down the untouched snow. We trekked for what seemed like long enough to traverse dimensions until - alas, our final destination.

The Northville Asylum. The gray-looking building stood in a monochrome colored clearing. Dying trees and shrubbery decorated its snow-covered skirt that reached endless miles. Even if it wasn't alive, it gave off the presence of a living, breathing monster.

As we approached, Sean described that there was no safe way into the main building from the outside, we will have to enter a surrounding building and go through the underground tunnels to come in from below. I pictured wide catacombs that directly connected the buildings - no big deal. I didn't think too much on it because my group tossed around the legends of this place. "They say the patients still wander around here," or "Jared got dragged through the tunnels by something he couldn't see."

We got in to one of the sub-buildings through some hole in the wall, if I recall correctly. The destructive desires of other urban explorers, vandals and fabled drug addicts exploded in its halls, leaving layers of debris in its wake. Our feet crunched on various crap as if we were still in the snow. Graffiti decorated the walls in favor of the peeling wallpaper. Some parts were works of art, some left immature messages of "666," "you won't make it out alive" and such.We wandered from room to ransacked room. I found a needlepoint project still packaged from 1980 and put it in my coat to take home with me. Eventually we reached a room with only a short, broken staircase leading to what looked like the dark abyss. Sean jumped a short way down, followed by Parker.

"These are the tunnels, we have to go in single-file." Sean said.

Well, it's too late to back out now, isn't it?

I jumped.

I fell in formation, Sean at the head, Parker and I in the middle - I had to be in the middle for protection - and Ryan following behind. The tunnels were small, rectangular and cramped. Piping ran through them, stuffing them even more. Sean was about the size of a pipe cleaner, so he was able to traverse them fine, the rest of us had to walk awkwardly at an angle of sorts. Suddenly, I run into Parker's back

"Lights out!" Sean whispers urgently.

I never knew darkness until that day.

We stayed in the pitch black for probably about a few minutes, but it felt like forever. Going from knowing your surroundings to blind in 2 seconds could make someone insane. Sean turned his flashlight on not a moment too soon, any longer and I would've screamed. He told us he heard someone running, and that's why he called lights out. It could've been my imagination, but I think we hurried through the rest of the way.

We rose up into the main building and commenced our exploring. Our guide lead us to the different spots we wanted to explore; the kitchen, the theater, up into patient rooms. Eventually, someone decided that they wanted to take a trip to a top floor room. Obviously there were no working elevators, so 14 flights of stairs it was.

I'm an asthmatic, so breathing cold air while fighting these stairs proved to be a bit of an issue for me. I honestly didn't expect much from the trip, so I packed ultra light - I think I only had my phone on me. I felt awful about it at the time, but we did have to make frequent stops at various landings for me to catch my breath.

On one of the landings, I heard a loud bang - something like a locker slamming. I looked to Ryan, whose gaze was locked to something in the distance through the doorway. I glanced to where I thought he was looking - down an empty hall with some outside light illuminating the frosted windows at the other end.

"Did you hear that?" I ask Ryan in a whisper.

He nods.

"Hear what?" Parker replies.

"There was a bang." Ryan said. "It sounded like it came from the hallway or something."

"I didn't hear anything." Sean stated. Ryan and I insisted we heard it, Parker and Sean claim they heard nothing. "I'll go check it out." Sean surrendered then climbed the last flight of stairs.

My anxiety spikes. Haven't any of us watched a horror movie? Minutes pass, we hear nothing. Ryan and I exchange looks multiple times. Our guide disappeared, and none of us knew how to escape here. I glance at the number panel next to the open doorway we stood in front of. Of course we were on floor 13.

"I'll go find Sean." Parker tells us, then begins to climb. I remember trying to stop him, but my pleas fell on deaf ears.

More time passes. Ryan and I simply stare at each other, at a loss. We hear someone come back down the stairs. I was ready to jump whole landings to escape a serial killer, but it was only Sean, saying that the coast was clear. We follow him back up to this small room with free-standing lockers creating a small labyrinth in front of a whole wall of windows. The scene outside looked like a sea of little gold stars. City lights speckled the night, and in the distance, you could see the lights for the ambassador bridge. We only stayed for a couple minutes, I think all of us were still in fight-or-flight mode.

Making our way back down, my legs began to go numb but I pushed through. I knew everything was fine, but somehow it felt like it wasn't. I wanted to leave as soon as possible. Sean joked about making a stop at the crematorium, and was met with a resounding "no." In the field on the way back, something skittered behind me, and I almost bowled poor Parker over because I bolted.

The end of the night is fairly fuzzy to me. I think I had some residue of adrenaline still running through me by the time my head hit the pillow, but I remember passing out sort of quickly. The next day the trip felt like a dream. But. I figured that if I could get through that, I could get through anything.

Fast forward to last year, I saw a news special about the place getting torn down, and I felt kind of sad and nostalgic. I almost wanted to take a trip one more time. Until they said that it had a lot of asbestos issues.

More info and pictures of the inside