My group of hometown friends was a collection of mostly boys, Lynnea, the occasional other girl, and me. When you put a large group of 18- to 22-year-old boys, and girls who act like boys, together, you get mayhem. Every time.
One particular fall, this group had managed to discover that there was an abandoned insane asylum just sitting on a hill in San Luis Obispo. We believed this meant the building was asking for us to break into it. Even if that's not what it meant, it's what we did.
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| Creepy even in broad daylight |
As the last of our group was pulled up onto the roof, one of the boys pulled out the screwdriver he'd brought for the occasion. There was a board crudely screwed onto a few-feet-square hole, on the flat, plank-like roof on which we all stood. Once the board was removed, someone (a boy) had to descend into the hole, scale a crumbling, inches-wide mantel (apparently our entry point was right above a once-cozy living area with a fireplace), and shimmy down to the floor; then help every other person jump-climb into the room with him.
My first night exploring this deserted, skeleton of a place, once populated with what I could only imagine were people just like Jack Nicholson's character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was frightening. I don't do scary movies. My imagination just doesn't allow me to forget the scenes burned into my brain when I see horrific things. I can't even really handle scary books, since what my imagination conjures is sometimes worse than movies. Tip-toeing around this place was a real-life scary movie. We were asking to be brutally murdered. (Or at the very least asking to get asbestos poisoning... there were signs all over the place.)
The tiny rooms were beyond creepy, and picturing the people who were locked in them years ago with blank stares and the glowing insanity seeping out of them was almost too much for me. Each cell had a tiny opening that we assumed had been used to push food through. We even "toured" the basement, which required us to bend over and crouch-walk through the dank, musty darkness, struggling to see one step in front of us as the first person in line shone their weak flashlight ahead. Our group mostly stayed together, which made the settling-house creaks even more terrifying, since the only explanation was that the spirits of psychotic mental patients were prowling around the floors above us.
After skulking through the halls of this ancient house-of-crazy for a couple hours, our party made its way back to the Living Room and each person got pushed up through the roof, leaving the last person to climb like a monkey back out of the hole. The board was carefully positioned and screwed back into place.
It took a few more hours and good night's sleep for the spooky to wear off. It honestly felt like I was wearing creepy as a second skin.
* * *
The next day, three of the "core" boys in our posse of delinquents came up with an epic plan... It was simple: Jon (yes, the man I married), Mitch, and Abel (on again/off again boyfriend -- off at the time) were going to scare the BAJEEZUS out of the rest of us. We had agreed to return to the asylum that night, the second night in a row, and bring a few people who hadn't seen it yet. This included Lynnea's older cousin, Robby, one of his friends, and our friend Cory.
The boys would go to the asylum earlier in the day, paint one entire room (even the ceiling!) red, then come back with us that night, acting as if they had no clue how the room turned red in the 24 hours since our last visit. An added bonus: Abel would stay in SLO, and be inside the asylum before the rest of us showed up. We were to believe that he was "meeting us there later". His job, when he saw us walking up the path to the building, was to flicker a flashlight in one of the top floor rooms.
To this day none of us can quite remember how each of us found out, but by the time we arrived at the asylum that night, the only people who didn't know about the plan were Robby and his friend, and Cory. Somehow the boys had let it slip to Nae and me, and word passed around to everyone except the three unknowing boys. All I can say is that it's a good thing I did know about Scare Our Closest Friends Into Insanity 2002, because even though I did know, I almost wet myself on multiple occasions.
* * *
We arrived at the asylum, and it was a perfect autumn night. Clouds blowing across the sky, alternately covering the moon, then allowing it to illuminate the asylum, casting demonic shadows as we crunched up the gravel path. The air was crisp, and crackling with excitement as we waited to see how the plan would unfold.
Right on cue, as we stood about fifty yards away, a light began flickering in one of the topmost windows. For good measure, one of us "in the know" said, "Uh... there's a light flashing up there." Everyone slowly turned their heads up toward the window. I was thoroughly creeped out, despite knowing exactly who was in there. Robby, obviously full of the heebie jeebies himself, exclaimed, "What the hell?" We all watched, some in mock, some in real horror, as the light continued to flicker, as if a fuse was shorting out. "Is there someone in there???" Robby was in the deliriously terrified phase, half laughing, half wanting to bolt back down the hill before a demon came down to snatch him into the hell house.
THUD. Rocks started whizzing past us. Not close enough to hit anyone, but close enough to hear, and close enough to recognize that they were coming from the same top window. I thought, nice touch, as Robby let his alpha male take over and yelled, "Dude, if there's someone in there, I'm going to WRECK YOU!" Boys overcome fear by pretending to be tougher than the unknown source of horror.
We stood in a huddle, trying to "decide" if we were brave enough to enter the place this time. All of a sudden, Abel walked up behind us, having come up the hill by the same gravel road we had. "Hey guys, what's going on?" The flickering and rock tossing had barely just ended... this guy was good.
"Dude, there's someone in there!" Robby yelled. "Wait... where'd you come from?"
"I just got here," Abel replied coolly, as the rest of us backed up his story that he'd come from the parking area, just in case.
We stood in front of the house a bit longer, "waiting" for the haunting to continue, but when nothing else happened, the boys decided it was time to proceed. A few of them went around the back to get ready to climb the fence, and the rest of us slowly started trickling behind them. It was when Nae and I were passing the barred windows to the basement on the way around the house that my blood ran cold and my heart dropped into my stomach. A knocking sound was coming from underneath the house. This wasn't an older-than-dirt-house-settling creak, it was knocking. Nae and I looked at each other with true panic on our faces and raced around the corner to catch up with the boys. As I scanned our crowd, accounting for each person supposed to be with us, I froze. Everyone was here. Right here, in front of us.
Not wanting to sound like the only girls in the group, that we were, Nae and I joined the males as we all jumped through the hole into the living room once again, trying to forget the sound we'd heard and what it could mean. Mitch, Abel, and Jon began the tour, showing Robby and the other newbies the place, as if they lived there. They took their sweet time, wanting the suspense to build before we finally came to The Red Room.
"Guys... this room is RED." We enlightened ones looked into each others faces in shock (at this point I was in actual shock because the knocking I'd heard down below would not leave my consciousness). "Dude, we were just here last night... there was no red room." Mitch let the silence fall hard and heavy.
Robby's toughness took over again as he yelled, "IS THERE SOMEONE IN HERE??? COME OUT, I'LL KICK YOUR ASS!!"
As he and his friend began running up and down the halls, yelling and beating their chests like gorillas, I had to choose between stifling my laughter and my screams. The air felt thick to me, like there truly was a presence other than our own in that hallway. Each time one of the boys yelled, I squealed and grabbed Jon's arm, even though I knew the origin of The Red Room. I could not shake the memory of the unaccounted for sound beneath the house, and the feeling that something evil was in the building with us.
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| One of many rooms we wandered through. |
Finally, one of the boys decided it was time to get out. We made our way back to the fireplace quickly, sometimes pushing another person out of the way, not a one of us wanting to be the last in line, as we filed back up through the hole, jumped down the fence, and ran back around the house. Our blood pressure returned to normal, and our adrenaline rushes morphed into hunger, so we did what all hungry college kids do: bolted to Taco Bell.
Once we had returned to civilization, as we ordered our food and sat around in the awful florescent lighting that defines Taco Bell, I started to feel normal again. The air had thinned back out, and the heavy presence I sensed inside the asylum was gone. Halfway through our meal, something caught Cory's attention on the floor.
"Abel. What's on your shoe?"
We all glanced down and the table went silent. There, accusingly caked on the side of Abel's shoe, was a streak of red paint.
A shadow of recognition darkened over Cory's face. The rest of us glanced around the circle, smirks threatening to fight their way onto our current masks of ignorance. Robby, appreciative of our elaborate prank, started cracking up, but Cory, with a look of death, only had one thing to say to us.
"I hate you guys."
Upon scanning the Internet for pictures of the asylum, I discovered that the brick building, built in the 20s, may have at different times been an asylum, an orphanage ("Sunny Acres"), a juvenile detention center, and/or a TB clinic... different people have different information. One thing stuck out in my reading: most people who have been there believe it's haunted.
