A Way Out

A few years ago I got trapped falling into a portion of an abandoned TB hospital. The sun was starting to go down when my friend and I realized we couldn't get out the same way we came in.

"Its too high, there's no way we can jump," I said as I pounded my fist on the windowsill from the second floor of the building. I yelped like a helpless dog. I frantically looked around the room to see if there was anything that could make my fall a little less hard. I pushed myself off the wall and turned around as the glass from all of the blown out windows scraped against the tile under my feet. My throat started to get tight, and I noticed that my palms were beginning to sweat.

"Its getting way too dark, there's no way I could handle myself stuck in here overnight," I yelled over to my friend. There was absolutely nothing left in the room for me to throw out the window to save my fall. It was then that I realized I was going to have to go back onto the first floor. The door we had come through upstairs had originally been sealed shut, so we had to climb a bed stand that we had brought over to get through the little sliver of a window that was in the door itself. But for some reason, it was harder getting out of than in.

I pushed my way out the slider, but tore my sweatshirt by rushing myself from panicking. I stood looking down the hallway, realizing that after halfway down I could no longer see. It wasn't even like the hall was overcome by shadows, it was just completely black. I had no flashlight, my cellphone was useless, and a lighter definitely couldn't lighten the kind of darkness I was in. The only thing I had to remotely have any light from was the flash of my camera, but you have no idea how scary it is to be trapped in a broken down building with your only light source being a fraction of a second.

Every time I let it go off, I imagined seeing something in between flashes, and appearing right in front of me staring at me through the dark. My friend and I began banging on all of the windows and doors on the first floor trying to find one that sounded hollow for us to get out through. All of them had been sealed and bolted shut from both the inside and out. We ran down the right wing of the building to see if any of the walls crumbled from the fire that had ruined a portion of the building not that long beforehand.

We ended up in an unrecognizable room, and by that point we were just wasting time, and there was barely any light left in the building. The highlights of the room were barely seen by straining your eyes, and the rest of the room was engulfed in absolute blackness. We knew the only way out was through the basement, and crawling up tubes to get back outside. This was honestly the last thing we ever wanted to do, because it was scary enough going in that way in complete daylight, let alone past sundown.

The building was deathly quiet, and it was pretty far off from the main road, so you couldnt even hear cars going by. The building had that autumn silence feeling to it, which once its mid-October I start referring to sundown that way. Its always extremely quiet, and its just after most of the leaves fall off the trees. The only sound in the hospital was our grunting from looking for a way out, and the echo of our shoes pushing around concrete and tile that had fallen from the ceiling.

We decided to go up to the third floor to get a better view of the first two stories for a way out, even if it meant shimmying off a window ledge. We really didnt want to go back through the basement. Our last resort was to crawl through tubes in the basement of this place, but to make things worse, these tubes ran from the morgue down there, and a hole in the wall of its bathroom.

When we got up there, my friend started pushing a large desk towards an open door while I jumped up on top of it and pulled myself into the attic from the top of the door itself. I looked around and saw there was no visible way out, and that the elevator shaft looked like it couldnt hold over 15lbs.

"This fucking sucks," I yelled down to her. The attic didnt even have a floor, so I wobbled my way back over on a single board supporting the insulation. I plopped myself onto my butt with my legs dangling out the space in the ceiling to get down from the attic. My friend spotted my legs as I began to bring myself down when I froze. I started hearing an old creepy tune that sounded like it had warped into F#. For sure it was a music box. This building hadnt been used in over 50 years.

Mind you, Im in the attic of the third floor right above the childrens unit where there were still faded paitings on the walls, and exposed film all over the floors. I literally fell out of the space and a disturbingly loud bang echoed through the building from falling on the metal desk. It followed by an overly quiet front, and I heard 3 more notes from the music box. I couldnt detect where the origins of the music was coming from, but it stopped just as quickly as it started.

As far as it being weird it is, but unfortunately I did have to crawl back through the tubes in the morgue to get out. I remember feeling like my heart was going to pound its way out my throat. I tripped on the last stair in the basement, and pressed the flash on my camera by mistake. Five feet in front of me was the body freezer, and Im pretty sure I trying running from it faster than I physically could, and ended up looking like scooby doo trying to get out of there.

I didnt even talk on the way home since all I could think about was the blackness and how quiet it was. Even when I lied down to go to sleep I would randomly think about it and shoot up from my bed and have to calm myself.

(This story is credited to a person named Skella.)