I'm What You Like to Call an Urban Explorer

I'm what you like to call an urban explorer. This hobby usually entails traveling quite a bit and then trying to find any abandoned structures or areas that are worth taking a look at. Sometimes I'd travel rather far from home, maybe even out of state, and then other times I'd go to other cities or go a few more miles away from where I live. This time however, I did not have that kind of benefit of traveling so far away due to the fact that the economy had gotten so bad and my job wasn't paying as well. Because of this, if I wanted to explore any abandoned places I would have to keep to the more local areas.

I started urban exploration a few years ago when I first moved into my current house. I had just settled in and I had seen every room in the house, including the basement. But it wasn't long before I noticed something strange about the basement floor. In the center of the room there was a small square wooden hatch with a metal handle attached to it. When I saw this, I thought there might be some storage area underneath but what I had found was much better than that. I opened the hatch and looked inside, there was a short metal ladder leading directly downwards to a room underneath. It immediately surprised me but it also gave me great excitement at the discovery. I didn't expect to find a sub-basement and such a thing isn't common in most homes. The room was difficult to see into as there was no light source inside so I went and grabbed a flashlight from upstairs. I came back and went down the ladder while shining the flashlight inside. It was a small narrow hallway with a storage closet and there wasn't much else there. It was mostly empty with a few bits of trash and blue-prints lying around but there wasn't any furniture or any other rooms. Anti-climactic I know but it didn't cease to amaze and excite me as this was a great surprise. The place looked dusty and rather old, as did the hatch, and I assumed that this was an unused part of the house. Ever since then I have been trying to find new abandoned areas to explore and satisfy my curiosity.

On a weekend, I had decided to prepare for my next venture and when I got back from the store I did some research on the surrounding areas for any new locations for which to check out. Most of the researched yielded the same places that I had already explored long ago but there was one particular area which I hadn't explored yet, and for good reason. It was an area I had deliberately avoided because it was poverty stricken, filled with crime, and mostly consisted of run-down buildings. It was the kind of place you would go several miles around to get to your job just to avoid going through it. Normally I would stay away from such a place and I actually did that for a long time. But I hadn't explored any new areas in several months and I was getting anxious because my desire for exploration was at an all-time high. So I decided to push away any doubts or fears of this particular area so I could finally explore the remaining abandoned places that I hadn't been to before.

The next Saturday, I drove my car up to that part of town, which was a few miles away, and I drove slowly around the neighborhood to see if I could find spot any particular abandoned buildings that were both isolated and worth going into. The town was just as I had expected, most of the structures had barred or boarded up windows and closed off doors. Those that were not like this were far and few between and pretty much all of these structures looked old and run-down. Some of these places looked like they had been abandoned a long time ago but I didn't want to explore them considering they were surrounded by other inhabited homes and apartments. If I had decided to break into any of these places there was a good chance that somebody from across the street or a neighbor might notice and possibly call the police. There was also the risk of running into some homeless people or some meth addicts living in these vacant lots. This wasn't a risk I wanted to take so I kept driving around hoping I would find some abandoned places that were somewhat isolated from the rest of the area. It took me a while but I came across one particular road which led out from the neighborhood into a large but mostly empty field.

I parked my car alongside the road, not too far from this road, and I hoped that my car wasn't going to get towed. I walked down the road for a long time, it must have been just a few short miles from where I had started, and the surrounding field looked relatively empty. There weren't really any buildings for the first mile or so and there weren't any trees either. The field went all around in the different directions for several miles and I kept going in a zigzag type pattern.

It took me around half an hour before I reached a small abandoned house which was completely isolated from any other structures or people. The only thing that surrounded it was the large unkempt field and the few bushes here and there. This was a good thing because it meant that there was very little risk of me getting caught and since this house was farther away from the local area I had hoped that it wasn't going to be filled with junkies or hobos. This would be unlikely however, due to the very nature of such places, despite my wishful thinking.

I approached the premises very slowly and carefully as to examine if there was anyone else there. There was trash and evidence of inhabitancy lying all around outside the building but I didn't see anybody inside from the windows. I went around the back of the house and went in through the door. Once again I carefully went around the home to explore and to make sure that there was nobody there at the time. Thankfully there wasn't anyone downstairs but there was plenty of trash and debris lying around, just like outside. There wasn't anything valuable though as all the furniture and scraps of the home had most likely been taken long ago. Graffiti also littered the walls and various parts of the house which showed that this was a popular spot for many other people.

Once I finished searching the downstairs I went around the back, where the staircase was at, and went upstairs. The area up here was pretty much the same as the rest of the house and it didn't take me long to finish my search.

I came upon the very last room, which appeared to be some kind of an office according to the various bits of paper and spare furniture parts lying around, and I stepped inside. Immediately I was greeted by a disturbing sight in the far right corner of the room. A person's skeleton had been lying on the ground and two things were in both hands. In the left hand, there was a handgun and in the other there was a note of some sort. I was struck with surprise when I made the discovery but after some thought I figured it was to be expected in such a place. I was surprised because I hadn't found a body or a skeleton of any kind in my previous expeditions and this was the first time I had. But the surrounding areas, like I said before, were notorious for crime and poverty. So finding somebody like this didn't seem completely out of place but some bit of surprise still took hold despite this.

I tried taking a look at the note but I couldn't read the vast majority of the person's handwriting due to time taking its toll and poor penmanship. But I was able to read the person's signature and that was really all I could understand in the note.

Believe it not, that was the first I had run into something like that but it wasn't the last time. At first I thought it was just a strange and unfortunate finding but it was later that I realized I was completely wrong.

It wasn't long before I went exploring again, at another place and it was here I had found another skeleton. This time it wasn't as clear as to their cause of death but I wasn't so concerned with that as much as the fact that I had found a dead person. They did have a note in their right hand but reading it proved very difficult and the signature was, once again, the only thing I could really make out. Keep in mind that this was just after exploring the last place which also had a dead person inside. That was the second time I had encountered a dead person's skeleton inside an abandoned area and it was right after I had found the first one. I went on another venture not long after the first and came across another abandoned structure which had a skeleton inside. That was two times in a row and I thought that it was just a mere unfortunate coincidence; oh how wrong was I.

Every single other place, that I've explored since then, has had a dead person inside with a note, either on them or near them. The means of death have been ambiguous at times and more obvious at others. The note would usually be virtually impossible to read, except for the signature, just like all the other notes.

After a while it became too much and I had to take a long break from urban exploration. These discoveries were disturbing each time and they never stopped. That's why I thought something paranormal or sinister was going on and it somehow involved me. That's what really frightened me and I couldn't continue exploring any longer. But I still considered myself a rational person and so I tried to reason to myself that I was simply imagining all of this. I had tried to tell myself that maybe all of this wasn't even real and I just needed some medication or to see a doctor. But I haven't had a single issue in my past regarding mental illness and I have never had any hallucinations before. And there was no way that I could have just kept on stumbling onto more dead people and a note as there was no way this was just a coincidence.

That was only just a week ago but now something else has happened. I had decided to use that sub-basement, I had found a long time ago, as a storage area. Just an hour ago I had gone down there to grab some supplies for some work I needed to get done and I noticed something immediately odd about the center of the room. On the ceiling there was rope tied around a loose wooden plank and it was shaped like a noose. When I saw this, I felt fear striking the very core of my being and I couldn't do anything else but try to reason why that rope was here. There wasn't anybody else in the house and I had no recollection of tying the rope, nor was it there before so how could it have gotten here now?

I'm writing all of this down on a few spare pages of paper just in case something happens to me. I think something very strange or terrifying is happening to me and I don't know what it is.