Mannequins



We all grow up hearing the stories of things that go bump in the night. The man with the hook for a hand, Bloody Mary the list goes on. We grow up hearing these stories and putting them to the back of our minds. We use our rational minds to weed out what is true and what is just folklore. I used to think the same way until I went… there…

Before I go any further I’d like to note that we had a very different kind of hobby we enjoyed. We would research places on the internet that were abandoned or hell if we were lucky possibly haunted. We always had a great thrill exploring the unknown, looking into places that society had left behind to rot. Now returning to my story…

I was 18 at the time and I was with my 2 friends Erik and Paul. It was a Saturday night and there was nothing going on. No weed to smoke and no alcohol around. There was nothing to do. I then told my friends of a place we didn’t explore yet. A few towns over there was this abandoned factory. The strange thing was even with the amount of research I put into this place I could not find a single thing about its history besides the address. No information on what it used to be, no ghost stories, no records, absolutely nothing. This seemed strange but cool; it kind of gave me the thought of possibly uncovering some interesting information myself.

We all piled up into my car and followed the GPS to the destination. The GPS said that the building was off the road a ways. We looked out the window and saw nothing but trees. I assumed the factory was deep in the woods. This didn’t phase any of us because we were so used to exploring the darkest and creepiest parts of the world. As we started to cut through the trees I shined my flash light a ways and found the factory up ahead…

It was huge… over grown with trees and foliage, it must have been about 3 stories high. All of the windows were either busted or boarded. We hit the jack pot. The 3 of us proceeded into the derelict structure and put on our respirators. Safety first right? There was junk everywhere, cans, old motors, trinkets of a different era way before mine. As more stuff appeared we came to the conclusion that this used to be some sort of automotive factory. As we continued deeper into the building I something felt wrong. A nauseating feeling of wrongness just swept my body like a wave. I stopped for a moment and Erik asked “What’s wrong”. Not wanting to sound like a pussy I just waved him off and we kept walking. Towards the center of the building there was a set of stairs. Creepy enough this place was but they had to lead down stairs. I never felt this feeling before but I actually didn’t want to go down there. I shined my light down the steps and stared for a moment. All there was, was silence. “Come on, you guys are acting like a bunch of fuckin pussies” I remember Paul saying. He led first, me and Erik followed close. We finally hit the bottom and to my unnerving surprise there was the arm of a mannequin laying on the ground. I thought to myself “What would something like this be doing in here…”. The feeling instantly got worse. We cautiously scanned the room with our lights, the beams illuminating the dust or whatever was in the air. There really wasn’t anything amazing down here but more motors and junk. We were about to turn around and head back up until I noticed something behind what appeared to be a large boiler. I walked up to it and it was a door. It was very short, about half my height. It was also covered in rust. I slowly opened the door and stepped inside. Without thinking I walk forward intrigued but horrified. I turned around and shined my light back into the room I came from and my friends were missing… The door then shut… there was no handle… there was no way out but in. I was terrified… I couldn’t even think straight. I banged on the door, I screamed for my friends and nothing happened. I turned around and shined my light and what I found was an old rusted ladder leading down into a dark hole. There was nothing I could do but go down and hope there was a way out. I proceeded down the ladder and I noticed about every ten feet the brick shaft I was descending would turn a darker shade of red. It got to the point where the bricks were a dark red, it seemed unnatural. I finally hit the bottom. The floor was flooded in murky water up to my ankles. I shined my light forward and my beam didn’t hit the end of the room. It was huge. The unnatural dark red was covering the ceiling also… I had to be dreaming. How could this be under an automotive factory. The more I walked deeper the more mannequin parts I saw. Heads, arms, legs everything. Some had red dripping from the eyes and mouths. Even deeper there were mannequins that were standing. Some were missing arms and heads. They got more frequent as I kept walking. As I walked even more deeper the mannequins were more intact. Red still dripped from the faces. Not even 30 feet in front of me my light picked up something. Something was crouched down… what I saw was horrible… this thing stood up alerted by my presence. It stood on four legs, it’s body was fleshy but inhuman… it had to be. It’s arms were large but it had hands of a human… the worst part was it’s face. It had four rotten, deformed faces connected to one head. Strangely they each had a different emotion… it’s neck cracked and spun the faces around quickly alerted. I unfortunately got a glimpse of all faces… One was smiling… one was frowning, one had a jagged sneer and the last had a long tongue sticking out. All the eyes were missing from the sockets. The rest was a blur. I sprinted without thinking and I must have ran head on into the wall.

I blacked out….

I woke up to the sight of my 2 friend’s faces. We were in the basement of the factory.

“Woah easy man… you blacked out, looks like you hit your head pretty hard” Erik said.

<p style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">I eventually sat up and began to tell them about the room behind the boiler. They were confused. I then got up and walked behind the large boiler to show them the door.

<p style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">It was gone.

<p style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">I never forgot what I saw that night. I really don’t have an explanation for what happened but I know it did. No one could have imagined something as horrible as that… You know it is funny, all those ghost stories, the stories about hooked handed killers and ghosts in the mirror. They must have happened to somebody… What I saw I will never forget… I searched day and night for weeks to find something out about this factory. Nothing came up… no stories, no history. It’s as if this place was forgotten for a reason…