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unadulteratedrebelrunaway · 6 years

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I CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE

[8/27/18].

Alexander W. Benson II

Do you find old building's creepy? Old buildings seem to have a personality all their own, and once abandoned, they always seem to take on a life all their own. The tragic part seems to be they radiate a sense of sadness. It is almost as if they know they've been abandoned, and they resent it.

Think about how much damage resentment can inflict on a living person. Whenever I walk by old dwellings in particular, I always have this sense they are pulling me in, and once I enter, I can never leave.

Lockport, New York, has many historic buildings. The city itself is built atop the Niagara Escarpment, excluding Lowertown. Many of its founders were Quakers and early Jewish settlers. Even then, Jewish people happened upon discrimination. Grand Island was originally set up as a colony for Jewish people, and it wasn't Jewish people who set that up.

Anyway, the city of Lockport still has some of its buildings, along with their own personalities. One such place is situated on the Niagara County Golf Course. Before the golf course was there, the grounds were home to the country poor house, which consisted of several buildings. A few of them still stand today, and one of those is the old poorhouse itself.

Back then, the poorhouse was where people went once society had no use for them. Too sane to be put in a mental hospital, and too law abiding to be put into prison or jail, yet their lot wasn't all that much better. Their lot was one that time and place seemed to forget.

People went in there unknown to the world, to a place where nobody knew their name, and then they died without a name. Crude nameless crosses marked their exit from this world. For years, people came, people saw, and then they went on enjoying their own lives without a care for those in the pine boxes. It is all just as well, since those boxes have probably rotted away.

In this poorhouse, in the basement, was the morgue. If there is one thing to really make an old building look and feel creepy, give it a morgue. To make matters worse, this morgue still has some of the rather crude equipment that was the livelihood of those who made their living off of the dead.

On several occasions, the county tried getting rid of this building, but to no avail. No matter what the price, nobody wanted it. Once in a while, a wealthy investor would seem interested in it, however, they would always pull out, and nobody ever knew why. It was almost as if some unknown force prevented its sale every time.

My wife and I got invited to stay at her friend's house across the street from the golf course back in 2008. I, for one, was looking forward to playing a round of golf. Not only that, I thought it was kind of cool rooming across the street from a historical site. It looked so peaceful and relaxing. My wife hates golf, but she has always been keen on historic places.

One thing about old places is they always have some kind of history, and by that I mean they must have been witness to something noteworthy. For instance, if they housed patients during the Cholera outbreak, then some heavy stuff must have gone down. Some of the bigger places involved have catacombs built right into the foundations.

Places like these have had many a share of hard luck stories, and I'm a believer in residual haunting, for one. For those of you who don't know what that is, I'll explain. An example would be if something traumatic happens to one or more people who are in a specific place at a certain time, then I believe that imprints itself on the very grounds it occurred. Think of it like when something gets burned, and even after that item is removed and the surroundings get cleaned inside and out, the smell is permanently stained into the very fabric of that environment, and nothing can get rid of it. It is almost as if the very fabric of time and space permanently records the very event, and will occasionally replay it for all the later generations to bear witness to it also.

As for my wife, let me just say that she is a bit more than a dabbler in the paranormal. She loves taking pictures and recording paces with an audiotape. Her paranormal photographs range from taking pictures of churches in broad daylight to old decrepit cemeteries on Halloween at midnight. I've looked at her pictures, and despite what people say about orbs, most of them look like reflections of light. When somebody tells me there is a face in that mirror, I look and I have to say, "What face? It looks more like a smudge to me." Then there are those pictures in the cemeteries at night. In one of them, I see hundreds of different colored dots. It looks like moisture to me. Why are they different colors? I tell people about all the experiments with light, like the way it can be refracted and split into all the different colors of the rainbow. Just take a look at Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

I'm even less impressed by the audio taped recordings. Nothing more than gruff sounds. It doesn't matter where any of those have been recorded, whether that be an old asylum, or some open field where nothing happened. The sounds are always the same. Now, if I hear somebody talking into it, and saying words that I, along with some of the other witnesses present, can hear clear as day, at the same time, then I would be inclined to believe what I hear.

As for hearing voices that couldn't be there, and some otherworldly sounds, I've never heard any of those. At least I didn't until this trip.

The poorhouse was beautiful but creepy. There were two windows at the corners that looked like a pair of sad eyes. It gave an air that seemed to say, "You can come in, but you are never going to leave. I'm keeping you." I remember as we were carrying our bags into her friend's house, I said, "Looks nice enough, but I wouldn't want to confront whatever haunts that place on a dark night."

Ironically, my wife never went inside it. Her friend, Phantasia, told her it might collapse on her, plus it was illegal to enter. I found it weird she never ventured inside. She was one of the most curious people I've ever met. That was one of the reasons I married her. We never would have met if it wasn't for that. Nevertheless, I figured that was that.

I asked Phantasia about the poorhouse the following day. She told us about the place's history. I asked something about what probably went on back then, like how we did some of the same things for the furthering of medical science that the Germans were also doing since we were in a race for who would become the next superpower at the time. Phantasia denied everything. Her friend told us in no uncertain terms that none of the atrocities happened. She changed the subject real fast by telling us we should go for a round of golf. My wife acted excited about playing golf, which was weird because she always hated golf. I thought I was having a flashback from my partying days.

When we went outside, she told me we were investigating the old poorhouse. I hated this, but I knew she was going in there, with or without me. To keep her from hurting herself or possibly getting arrested, I went along despite my feelings about it.

It was hot and sunny outside. Inside, it was dark and cool. Nothing but stainless steel tables and turn of the century medical equipment. If it hadn't been for the dust everywhere, the room probably would have been very bright on account of everything being ivory white. I guess these places where laid out like this to make everything extra bright once the lights were on. Attention to detail, especially since life was separated by death by fractions of a millimeter in here. One slip, and oops, I've lost another patient. Of course, I hate to admit this, but I'll assume that since lawyers weren't in such a sue happy mood until the 1980's, maybe the doctors back then weren't as concerned about using extra care when it came to saving a patient's life.

Off to one side, was a room with a heavy steel door. It looked filthy but very robust.

Like I said, the entire room was white despite all the dust. What I saw next put ice in my veins. There was a cabinet with a glass door. I would find out later it was what the mortician used to fill the dead people up with formaldehyde. Half the windows were boarded up. There didn't seem to be an alarm system. I was hoping it wasn't one of those silent alarms. There was an old heavy wooden clipboard with a rusty hasp that wasn't locked. Being curious, my wife opened it. The paper was extra thick, much thicker than anything they use today, and the writing was in black ink. The writing was perfectly legible with the dates entered in it. Some of the dates went back to the 1920's. I believe that was close to when the poorhouse opened. It was surprising that something so old was so well preserved.

"It must have looked like this back when they were writing this stuff," says I.

My wife got this saddened look in her eyes. I saw all these names of people that were forgotten, not just to us, but to the world that tossed them away like adult orphans. My wife couldn't believe that so many people had nobody to love them. I exclaimed the tragic part was unlike an orphanage where the young ones could leave once they grew up; this was the place where these people died. Then I wondered if some of these people were only clinically dead before they had their souls pumped out of them. What if they awoke during the embalming process? Could you imagine that happening to you? You know, that was about the time that Hitler started performing those medical experiments on the mentally unfortunate over in Germany. Then there was a loud bang on the other side of the steel door. I almost jumped out of my skin.

We listened. I whispered about the bear we've been told that had been sighted on the grounds. Then it happened again, this time so loud and hard I swore the door inched outward. Some paint flakes on the jam fell to the floor. That door was shut pretty tight and would take a great amount of force to move because I tried a pull test earlier on it. I had my doubts it was a bear. Then a third bang, this time accompanied by the sound of a heavy steel table being dragged towards the door.

I would have freaked out if it was Grizzly himself from the movie of the same name, but this was worse. A high pitched shriek. It was a woman's voice piercing through my very soul. I swore it said something to the effect of, "Get off me. Pull that thing out of me. Why are you cutting me open?"

We were out in an instant, including my wife. Once outside, normally, we would have started talking but we didn't. Not a word was spoken until much later that night. The experience was freaky.

Later that night when we were lying in bed, my wife turned to me and said, "How do you explain that Sherlock Holmes?" I tried coming up with something good. The trouble was my explanations were tenuous at best. Finally, my explanation was a person must have had a television set blaring with the window open.

She told me, "That sounded awfully close to be coming from somebody's house."

I countered with, "The wind must have carried it over."

Then she said, "I don't think anybody would listen to something that creepy."

After a moment's thought, I turned around and said, "Have you ever heard of Alfred Hitchcock presents?"

A thought occurred to us both. She told me there have been cases of homeless people squatting in those buildings. "I used to know the supervisor there," says she. "He told me they thought one of the buildings was haunted until they decided to investigate it. They ended up chasing this homeless guy out."

The image of that haunted facade flashed through my head, with its two looking eyes at us from atop its perch. I thought about calling the police, but we were breaking and entering ourselves. If we ran into some maniac who talked to himself in riddles while pacing around with a little backpack with all his worldly possessions inside it, things might not turn out pleasant.

"Looks like we're in luck," says I. "I brought Big Bertha with us in case we run into that bum."

The following morning, we got up so as not to disturb Phantasia. She would have freaked out if she knew what we were up to. I grabbed the golf clubs, and Suzie brought the tape recorder.

When we arrived, the first thing I looked at was the heavy steel door. Nobody opened that thing. It was painted shut, despite the jarring it received from some unseen force the previous day. We decided to see what was in there.

Quietly and quickly, we went to work so as not to get caught by the police. It would have been one thing if Phantasia would have caught us, but I was really worried about the police since what we were doing constituted a felony.

Back in Phantasia's garage, I found a crowbar with a cat's eye. It offered a sharp edge that would come in handy, both as a tool and as a weapon of self-defense, just in case. That edge came in handy as I needed to sever the paint job that sealed the door shut. Then I was able to get the crowbar in with just enough tapping, and little by little, I was able to work that door. It took a few minutes, but I got it opened. Of course, Suzie, with the heart of a lion, helped make it possible.

Just to play it safe, I was the first to go. I couldn't believe my eyes. Despite the noises we heard the previous day, nobody was in here. The place was a lot darker than the first room, but I could still see on account of the sunlight coming through all the holes in the boarded up windows. Despite holding my Big Bertha, I still felt scared almost out of my wits. It was as if something ominous was watching my every move, almost knowing what I was going to do even before I knew it.

Nothing but some empty gurneys, open storage bins, and a couple of old kits the morticians used for embalming. Some of them still had fluid in the bottles with the hoses attached. The steel tips at the other ends of the hoses looked like they could still serve their purpose. I'd sure hate to get poked with that stuff. I looked out one of the only windows and there were all the countless wooden crosses of those that died without hope, or a name. The creepy part was looking at those old slabs that went into the wall. Could you imagine being left there for the night, and the only one who comes to visit you is the mortician when he pulls you back out to perform an autopsy and embalmment on you? Back then, seeing how crude technology was, I wonder how many people were thought to be dead, brought in here, and then had their blood drained from them, only to wake up during the process.

It almost looked like a museum. Everything in there looked ancient. Even the boards looked old and decrepit. Nobody has been in here for years. What caused all that noise?

I told her, "There is nothing to see here. I say we hightail it. We were pretty worked up yesterday, and you know how that can prime up the imagination. We must have only thought we heard those things."

On our way out, my wife drops the recorder just inside the entryway. I told her not to bother, but she told me, "Just in case. I'd like to get something."

We didn't say anything to Phantasia. We wanted our last night to be as uneventful as we could make it. We know nothing about the people in the log because many of them were called Jon and Jane. The crosses didn't have names on them and their coffins were pine boxes.

I didn't want to go back in, but we had to get that tape, or at least my wife had to. We decided to make one last trip.

"Okay," I told my wife, "but let's make it fast so the cops won't catch us." We got the tape. Would you believe it took both of us to shut that door?

Thud! We just stared, and thud! This time with even more authority, sending flakes of paint from the door jamb. What followed was the dragging metallic sound toward the entrance. It made my skin crawl. We were outside in five seconds. Later I recalled hearing that horrible scream, accompanied by the pleading, "Pull that thing out of me. I'm not dead!"

I never ran so fast, but it couldn't be fast enough. My neck still hurt for two days afterward from looking over my shoulder the whole time. Someone, or something horrible, was watching us. As least I would have swore up and down that was the case. We tried calming ourselves down as best we could but to no avail. It took ten minutes of race walking before our heart rates slowed down. Even then, things weren't back to normal. For a minute there, I was scared I was going to drop dead from a heart attack, and that mortician was going to come out and drag me inside to join his other friend he was having fun with.

When we got inside, Phantasia was sitting at the table. "You like to take your walks awful early." We told her we liked to get our exercise before the jerks got on the road."

We got home. Then Suzie played the tape on our stereo system. She had to turn the sucker up to the point the wall was shaking. Once it got to the point where I wanted to shut it off, we started to hear something.

The sounds of metal on metal got louder. Suzie was hearing it, too. It would turn out what we heard the day before was only a warm-up. Now was time for the crescendo. The clanging got louder, along with a crude sound like somebody was performing an operation, only I don't think it was to save somebody's life. I felt chills down my spine that whatever it was, it was something ominous.

A man began talking in broken English. It sounded like he had a German accent. He sounded cold and unfeeling, like he was following military orders. Then the screaming began. Something along the lines of, "What are you doing to me?" I thought I heard him tell her to shut up. I heard the voice command someone to use the saw. The other one said something like, "No." Then the lead voice threatened to execute him with the service revolver for insubordination if he didn't cut her open to insert the pump. No more argument.

Then some metal on bone action, almost like she was being sawed open. She yelled something along the lines of, "Pull this (expletive) cord out of me. My veins are collapsing."

Yelling about the horrible pain. Then the blood curdling screams began. After that, silence. Hermann the German started humming some song that neither my wife nor I recognized. Accompanying that was a whirring sound like some high speed drilling action, almost like what you would hear in the dentist's office after he gave you Novocain, except there was no Novocain coming on this round.

My wife turns to me and says something along the lines of, "Could you imagine having no place to go, no place to work, and ending up there? Catching some disease through no fault of your own, and ending up spending your final moments on this plane being a medical experiment, or a simple write-off because you cost too much to feed?"

Then the sounds stopped, and I had to kill the stereo. I couldn't take anymore.

THE END

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