Just Bought My Childhood House 3 (Archive)

Alright. So. Huh. I guess I'll just tell this in chronological order.

So first off I heard from the realtor. They contacted the people I bought it from and acted like they were just curious if they'd ever had any poor experiences with the house. The owners told him that they just didn't really feel that the neighborhood suited them. No ghostly experiences or anything like that. I asked that my realtor give them my number but I haven't heard from them. However, I did a little digging and here's what I know:

So the house was built by a family about a hundred-fifty years ago. Like I said, we're in an OLD area. So the family that built it lived in it and passed it down until the last few members died out. I guess no one had any kids so the bank took ownership. I found all this out through public record, but I don't really know the details of the sale to my parents. I assume they bought it from the bank.

My buddy came over around five after work and I basically gave him a rundown of everything I know so far. He agreed for the most part, but I could tell he thought it was some prank I was pulling. I had asked him to bring over some climbing stuff and even though he didn't know why I wanted him to he came through. One of the things he brought was a little flashlight, and he said the first thing to do was lower something brighter than a glowstick in there. The rope was about 90', and we got just about two-thirds of it in there before it started getting pulled to the left. The tunnel was curving, like a spiral.

That's the best way I can describe it. Reminded me of how a magnet on a string acts when it's being attracted to another one. The light also flickered and we thought it would go out but it was tougher than the other lights and stayed on. By that point my buddy was 100% in agreement that shit was really not normal. That must explain why the glowsticks never hit bottom. They got sucked into and beyond that curve.

We lowered the light in as far as we could, and lost sight of it. By our estimate the curve becomes really noticeable around 75 feet down. I was all for going down right away but my buddy is smarter than me and insisted that we do a few more checks. He sort of rigged a system up that was tied to one of the bigger beams and attached a harness to it. He was VERY insisted on it being just a piece of shit thing that would never be as totally safe but I have to admit my adrenaline was going and I NEEDED to know what was in there.

He got the thing all rigged up but when I asked for the harness he wouldn't give it to me. I said, give me the damn thing, and he refused. He kept saying no, it's not safe, I'm the only one trained to do this, all that stuff. And I tried to be respectful about it but we started arguing pretty bad. Then he threatened to take his entire set up down and out and I VERY reluctantly agreed to let him go down first to check it out.

He put on some kind of respirator thing like I've seen constriction workers wear and got himself all rigged up in the harness. He's a bigger dude so it was a tight fucking fit for him under that roof. So much so that I thought maybe he wasn't gonna fit at all. But he managed to cram himself inside and test his weight down on the ladder. It was fine, totally solid, and he started down with me holding a really big camping flashlight to give him as much light as possible.

Everything was fine until he got about 30 feet down. We'd been talking and then suddenly his voice cut off. It scared the shit out of me. I could see him but it was like he was behind a wall, no sound at all. Afterward, he said he couldn't hear me either, and he came back up, calling the whole time. From my end, he was totally silent until a very specific height, when suddenly I could hear him again. We narrowed it down to just about where we figured the basement would be. 32 feet, give or take. Which means that this tunnel is going WELL below the basement.

He got almost triple that before he had to stop and come back up. His voice was really shaky. He said, it's fucking cold down there. I didn't really realize what he meant at the time so I just asked if he was gonna stop. At first he said no, but then he went back down and it seemed like he got stuck going around that curve. He tried a few different ways but because of the angle he didn't have enough clearance. The tunnel doesn't exactly get narrower but my friend was having some trouble anyway (he's a BIG fucking dude) and for some reason just couldn't seem to get the right angle to make that curve. It seemed like it took him forever to get back up. We regrouped.

He said at that specific point a little over 30 feet down, it was like going into ice water. Freezing cold, no sound. He couldn't even really hear himself, he was super muffled. He said it wasn't like anything he'd ever experienced before, and did I really want to go down? Of course I said yes, and he got me all strapped in to the harness. I'm small, it runs in my family, so I had no problem getting down inside.

The ladder is made of the same wood as the rest of the house, and is basically just blocks of wood hammered into the side. As you go down the curve is VERY noticeable, much more so than if you were just looking at it. At the point where you hit the basement, the panelling gives way to dirt that's shored up with some occasional planks. At around the same point, you go through that barrier and it's shocking to the system. Takes your breath away. There's also a pressure change- my ears popped really painfully.

Since I was going down feet first I couldn't really see what was below me. I felt the curve more than saw it. I gave my friend a thumbs-up and started the turn.

I went down for over five minutes, guys. I timed it. Now admittedly I was going slow but I can't even express how wrong it felt to just keep going down into this fucking endless hole. There was a point where I really seriously started getting scared that I was never gonna find the end of this thing. It was that long. Then all of a sudden I went to take another step and my foot landed in something that rolled under me and almost send me on my ass. I kicked it all aside and got my feet under me. Solid ground. Cold through my shoes. I pointed the smaller flashlight at the ground.

The glowsticks. Still glowing. And farther away in what was basically a closet-sized room, the marbles. Holy shit.

The room is small, like I said, and open at one end, where it appears to continue downward in that same circular way. There is no natural light, and the air is INCREDIBLY cold. I only spent a few minutes down there but I was frozen by the time I left, which was quickly. I was nervous being down too long without my friend knowing what was going on.

Needless to say he was pissed that he couldn't get in but neither of us was willing to call it quits. Communication down there was an issue, though, since after a few failed attempts at my calling from the room, we concluded that electronics didn't seem to like working down there. We decided we'd do things on a time limit instead. I'd go down for half an hour at the most and come right back when time was up. If I didn't show, he'd call the cops. He wasn't crazy on it but by then he was dying to know what it was just as much as me.

In total, I spent about two hours down in what I just started thinking of as the sub-basement. The walls are some kind of grey rock. They're smooth, no markings or seams. Completely dark, no lights of any kind. I didn't have the balls to turn off my light to verify that though. The ground is dirt, and there's no sign of prior traffic except a place that's scuffed right by the edge of the ladder, near where my own marks are. The hallway leading down, out of the room, is wider than the tunnel coming down. I followed that for a ways, but it seemed like the space was getting wider and I didn't want to risk getting lost. Everything looks the same down there.

The entire time I was going down this hallway, farther into the ground, it kept getting colder and colder. The walls were almost painful to touch. My nose hairs were freezing together, and about then is when I turned back. That second time through I noticed something I'd missed coming in. It was lying out of my line of sight, near the right wall. Something green.

A piece of a string of Christmas tree lights. It must have fallen off when I lowered it and gotten stuck to my shoe. I don't know how else it would have gotten there.

Up top, I was so cold my buddy had to help me out. I had no use of my hands. It was like I'd been in a deep freezer. I got into the shower and stayed there for almost and hour trying to warm up. My buddy agreed to stay the night in case i needed help or something.

He has tomorrow off, and I've agreed to wait until he comes over again to do anything else. I'm going to buy some heavy winter gear to take down with me, as well as some fishing line and chalk to mark my way. I'm also bringing a tape measure and some paper so I can draw out what this place looks like roughly. If there's anything else I should bring let me know.

I don't really know what else to say about it. It's beyond strange. Impossible. I don't know what to think. I had no idea this thing was under my house and I want to know why it's there. Why there's ZERO record of anyone even knowing about it. I'm gonna look around in the attic to see if maybe there's stuff up there from the previous owners that they forgot or something.

I feel really sick today for some reason, though, so I'm not feeling up to much. I'll do it tomorrow first thing.