When I was a kid, my mom would take my brother, Brendan, and I to waterparks frequently. A couple times a year usually. We were lucky enough to grow up about 90 minutes from the waterpark capital of the world, so it wasn’t a big event to travel to go to one. We didn’t have a ton of money growing up, but enough to be able to afford these trips as my mom was a pretty good bargain hunter.
On one of these trips, we encountered something, um, unusual. See sometimes on our last day, we would shop downtown after checking out from the resort before heading home. It’s mostly tourist traps, but sometimes you find something cool or interesting. While walking through the stores, we passed a cheery, early 20 something saleswoman. She called us over to listen to her pitch. “Come stay at the newest and ‘hottest’ waterpark resort in the Wisconsin Dells. Hellfire Bay is running a special deal, stay two nights, get one free for our opening season.” Never one to turn down a deal, my mom booked it right away.
A few months went by and it came time to set out on our trip. We got everything packed up: swimsuits, sunscreen, goggles, etc. My mom, my ten year old brother, and I piled into the car and then began the endless “I have to pee,” “I’m hungry,” and “are we there yet?”s that always accompanied these kinds of trips. The resort wasn’t actually in the dells, but a few miles outside of it, which was fine with us because that meant less people nearby.
When we arrived we noticed the peculiar theming of the resort. With a name like Hellfire Bay, you’d think we wouldn’t be surprised, but we were. Two great big pillars greeted us as we entered the building. They were surrounded with cheap looking fake fire and so was the rest of the lobby. My mom approached the check-in desk and gave our last name. We got our room key and resort map as well as a list of things to do nearby. As we walked away the clerk told us to “have a sinful stay,” which was a little unsettling, but we tried to ignore it.
The waterpark, the main attraction to the resort, was just as cheap looking as the lobby with dumb devil cutouts and more fake fire littered about. I guess when it comes to waterparks you get what you pay for. At least we got to cool off in the pool and go down the couple of water slides they had. When we had our fill of splashing and sliding, we came back to our room. It was evening, but not too terribly late. I wasn’t ready for bed yet, so I thought I’d go for a walk around the resort. One of my favorite things to do at resorts was just walk around and memorize where everything was.
I asked my mom, but she told me I had to take my brother if I left the room. I groaned and said, “come on, let’s go.” He followed behind me oblivious to the fact that I hated having to take him with me. We walked through the halls of endless rooms looking at the room numbers to get a grasp on where I was at any given time while keeping my own room number in mind so I could navigate back if I got lost. As we passed landmarks I’d announce them out loud while pointing to them. My brother thought I was showing him, but to be honest it was more of a memorization technique. “Waterpark… sauna… weight room… gift shop,” and so on.
We then came across a sign that read, “Rooms 648 – 670” with an arrow pointing to the right. Being the edgy teen that I was, I turned to my brother and said, “Hey, we should look for room number 666.” He responded with giggling, not really understanding, but being able to recognize that there was something “bad” about doing that. As if the mere mention of the number could get us in trouble.
We walked down the hall on the right watching the numbers go up as we passed. 648, 649, 650, etc, but then I noticed something when we got close. It went from 659 to 668. “There’s a whole section of rooms just missing,” I said, turning to my little brother. He looked back to me and said, “I wonder where they are.”
“I’m not sure, but let’s keeping looking.” I looked to the last three doors in the hall. Next to doors 669 and 670 was an unmarked door. I looked to Brendan, then at the door. We creeped up to the door and gently opened it. Peering inside what we saw was not another hotel room, but a stairwell. It didn’t go up, however. It was only going down. I had thought we were already on the lowest floor, but apparently there was a second basement level.
We slowly walked down, looking around at the apparently unused stairwell. “Watch your step,” I warned Brendan. “These steps look like they could crumble at any moment. Plus, there’s spider webs everywhere and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some spiders.” He nodded, but didn’t say anything. I could tell by the look on his face that he was getting increasingly uncomfortable. When we reached the bottom of the stairs there was a door with broken hinges just kind of hanging there. The doorway lead into another hallway.
“Here they are!” my brother excitedly pointed at the missing hotel rooms from the floor above us. We began to walk as I read the room numbers out loud, “660, 661, 662. I wonder why they were built down here instead.”
“Could they have been old rooms for people that worked here?”
“Well remember this is a new water park. Most of this complex is new, but this section at least had to have been here before. My guess is the building above was torn down and rebuilt, but the basement from the building that was here they just left with no plans to use it. Could be old staff rooms though.”
“But why’d the original hotel number the rooms this way? Even if that’s true, that’s still not a good reason for these out of order room numbers right?”
“That is a good point actually,” I trailed off in thought as we approached room number 666. “Well here it is.”
“Do you think we could get inside? That other door was hanging off it’s hinges, we might be able to get inside this one too.”
I shrugged my shoulders and reached for the door handle. “Sure, what the hell. No pun intended, but first,” I slipped the sign that said, “666” into my pocket. “They’re not using it anyway right?” I said rhetorically. I turned and pulled the door open. The hinges were completely intact, but it was unlocked. I stepped inside, let the door close behind us, and couldn’t believe what I saw as we got inside and looked around.
It was a completely normal room. When I say that, I don’t mean an old run down room from the 70s that’s been ignored. The room was clean and even had all the towels folded. The bed was made. It was ready for a new guest, complete with an “enjoy your stay” card. My brother was also puzzled.
“So now what?” Brendan asked.
“Go back I guess.”
“I was kind of expecting something else.”
“Yeah same. Oh well.”
We turned around and headed out the door. It closed behind us and we began walking down the hall headed back to the stairs. It should have been no longer than a 30 second walk, but after a minute we stopped, both of us confused.
“Are we sure this is the way we came?” my brother asked me.
“I thought it was, what do the room numbers say?”
We both looked and neither of us said anything at first. We stood shocked as we looked at every room number. Every single one had “666” next to the door. We brought up our pace a bit as we both continued to look frantically at every door number hoping that the number would be anything except “666.” Even though we were both panicking and internally screaming, we both tried to look calm on the outside and not let the other know. He was doing it because he didn’t want to be viewed as the “baby brother.” I was doing it because I felt like as a big brother it was my job to be the cool and calm one.
Eventually, we came to the end of the hall. There was just one problem: the broken door was not there to greet us. Instead, it was another “666” hotel room. I looked to my brother and said, “I guess we were going the wrong way then.”
“So should we turn around?”
“Yeah. Just a second though. Just out of curiosity,”
I trailed off as I reached for the knob. Just as I was about to touch it, my brother spoke up.
“I don’t think we should. I just want to go back.”
“Oh, come on! Don’t be such a baby.”
As soon as the word “baby” came up, he shut up immediately. Like I said, he hated being thought of that way. I opened the door and peered inside. It looked like some storage area. The room looked like a big closet and was full of the fake fire that had been decorating the lobby, waterpark, and various other places around the resort. I headed inside to look around. There was nothing in the room besides this fire. I got to the back and looked up to notice my brother still next to the door. Not moving. Not talking. Just waiting for me. I started to feel bad and said, “Okay fine, let’s go.” Once I made my way back to the door of the room, we exited the room together.
When the door closed behind me, I took two steps and froze in place. My initial thought was we had to have walked the wrong way down the hall. I mean, it’d the only logical explanation. I don’t know about Brendan, but that thought calmed my nerves considerably. The only problem with that theory, however, was when we left the room at the end of the hall and looked down what used to be a completely empty hall when we walked down just moments ago and saw a hall that was now littered with the cardboard cutout fire.
“Wh- bu-“ Brendan barely stammered.
“Okay yeah. Maybe you were right. Let’s get back. Now.”
We were both about fed up with the bravery act. At the same time, we both broke into a full sprint. We passed room after room. I didn’t need to look at them. I knew that if I looked to a sign on either side, I’d see the same thing. Cardboard fire and the number of the beast. I didn’t want to mess around anymore. I regretted looking at all. At the other end of the hall there was another door. Still not that same broken door, but I didn’t care anymore. I just ran and ran and ran, opened the door, went through, saw more of the same, and continued to run and run and run. Then I noticed something. I was warm. Like not just “I’ve been exercising” warm. It was so hot I felt like I could pass out.
“When did it get so hot?” There was no response. I stopped and turned around, but my brother was nowhere in sight. I panicked. I was now completely alone, lost, and sweating bullets. Turning around, I ran back the way I came. Or the way I was going initially. I couldn’t tell left from right or forwards from backwards anymore. I didn’t know if I was going towards the stairs, towards the storage, or a different direction all together. Words could not describe the terror I felt in that moment.
“Brendan? Brendan!? BRENDAAAAN!?” I screamed out while dripping with sweat now. I couldn’t see him anywhere. I just kept running. Run, run, run, run, open door, run, run, run, run, turn corner, run, run, run, run. I was drenched with sweat and tears were pouring out. I opened another door, it had to be the 5th or 6th at this point since I turned around. The heat was nearly unbearable. One foot in the door, I stuck my head through to see what was causing the excruciating heat. I looked and my already soul crushing fear was cranked up fear to 11.
The entire hall was engulfed in flames. “Oh no oh no oh no,” I mumbled to myself. I turned around to start trying the other way, but all the cardboard fire had transformed into real fire. Cornered by fire on both sides I thought quickly on what to do. Then I remembered that I had a cell phone. My mom told me that it was only for emergencies. I was pretty sure this counted. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the phone, and dialed 911. I held my phone up to ear, saying a silent prayer. After a few seconds of silence, I pulled the phone away from my ear to look at it. Then I remembered I was in the basement and had no service.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, now what!?” I said to no one staring at my useless phone. Thinking quickly, I remembered the rooms all around me and that the one room we looked inside of looked just like a normal hotel room. I could use the room phone to call the front desk! Standing in the door way, I looked up and down the hall hoping to find a path to a door that was clear enough to not get burned on the way. I found my path and took off without wasting any time. Approaching the door, I read that damn room number for the millionth time. “666” It’s like it was mocking me. “Remember? This is all your fault. You just had to find me. Well? Here I am.” Remembering my fire safety training, I felt the door with the back of my hand. So far so good. With the hall in blazes, I figured the doorknob would still be hot though. I grabbed it through my shirt and entered the room.
I ran to the phone and picked it up to listen for a dial tone. Let me tell you, when I heard that dull drone, it might as well have been a choir of angels. Looking down I saw the sign that read, “Dial 0 to reach the front desk.” I smashed that 0 key and waited for the line to connect.
“Front desk, how can I help you?” Success! Things were finally started to look up! The words spilled out of my mouth like some kind of word vomit. “Yes my brother and I were wandering the halls and went down to the basement and started looking at rooms and first we got lost then I lost him and then the whole basement started on fire I can’t get out I tried to call 911 but I had no cell service I need help.”
“I’m sorry. There’s no escaping from Hellfire Bay.” Click. They hung up. What was that? Some kind of prank? I was not amused. I dialed the extension to our room to try to get a hold of my mom. It rang, but what I heard was not my mom pick up. “I’m sorry. There’s no escaping from Hellfire Bay.” I tried again. “I’m sorry. There’s no escaping from Hellfire Bay.” I started just dialing random room numbers, but every time the response was the same. “I’m sorry. There’s no escaping from Hellfire Bay.”
My heart sank so far I’m pretty sure it was on the ground. “This is it. I am going to die, ” I thought to myself. I shuffled over to the bathroom. If I’m going to die I might as well get a short break from this heat. I ran a cold bath and sat there. I heard the fire move to the main room. Smoke began to fill up the room. Soon it was so thick I couldn’t see the door. The ceiling fell. All sorts of things fell from the upper floors. “I wonder if they’ll ever find my body,” were my final thoughts as my consciousness slowly faded.
I woke in a cold sweat. Was I in the hospital? No, I was in my bedroom? I shot out of bed and ran downstairs to find my mom.
“Mom! What happened? Where’s Brendan? When did we get home?”
“Calm down, calm down. Brendan’s playing in his room. Get home from where?”
“The Dells!”
“Honey, we haven’t gone since June.”
“No when we went to Hellfire Bay!”
She had no idea what I was talking about. In fact, no one had any idea what I was talking about. No one believed me, they all said it was a bad dream. It was too much to be a dream, but my main theory is that for some reason or another I just hallucinated the entire day along with the woman that sold us the trip. Weird that those were far apart though. Maybe my memory was just playing tricks on me, I don’t know. I waved the entire thing off as made up and I would have let it die there without ever making this post if it wasn’t for what happened about a week ago.
I was visiting my childhood home and going through old clothes; taking what still fit, donating what was in good shape, and throwing away the rest. I picked up an old pair of jeans. “Wow, I don’t think I’ve worn these since high school!” I thought to myself. Then I noticed a lump in the pocket. I took it out and saw it was my old phone. “It’s melted! How hot was it in the attic?? Wait there’s something else in here.” I slid out the old hotel door number sign with those three God forsaken digits that haunted me for years. I had all but forgotten about that nightmare. Then I saw it. 666. All those memories flooded back.
I’m still not sure if the whole thing happened. Maybe we stayed at a different hotel and I took it, but for some reason my brain made up this whole convoluted story as some kind of justification or protection from a trauma that actually happened. I’m writing this all out on the slim chance that it is real. Maybe I have an opportunity here to warn someone. Stop them from having to go through what I did. If you are in the Wisconsin Dells and someone approaches you to talk to you about Hellfire Bay, turn around, walk away, and never look back.