I got into urban exploring a few years ago. Or urbex as the kids call it. Mostly did it because it seemed fun. And it was. Mostly. I started doing it with my friend Cam. Real lad’s lad. Really outgoing, everyone loved him, always up for a beer. It was his idea actually, started going on about going where nobody else goes, I joined him because I was bored.
We started with sewers at first, subway tunnels. Nothing too dangerous. After a few times we started inviting our mates with us, have little groups going out. But they either couldn’t find the time or would rather be getting drunk.
Don’t blame them but me and Cam didn’t stop. Moving on from subways we tried the whole taking selfies from skyscrapers thing. Cam nearly lost his footing, shit himself, and then we moved on to exploring abandoned buildings, much closer to the ground.
Always during the day though. Except this one time that I’ll never forget.
“How about we go to that abandoned hospital already?” Cameron said over some craft beer at this new joint we were at. Real hipster pub, not one of our usual hangouts. I knew the hospital he was talking about since we talked about it for what seemed like years. But we could never find the time and there was always somewhere closer we could go to.
“We’ll just go there at night this time.” Said Cam.
Maybe it was the beer talking but I agreed to it right then and there. I wish I hadn’t.
A week later we were at the front of the hospital after sunset, just the two of us. We came full kitted out though, headlamps, dolphin torches, even had hi-vis jackets on.
I said we never went exploring during the night, right? Heaps of things can go wrong. You don’t see where you’re going is the main thing and especially in abandoned buildings with unstable floors and crumbling steps you can easily hurt yourself. But me and Cam thought we were top shit and could explore this hospital with our eyes closed.
So we lit up our torches and went right in.
Just a word about the hospital: it was a small, private hospital abandoned some twenty odd years ago. The company was bought out and they moved the hospital closer to the city. Everything they could take with them they could but as we stepped inside the main lobby, we still found ripped couches, a moldy dusty reception desk, and plastic plants that were still as good as the day they were bought.
It’s a really eerie feeling walking into a building that was once so full of life now turned into a hollowed-out carcass. You could see that some people had clearly been here since the move, graffiti sprayed on the walls, one of the couches was torn open and smashed to bits, there were even a pile of needles on a newspaper left behind by some junkie.
And there was that smell, the smell of copper.
Cam noticed it too and said somebody must have tried ripping out the pipes for drug money or something. I wasn’t so sure…
Still uneasy, we headed up for the stairs so we could go straight to the third floor. I kind of joked that we could just take the elevator if its power hadn’t been cut off for about twenty years. Surprisingly, Cam weakly smirked, not his usual jovial self. I tried to give him (and me) an out and said maybe we should explore here when there’s daylight instead. But true to form, Cam made a big show about how there’s been nobody here for twenty years and he’s not scared of some cliché B horror movie set.
So off we went to the third floor.
Our footsteps could be heard echoing throughout the entire building. One step after the other, from the only two souls in the building. It was starting to become more than a little unnerving when we stopped at the second floor and I thought I could hear the sound of the footsteps echoing for a second or two longer than they should have.
I looked out onto the second floor, illuminating a long dark corridor with doors in various states of disrepair. Cam, sensing my unease, told me to knock it off. There was no one here and this was just like any other location we’d been too.
“What if some junkie or squatter’s in here?” I said as I turned to Cam.
He raised his arm to shield himself from the my headlamp light and swore at me.
“First off be careful where you point that thing. Ya idiot. Second, there’s no one else here.”
“But how do you know?”
Cam rolled his eyes and used his hands as a megaphone. “Oi! Is there anyone here?”
Silence. I didn’t dare move in case I masked the slightest bit of sound.
“There.” Said Cam. “No one here. Let’s hoof it.”
“As if anyone would call back,” was my response.
“Oh shut up,” was his.
The third floor was even stranger. The same decrepit hallways, but for some reason I felt like I was being watched. Cam suggested that we break up and go in separate directions but I retorted that we should stick together in case one of us gets hurt. He told me to stop being such a pussy and started walking down what a rusted sign once designated the “Burn Ward”.
I headed down “ICU” and started exploring.
I don’t know why I was surprised but all I found typical hospital equipment in the hospital. There were still bed curtain racks, hospital beds still here even though the mattresses were all yellow and soiled. The smell of copper was even stronger up here somehow. There was even some paperwork left on a bedside table with the hospital logo imprinted on the top mouldy sheet of paper. I was filing through them when I jumped at a voice at the doorway.
“Stop being such a pussy.” I, and I’m ashamed to admit this, but I screamed a little bit until I turned my torch to the voice and saw Cam standing at the doorway. He snuck up on me because he wasn’t holding a torch. I saw what he was up to.
“Yeah, funny. Are you serious about exploring this place or was this all just to scare the crap out of me?”
Cam standing at the doorway just smiled and shrugged.
“Let’s hoof it.” Cam said.
There’s was something about the way he said that, it was almost identical to how he said it a minute ago, a weird sense of déjà vu overcame me. But it was my best mate Cam standing in front of me, so what the hell was I so afraid of?
We walked into the hallway but instead of going back to the stairwell Cam led me deeper into the ICU ward, passing what was once a nurses’ station once.
What was weird was how easy he navigated the hospital, especially since he had no light with him.
“There’s no one else here.” Cam blurted out without any prompt.
I just nodded, my headlamp running up and down the decrepit walls.
“Be careful where you point that thing.” Cam warned me.
We had just walked into what was once a patient’s room when we both heard the echo of a voice.
“Oi? Where are you?”
It felt so familiar. It felt so familiar but I started to panic because there was someone else in the hospital.
“There’s no one else here.” Cam said just weakly smiling.
“I told you. I told you there was some junkie squatting here.”
“Ya idiot.” Cam said standing in the middle of the empty room.
That same voice from before. “Hey, I found something.” That was Cam’s voice that called out. But I was staring at Cam right in front of me, just grinning. My heart dropped. I didn’t know what to do.
At that point, I don’t know why. Maybe it was some sort of weird fight or flight response, the adrenaline and the darkness messing with my rational thinking but I started walking backwards, my eyes never leaving the Cameron in front of me, my headlamp lighting up his toothy grin, his head cocking, my heart pounding, before he lurched forward, I dashed for the doorway we came through, and turned right towards Cam’s voice.
“Ya idiot! Ya idiot!” It screamed behind me. I didn’t dare look back.
Cam’s voice came from ahead, down the corridor and around the corner. “What’s going on? You alright?” I ran forward towards Cam’s voice, my head throbbing, the light from my headlamp frantically dashing from one side to another, the dark rooms being lit up for only a moment as I kept sprinting ahead. I still heard the footsteps of fake Cam behind me. I was quickly approaching the end of the hallway, rushing closer and closer as my momentum slammed me into the wall.
I didn’t have time to slow down. I couldn’t slow down to turn. My hindbrain telling me to just run and faster. I turned to my right and saw a light flashing from around the corner fifty metres away.
I almost blacked out I was running that fast. I was halfway now. Behind me all I could hear was “Ya idiot! Ya idiot!” I honestly thought I was going to die at that point. With every ounce of breath, with all the strength in my legs, I tried to turn around the corner and fell flat, right on my face.
I just laid there, eyes closed, waiting for the fake Cam to dive on me.
“What the hell are you doing?” I opened my eyes. Light directly shining at my face, I winced and looked up to find Cam staring down at me, torch in hand. I paused for the briefest of moments before I sprang back up and ran to the real Cam.
He caught me and held me tight. “Careful. You trying to send us to a hospital? Heh, get it? Because we’re-.”
I pulled him towards the stairway and just got words out of my mouth. “Monster. You. Chasing. Go. Go now.”
Cam lifted the torch down the hallway, showing nothing except my dropped torch and the broken glass from my headlamp.
He slowly walked over to my torch and picked it up. Slowly, he carried both torches to the end of the hallway and shone the light down the hallway and screamed.
I screamed for him to run.
But he just turned and laughed at me.
“There’s nothing here you dumbarse.” He said.
I was pissed at him but more than that I was terrified. Terrified of whatever that thing was coming back.
I carried on for a minute, about that copper smell, that guy that looked like Cam, about how he sounded just like Cam, how he chased me. Cam tried to smirk it off but he thought I lost my mind and decided he should get me out of here. Every step down the stairs echoing throughout its empty halls.
To this day I don’t know what I saw. I just can’t explain it. Cam said I panicked myself into some sort of psychosis, like he was some sort of psychologist all of a sudden. I thought there was something actually living in building. But I never want to go back to find out. I’m going to stick to skyscrapers and sewers from now on.