Ya know, I was about to start this gruesome tale with a funny opening. Like, “Be me. Be stoopid urban explorer. Find manmade horrors beyond my comprehension. Cry. Imitate greentext for funny.” But it just seemed wrong, wrong to make fun of the helpless victims I encountered. So, I decided to instead say something more sensitive. I hope they find peace. In heaven? In the void? Outside Samsara? Wherever they believed.
I’m an urban explorer, as I said in the title. I have seen such terrors such as “Cursewords spray painted to walls” and “S+H 4EVER”. Jokes aside, I mostly just delved into condemned, but rather new buildings. Like that one office building that was built in the ‘90s and the company made a new one. Not a sanitarium with ghosts still haunting, or a pagan church with miles of catacombs. Nope. Just some boring old offices, decked out with some old Halloween decorations to draw more clicks- and more money to my empty, college kid pockets. But I was… commissioned? I guess? By some guy to explore this old hospital. Several thousand dollars were promised to me, with a hundred in advance. I was tempted to take that prepay and run, but I figured- well, it couldn’t be bad. Just an old hospital.
This “old hospital” turned out to be so, so much more.
I was determined. The weak, can’t-play-horror-games loser I am thought I could handle it. As you’ll see later, I absolutely couldn’t, and I don’t think anyone could, honestly. I agreed to the guy, perhaps a bit too quickly, and he sent me the coordinates. Some hulk of a castle-asylum in Montreal. I had a quick thought of Project MKULTRA, but a quick google check let me know Alan Memorial is still used, for much less sinister purposes. Thank God, honestly. I don’t have the balls for that. Never will.
I went with some buddies- Alan, Kelly, and Iz. Alan is a bit of a weird dude, but not in the sweaty way. He fangirls over a few books, but don’t we all? Kelly is a mechanic of the finest degree. She’s working towards an undergrad in general engineering. Iz loves the gym, has quite a lot of muscle for a shorter girl. We all bonded over a weird night at a pub, but that’s a story I’ll tell another day. To make a long story short, we all have our strange encounters with the unexplainable, and we try to forget it. And we have- just normal college kids, with nothing extra special about us but Kelly’s pet sugar glider.
Alan and Iz had been with me to a few places, to be guests in my exploring. Just those old office buildings, though. When I told them, in the group chat, Iz and Kelly were quick to accept. Alan took a bit of coaxing, but eventually agreed. After I had everyone together, I finalized the payments with that contractor- four thousand, perfect to split. I should have been more skeptical about where that money came from, but at the time, I didn’t care about the legitimacy. As I said, broke college kid. We packed- a good length of rope, eight pairs of disposable gloves, and my recording equipment. Some other stuff, but it wasn’t of much importance. I fueled my old ‘07 Tundra, and off we went to somewhere in Montreal.
When we got there, it gave my goosebumps. Iz laughed, and tried to break the ice with an awkward joke. “Kinda like Mystery Inc, huh?” She was met with silence. All of us were a bit scaredy cat, grim faced. I finally sighed, and with the help of Kelly and Alan, set up my camera and mics. “Make this a good one, guys. Our paychecks are riding on this one.” I collected myself, and plastered on a good old YouTube face. The group followed, and I motioned a “3, 2, 1”.
“Hi guys! We have two big surprises for you today- number one, I have my friends Iz and Alan here, and a never-seem-before star, Kelly! We’ve got a great video here, and we would all appreciate it if you could blow up my Buy me a Coffee! Onto our second exciting thing for you today; we were gifted a massive amount of funding for a new, huge project- we’re here in Montreal, to explore an old, shut-down hospital! We’ve heard some reports of supernatural activity here, so maybe we’ll find some ghosts not yet at rest, still haunting… and they’ll haunt you too if you don’t smash those like and subscribe buttons!“ Kelly cringed a bit, and I felt a bit bad, for the clickbaity way I had to speak. Algorithm is a bitch, and this payed the bills well. I couldn’t change.
“Now, we’re gonna have a look inside!” We walked up the dramatic stairs, and made a few comments about how absolutely 100% not clickbait spooky it looked. As we neared the antiquated maple doors, I creakily opened into the Feather’s Edge Hospital. A spew of dust and decay shot into our faces, making all of us sputter. “This place has been left for a long time, huh?” I asked the camera. We continued into a reception room, with a high ceiling and a dusty, gaudy chandelier hanging from the ceiling, its old-fashioned bulbs long broken.
A skitter and a crash came from the dark corner, and my head turned like a whip. “What was that?” Kelly asked, already nervous. “Probably a raccoon… or maybe a spector!” I made a whistling noise, and Alan chuckled. Iz clicked on her flashlight, and made her way through scattered debris to a large, long desk. She swiped her finger across it, and it came back covered in dust. The desk had nearly a half inch of it, covering the surface. “Seems like this place hasn’t seen someone in… decades, probably.” Iz observed. “Seems like.” Alan concurred. Eager to get on with this, I tried to seem enthusiastic as I said, “Let’s move on to the meat and potatoes of this place!” Alan lead the charge, towards a large doorway, guarded with doors not unlike those you would see a deli. The old lock seemed rusty and broken, what looked like makeshift picks rotting in the keyway. Trying to ignore that, we strode through. A strong scent of rot permeated the air. “Something died in here.” Kelly seemed like she was ready to throw up. I was close, to be honest. “Wow. That’s… that’s something.” Alan said. “Let’s- agh- forge ahead!”
Not even ten steps further, we came across out first big thing- a rolling hospital bed. Its metal frame was rusted, close to collapse. The sheets were crumpled and unmade, stained by a dark, crusty stain. Old blood. Kelly’s face turned a sickly, almost cartoonish yellow-green. “M-maybe we should, uh, cut the camera?” I swallowed a lump in my throat.
“We’ll just.. send this to the guy. We won’t put this on the channel.” I kept the camera rolling, determined to keep it in one shot. “I don’t wanna do this!” Kelly wailed, and stepped back, one, two, and turned. She broke out in a run, and as I looked at Iz with one of those “looks”, I heard a sickening crack in the air. Alan whipped around, just a few milliseconds before me and Iz. I saw a shadowy hand scamper back to the corner. Kelly lay, a steady flow of crimson from her forehead, next to a blunt, yet twisted piece of metal, which was now stained with her fresh, bright scarlet blood.
We stood for eleven seconds. Eleven seconds that held half my life, how eternal that moment was. Eleven seconds ago, there were four living people in this room.
Now, there was three.
“What the fuck.” Alan broke the silence with vulgarity. To be fair, I was barely an inch away from shouting obscenities. He broke into a sprint towards the doors, and pulled them open. Or, tried to. They were firmly locked. “What the fuck. What the fuck. What in the *fucking* hell-“ Alan was cut off by a scamper of a… something, in the relative void of a corner. My eyes darted around, first to Iz, who was just standing there, shaking, then to the creature. At first, I thought it was another body. Vaguely human-shaped, sprawled out.
Its head shot up, and stared straight into me, pearly whites gleaming. Its eyelids were gone, leaving two eyes, piercing blue, wide as saucers. Staring right at me. Its jaw went slack, the not-quite-human loosening its hinges, preparing to speak. Still smiling, it said in a guttural voice, “Welcome to hell.