Absolutely exhausted.
Got back from a weekend trip with Jack and Steve today. The guys were working on this documentary they’ve been working on for the past couple of months and wanted me to help out lugging their shit around for me. I wouldn’t normally have been into it, but they bribed me with a two-four of Molson, and it’s not like I had anything better to do with my weekend.
They’d found some old ghost town way the shit out in nowhere. Jack told me that he heard about the place from our great uncle, who’d lived there for a while when he was in his twenties. From what he tells me, it was a mining town back then, but the mine closed down when there was some kind of accident or something, and the whole place pretty much dried up.
As the story goes, the place was abandoned, and (and I know how fucked this sounds) people who visit it say they’ve seen weird shit there. Stuff getting moved around and what-not. Weird lights. All your usual ghost story bullshit. Jack hears about this and of course he wants to get some footage of the place for that documentary they’ve been working on for the last year. So we went up there Friday afternoon after work and got there around sunset.
The place wasn’t so much spooky as it was unpleasant. The last few folks moved out maybe twenty years ago, so even the nicest places were still pretty run down. I honestly wonder if anyone even owns any of this property at this point, or if it’s just completely abandoned. Anyways, it’s obvious that a lot of the houses have seen some use in the past couple of decades. Hobos and shit. Probably some college students, coming out here to party unsupervised, too, by the looks of it. I was just amazed at how much of their shit they just left lying around before they left. Lots of old sleeping bags and duffle bags and such.
Anyways, there was some talk of maybe sleeping in one of the houses for the night if one of them was still in reasonably good repair. We ditched that as soon as we had a look around. Enough idiots and vermin had both been in each of them to chew through or spraypaint all of the walls to make any of these places unlivable. We all figured we’d sprawl out in the dodge and make due.
First, though, Jack and Steve wanted to go exploring during the night. Get some footage of the place when it was at its spookiest. I think they didn’t give enough thought to the fact that the nearest working street light was maybe four miles back the way we’d come from, and the rinky-dink lights on the camera would only do so much. We were stumbling around for about an hour, and it was so dark that I don’t know how they thought we’d get anything on tape even if it were happening three feet away from us. We all decided we’d head back up the road the next day at the crack of dawn and get some high power flashlights from the Canadian Tire there and give it another try the next night.
I swear I’ll never sleep in the back seat a Dodge again. When I woke up the next morning after trying to get comfortable in there, I was fucking exhausted. I guess I just wasn’t able to get into a good position or something, because I was sore all over. I know I didn’t have any dreams that night, and I remember reading somewhere that that has something to do with how well-rested you are. I usually remember my dreams pretty good, too.
So anyways, we drove into town the next morning, and the guys were pretty wasted from sleeping in the truck, too, so we figured we’d have a look for a motel or something we could book a room or two in while we were there. So after a quick breakfast and about eight mugs of coffee at the local Denny’s, we set out into the town. Turns out there’s not a lot of call for accommodations in Willow Creek, and the only motel in town was already all booked up. The guys took this better than I did, talking about suffering for their art. Me, though, I’m no artist. I’m just the guy carrying all the gear, and I just wanted a comfy bed to crash in at night.
After we got some lights from the Canadian Tire, Jack and Steve spent most of the rest of the day doing what they called “streeters”. You know, when an interviewer shoves a camera and a microphone in your face on the street and gets you to talk to them about whatever they’re interested in? I just tried to stand back and let them do their thing. A lot of the people living in town have older relatives and stuff who used to live in our little ghost town (which used to be called Brockville, as it turns out, though you’d never know it now, since all the signs are gone, and it doesn’t appear on any map made in the past few decades), and a lot of them have heard the same stories as Jack did, as well as a few of their own.
The one that stuck with me the most was one that this middle aged woman told us. Her brother (I forget his name, but it’s on the tape), used to work up there in the mine before it closed down, and was there the day the accident happened. This was fucked up, though, ‘cause she said that he said that when the mine was cleared out, they never really explained what had happened, if it was a cave-in or what. When it closed down like a week later, they didn’t offer any explanation for why, and nobody in town seemed to be clear on it either. That, or they just weren’t talking about it. But this was fucked up, you know, because it was a small town, and people in places like that will gossip about anything, right? Like, you could buy a new pair of shoes and have everyone in town know about it by sundown. So how does something like this happen without anyone ever finding out anything about it? The woman we were talking with didn’t know, and neither did her brother, and I guess he never had a chance to find out, because he died in a car accident maybe a year later, after he’d gone out drinking one night (we found this out when Steve asked if she could put us in touch with the guy).
So anyways, that afternoon we go back up there a while before sunset so we could get some footage of the mine itself before it got too dark. I swear, it’s like someone was keeping a secret fortune in gold and shit down there, it was locked up so tight. I guess maybe the old owners of the place thought they could come back to it again some day, because they were sure as shit careful about their investment there. Steve was talking about coming in there with some bolt cutters and having a look inside, but Jack and I talked him down from it, since we didn’t want there to be any obviously illegal activities on the documentary.
So eventually night falls, and we get the lights going. We spent maybe half the night wandering around, changing tapes and flashlight batteries as we recorded constantly, and probably half a dozen times we found ourselves running after some sound that must have just been a rat or a raccoon or something, because we never saw shit. By three AM, I was beginning to hope some of those college students or hobos or whoever would show up just so I’d have someone to talk to besides these two guys. Nothing against them, but they’re not a lot of fun to be around when they get all focused on their work and telling you to be quiet all the time so they can listen for the next fucking rat or whatever to make some noise.
I eventually told them I was calling it quits and crashed out in the back seat of the dodge for another futile try at some sleep. Same shit as the night before. I couldn’t get comfortable, and when I woke up I felt even worse than I did the day before. That was this morning. I still feel like shit now.
So anyways, I wake up and Jack’s sleeping in the driver’s seat. Steve’s nowhere to be seen, and we figure maybe he’s out taking a piss or getting some more footage of the town or something, and just didn’t want to wake us up. We look around for maybe an hour and start to get really worried when we can’t find him. We start calling his name and checking back in the car and shit. Nothing.
Now, this town started looking a lot creepier to me all of the sudden. I guess it was just adrenaline or whatever, you know, messing with my senses, because I kept on getting all turned around walking around corners and stuff. Like, I’d think I was walking north and suddenly I’d realize I’d been heading west for the last five minutes, you know? I think some of it must have been that I was still feeling so tired, too. I wasn’t as sharp as I should have been.
Finally, we decide we’re just going to start driving the truck around and honking the horn every five seconds and hope maybe he’ll hear us. By that time, I was starting to wonder if maybe he’d gone into one of the houses and had the floorboards give out under him and he was like bleeding to death or something. A lot of these places really were that run down.
So finally, just when we’re thinking of calling the police or something, we see the fucker coming around the corner, carrying his camera, flashlight, and bolt cutters with him. It seems the cocksucker decided to get up during the night and break into the mine on his own while we were asleep; he had the cutters in his toolbox in the back of the truck. So while we’re wandering around the stupid town for an hour and a half, HE’S lost down in the mine, because, like an idiot, he didn’t have enough batteries with him and his light died while he was down there. He was really freaked out when we found him, all shaking and stuttering, but we didn’t have a lot of sympathy for him. A lot worse could have happened to him down there if he hadn’t been lucky and we hadn’t been honking the horn when we passed by the entrance to the mine.
At that point, we were all tired and pissed off and frustrated. The entire weekend was a waste of time, I hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in two days, and now this. I just wanted to get home and into my own bed as soon as possible, and the guys didn’t try to put up any kind of a fight. After the shit Steve’d been through, he was just as eager to get home himself. We took off straight away, and drove for four hours before Jack dropped me off at home. Fuck, but I’m tired. After I talked to Kathy and the kids about how things went, I headed straight to bed, but I couldn’t get a wink of sleep. I guess I was still to sore from sleeping in a bad position the last two nights. Now I think I’m just going to take a long hot bath with some of those salts of Kathy’s in it and try again. Fucking waste of a weekend.
