Horror Stories

The Asylum

My friends and I used to do a lot of geocaching after our senior year in high school. For those who don't know what geocaching is, it's essentially a worldwide scavenger hunt. People will select sites and conceal a "geo-cache" somewhere unobtrusive, then post GPS coordinates on geocaching websites where other searchers can download the cords and locate the cache. Usually, people who have found the object (often it's a chest or something hollow) will leave a note or small personal memento for future searchers to find and appreciate.

There are several types of geocaches, and most of them are thematic in nature (i.e. scenic destinations, romantic sites, hard-to-reach areas, etc..) This story begins when my friends and I decided to try a series of purportedly haunted locales within about an hour's drive of our hometown. It began innocently enough—most of the sites had "spooky" backstories that were, of course, entirely fabricated. So we had a great time scaring the piss out of each other and generally creeping ourselves out.

We'd begun searching after the sun had set to enhance the creep factor, but by around midnight, most of our large group had dwindled off and gone their separate ways. When we reached our last coord, there was just myself, Rebecca, Kevin, and Evan left, and we were determined to knock it off our list.

Rebecca was our guide for the night, in charge of putting in the coordinates and reading us the backstory behind each site. So, while I drove, she began reading about the last one out loud to the rest of us. Now, I'm paraphrasing here, but it was something along the lines of:

"Henckel Asylum: constructed in the early 1900's, the James Henckel Asylum was built to house a burgeoning population of the criminally insane. Men who had committed vile crimes (rape, murder, torture) without signs of remorse were deemed mentally unstable and sent to this facility for further study and rehabilitation. Once committed, very few criminals were ever released back into society, and those that were usually had been given frontal lobotomies (a popular experimental procedure at the time) or electroshock therapy, both of which rendered the patient nearly braindead, capable of performing only rudimentary tasks.

Stories: Contemporary visitors to the Asylum report hearing banging noises, cell doors opening and closing, and hearing cackling laughter that is abruptly cut short."

It was pretty standard fare compared to the rest of the sites we'd visited that night, and we naturally had a good time psyching each other out for the next fifteen minutes while I drove us to the Asylum. We'd all heard about it (it was in our local area after all) and we knew it had been condemned and abandoned since as long as any of us could remember, so we figured it'd be a great place to run around and be reckless teenagers without risk of getting yelled at by the cops.

When we finally arrived, it looked like something straight out of one of those cheesy B-movies they show on SyFy. Chain link fence with barbed wire around the perimeter, two guard towers flanking the main gate (which was, of course, chained and locked shut with a big NO TRESPASSING sign hanging from it). The asylum itself was decrepit, looking like it hadn't been touched for decades—which was surprising, since we grew up in a pretty nice area, where the municipal lawmakers tried to keep everything looking spiffy for the tourists.

Needless to say, we promptly ignored the sign on the front gate and hauled ourselves over, cameras and GPS in hand, and walked towards the asylum. Now, given our attitude towards the previous sites, you've probably gathered that I'm somewhat of a skeptic. I believe that there are paranormal things that can't be explained (yet) but I'm not exactly summoning demons in front of a bathroom mirror. So when we opened the main door to the asylum (conveniently unlocked), I dismissed the cold burst of wind as just stale pent-up air rushing out after being trapped inside for so long. My friends' bravado, however, quickly disappeared and they began shuffling their feet nervously at the entrance, hesitant to cross that invisible threshold.