This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Bucks_0 on 2024-10-02 02:17:45+00:00.

You don’t need to know my name, it’s not important. And I know that I’m bad at writing, but I need to get this down before you follow in my footsteps and find yourself on that dirt road, leading to that place. Once you’ve entered, they don’t let you leave.  

I should’ve listened to my gut when it told me something seriously sinister was hiding out in the dark corners and hallways of that horrible building. Something that I would come face to face with that very night. 

This was in 2017. My friends and I had done a lot of abandoned exploring as a group when we were still in high school. Mostly old churches, malls, and some crack houses that were usually inhabited by junkies shooting up, or homeless people needing a place to warm up for the winter. We would stock up on beers, spray cans, and whatever change we could put together between the three of us to buy some weed.  

 It started out tame. We were just a bunch of stupid teenagers exploring old buildings, all while getting hammered and stoned in the process. We had a cheap handheld camera David got for a school film project we would use to record our adventures. Most of the footage was just our antics and vandalism we would do in these abandoned places, thinking it was the coolest shit at the time. Mark would even edit the videos during the week and post them in our group chat. And that’s how we spent the rest of our summer, each abandoned place getting crazier than the last until we had seen it all in our town.  

One Friday night in November, David and Mark were at my place, where we would drink and smoke every weekend, thinking about the next place we would explore. We had already been everywhere in town, and it was getting repetitive. 

 That’s when we settled on The Elm Creek Health Facility, an abandoned mental asylum 45 minutes up north of town. We heard stories about kids exploring and going missing, but obviously, urban legends weren’t holding us back from having a good time. David had a great-grandmother who was admitted there in the 40s because of her severe schizophrenia and manic episodes. Doing my research on the place now, it was famous back then for its inhumane experiments on patients and was closed down in 1963 after many cases of abuse were reported. The facility was shut down, but the building remained.  

The rain battered down on the windshield of my car as we made our way north on the highway. I was 4 beers deep, and to sober up, I kept the windows rolled down in the pouring rain. We exited off the highway and made our way east towards the industrial side of town, where a dirt road led to the facility.  

That feeling I spoke about earlier was overwhelming me. A sense of existential dread, fear, and excitement washed over me as we turned into the dirt road, only lit by my headlights. The rain was still coming down heavily, only stopping when we were enshrouded in the tall and thick trees along the dirt road.  

We parked when we reached the no-trespassing gate. Mark handed David and me flashlights, and we set out on the path to the building on foot. We joked about not making it out alive, as a means to project what we were feeling. We were all scared shitless, but wouldn’t admit it. Mark was on camera duty and started rolling as soon as the building was in sight.  

The building stood high in the sky, overgrown with vines and leaves covering the boarded-up windows. We were lighting up a joint when we first heard the voice. 

“you guys exploring too? There’s an entrance over here. Come here and I’ll show you”  

The voice rang out in the cold rain, emanating from somewhere outside of the building. When Mark responded to the voice and said “Yeah we’ve never been here, where are you ?”  

No answer.  

 

We couldn’t see where the voice had come from as we were still far from the building, so we just shrugged it off as another group of explorers, and maybe we would get the chance to see them when we got inside. We approached the building and scouted the perimeter for any entrance point we could find until we found an open window behind a grate. Mark kicked the grate in, and we descended into the basement of the building.  

The smell was the first thing that hit us, Mould and rotten wood. The room was full of graffiti, and medical instruments and books were strewn haphazardly around the room. Smashed beer bottles and cigarette butts littered the floor and made it apparent that we were not the first or the last people to ever enter this building.  

We made our way out of the room and down one of the long and winding corridors, asking “Hello, is anyone there?” to which we received no response.  

We brushed it off as maybe the group had left before we made it up to the building, even though we knew it wasn’t possible, and we continued before Mark stopped us and said “I heard this place has a room where they did experiments on patients. It would be sick to get on film. Let’s split up, and if you one of us finds it, call the others” before I could object, he was walking down the staircase with the camera pointed at his face, talking to the audience vlog style.  

David was just as scared as me, but to look unbothered, he offered to take the third floor and let me explore the main floor on my own.  

I went room by room, shaking with nervousness and mentally documenting what I saw to tell the others later when we were done. The feeling of being watched was enough for me to start calling out to Mark and David, to which I received no response. That was when I started running back towards the beginning of the corridor to where we had split up in the first place.  

That was where I saw him, Mark was standing in the corridor, back turned to me, and not moving. “Mark what the fuck, this isn’t a time to joke around, I want to leave.” he didn’t move.  

A chill ran down my spine as the man turned around and revealed himself. It wasn’t Mark, 

 it was me.  

The man was a carbon copy of my face, except for the soulless void of black in his eyes. His face twisted up into a grin.  

My body was frozen and I stared in horror, as he mimicked me perfectly “Are You lost, Jason?” I backed away slowly, tripping over garbage on the floor in the process. “Why are you trying to leave Jason? They don’t let you leave here. Just Like David’s Great Grandmother.” I regained my footing and turned towards the staircase 

I raced down the stairs towards the basement we entered, tripping and stumbling while trying to convince myself this was some sort of elaborate prank. 

That was when I heard him start to run. He chased me down the stairs and throughout the basement until I got to the room we entered. I hauled it across the lawn, not looking back even when I heard the distant shrieking of David and Mark.  

Trembling with fear, I got to my car put it in reverse, and drove to a gas station 2 miles away. When I called the cops, a search party went to the facility to find David and Mark. 

They are still missing to this day.  

Every night in my dreams I am in that building.  

If you ever find yourself on that dirt road, remember this;  

They don’t let you leave