Summer Scare

Summer 1972: Near where I spent my formative years was an abandoned convalescent hospital. Upon discovery it quickly became the hang out of choice for my friends and I.

Most of the buildings were two stories high and were perfect stand ins for military installations when we chose to play army. Our games were somewhat similar to capture the flag. We would divide ourselves into two teams and each team chose a building for their headquarters. The object was simple sneak past the other team and steal their flag.

One afternoon while in the middle of a battle we stumbled across a stairway that led down rather than up. Electricity was no longer fed into the building so nothing could be seen but darkness. We had no flashlights and though none of us would say it out loud we were somewhat scared of what appeared to be the basement.

For a short while the stairs were ignored and our battles continued unabated. Of course it was not long before the inevitable happened and exploring the basement became the challenge of the team who lost one of our battles.

As it happened my team lost the battle that afternoon and the three of us had to take up the dare or sneak home with our tales between our legs. Knowing we would never live it down we took our flashlights and descended into the darkness.

We explored for ten or fifteen minutes without discovering anything of real interest. The basement consisted mostly of offices and laboratories. Some old equipment and furniture was scattered about but all in all it was rather dull.

Or so we thought.

Just when we were about to return to the sunlight we found a second set of stairs that continued down into the darkness. We descended the stairs and came upon a closed door. There was a sign on the door and when the dust and the cobwebs were removed we found that it was the entrance to the morgue.

Our first instinct was to turn around but we ended up goading each other into continuing. We passed through the door and found ourselves in a long hallway. We checked several rooms and found more offices and one room that appeared to resemble an operating theater.

A sign on the wall directed us to the morgue, which was of course, the last door at the end of the hall. As we slowly moved forward it appeared that the door to the morgue was propped open. Our flashlights played along the corridor and by unspoken agreement came to rest on the floor in front of the morgue. Our silence grew so deep that you could have heard a pin drop.

We were looking at what appeared to be a white shoe, but not an abandoned shoe; no it had a foot and leg still in it. Our hearts felt like they were going to explode from our chests. We turned in unison and ran screaming from the building.

No one believed us at first, than when we had them convinced they somehow talked us into returning to the morgue with them so they could see for themselves. We made our way back down into the darkness and found the door had remained as we had left it. They saw the shoe and its contents but that was not good enough. Dares began running around the room until someone took up the challenge and went to open the door the rest of the way.

Taking two flashlights with him he approached the door. Along the way he found a discarded cane and used that to prevent himself from getting to close, just in case. He reached the door and pushed it open. Standing still as a statue he just seemed to stare for a moment and than he released an earth-shattering scream. Needing no further encouragement we broke all existing land speed records in our escape. When we had safely returned to the sunshine we fell panting to the ground.

Just as we were about to congratulate ourselves on our escape we realized we had returned one person short. Our friend who had opened the door was nowhere in site. However before we went into full panic mode he appeared laughing like there was no tomorrow. In his hand he held our "leg" which it turns out was nothing more than a prosthetic leg that someone had been left behind.