Piece of cake

I used to be dead scared of driving to the point of being absolutely positive that I would never ever learn it. Now a day I drive at least 5 hours a week just to go to school, then there's the rather frequent 16 hours back and forth to go home every other weekend and the somewhat.... alternative sightseeing trips on the remaining weekends. And, needless to say, I've tackled the shift stick even, cause that's how we do around here. But now, I can't help but wonder if I was right to be scared? Is it just me that's noticing how stupid we all get in traffic?

I'm just driving and driving, minding my own business, when suddenly I look in the mirror, and HOLY COW, where did I get that trailer?! No wait! That thing is surely way out of the weight class of my poor little Ford. On closer inspection it looks more like a lorry, only it looks to have stuck to my bumper. Wonder what would happen if I hit the breaks? But never mind that. I'm sure the driver must be fast asleep, as the left lane is wide open, just waiting to be used. Funny.

Also, when people are trying to get onto the highway and you are suppose to be nice and not put their life in danger and all sorts of warm and fuzzy things. Well, some people find this a splendid time to rush ahead of you. I mean, you've already got approximately 1567 cars between you and your home, you wouldn’t want to make that 1568 just to spare someones life... I totally get it! I mean, why enter in front of that nice, but somewhat worn out Ford Focus that's made room for you, when you could put the pedal to the metal and squeeze in between the car ahead of it and the lorry that are way to close for comfort? I mean, he or she could totally save at least like a split second!

A late, warm evening in august, I was reminded of what a difficult thing it is to drive. I had driven for a solid 7 hours that day and by now, the traffic had almost stilled completely. I had left the shift stick in neutral, just rolling downhill, which had left me with only one pedal to use, the breaks. Every time I taped it, my right leg protested painfully. This is when the most... shall we say “educational” idea struck me: why not use my left foot? It's just hanging around idly anyway. I feel very pleased with this idea and immediately switch feet. It's all good, until I actually have to do something. I tap the break again, but this time the fault is somewhere else. I tap it too hard. Turns out my left foot is not as fine tuned, or rather it is tuned for something else entirely: the clutch. This is quite unsettling and when unsettled in traffic, I usually automatically floor the clutch just in case. So I floor the clutch, except it isn’t not the clutch, it's the break. I swear to God, the car behind me almost ran me over even at such a low speed. So, note to self: it is of the essence to keep the right foot on the right pedal. Driving is very complicated, it's just that we've all forgotten. We just think that we can do it, we don’t realize that the right foot cant do what the left foot is doing, so how would we know if we suddenly didn’t know anymore?

One afternoon I'm driving home from school. I'm on the highway, and suddenly I plunge into a thought-experiment. What would happen if I fell asleep right now? As I'm doing 110 km/h in 5^th gear at probably around 2500 RPM, I've got my right foot on the gas pedal. I carefully relax the muscles. As this car has a blessedly mellow diesel engine and requires a little intent to unsettle it's pace once it's taken to it, the pedal sinks just barely and it continues steadily at the same worrisome speed of 110 km/h. But then I have another idea. I pull my heal back just a bit from the pedal, and relax my foot again. This time it starts to accelerate. I quickly slow back down, eyes wide with horror. I'm wide awake at this point, despite that my brain is positively silver from all the metal fumes I've inhaled at school that same day, but all around me, people are going home from work, all tired and worn out, all at 110 km/h with their foot on the gas... This is exactly the sort of situation where you will want to remain blissfully ignorant. 

Lyster Sanatorium... again and again and again.

Then we were there again, the building still standing and looking awesome. To think they want to tear this thing down. That's why we're here, because it might be the last time we ever get to see it. I don’t know why this makes me sad, but it does. It's still just as fascinating as the first time I saw it, which was less then a year ago. A year before that again, the fascination was pretty much instant as it emerged from a small photograph of a big white building on the mountainside snapped at twilight a warm summer evening from across the fjord... my 250 mm lens was just short of giving me a good look at it. I would have never imagined I would set foot in this place and live (through the panic) to tell the tale. Not unless there was a gun to my head... and I would still have died from the panic I imagined. Which goes to show that a lot more is possible then originally expected. And even such low level impossibilities feels mighty good to conquer.

This time I have thought to come better equipped, with proper flashlights, a flash and a tripod. Tripod in hand, I work a lot slower then usual as it's not soothing my usual, restless self. My frustration was fairly faint though. My experience from my trips to Lier (abandoned mental institution) is that such hangups as a tripod needing to be adjusted would surely murder me slowly. Being forced to remain still made the nervousness ease up on me, as though the devil was on my trail back there. In this place, my behavior alters as well, but in quite a different way. I become infinitely chatty, thinking and speaking almost simultaneously, leaving no time what so ever for any elaborate consideration on the matter of whether this would be even remotely interesting to anyone, ever. I can be quite annoying.

In the deep darkness of the basement, the sweep of a tiny flashlight reveals a small object on the floor.
“Is that on of them sticks they used to lobotomize people with?” Ramona wonders. I believe I've told her about such things previously.
Not even a chill spreads at the mentioning of such macabre tools. For various reasons, I'm fairly sure she is wrong, but I hunch down to have a closer look. It's just a nut cracker, or rather half a nut cracker. When I give my interpretation of another object a moment later, it was Ramona's turn to be all rational.

“It's just a broken sifter” she clarifies, shooting down my more imaginative ideas, revolving around the fact that it is remarkable head-shaped. There are plenty fuel for the imaginative in this place. I used to see mosters everywhere, but now I feel only vaguely unsure when I'm walking around alone, wondering where Ramona has disappered off to.

As we slowly finish up with the basement, we run into the guided tour and get a tip that we might want to head up to the library while the sun is still in the right spot. Apparently there is a hole in the ceiling and the light is good just now. We head on up 4 flights of stairs, to the topmost floor (not counting the attic). I am very happy as I had thought this train had gone. We barely entered this floor during my first visit as the strange arching corridor was creeping me out (hard to imagine now), there was the added risk of going tumbling trough the floor the further up we went and last but not least: Janne had had enough at that point. She simply did not take as much interest in this stuff as I do. Last time, anything above the first floor was off limits. So some parts of this building remained uncharted, and now I would finally get to see them. The basement and first floor had been thoroughly explored, but some of the second, most of the third and almost all of the forth was still fresh to us.

As we step off of the solid and safe feeling stairs, I bring on my stealthy, soft gait, very aware that there is a long, crushing drop lurking beneath my feet. Under every slightly upward turned window in this hallway there is vivid decomposing going on. In one particular bad spot, I step in a doorway, grab onto it while reaching as far away from the rotten spot with one foot as I can, brushing my front against the wall. Ramona thinks I'm being super silly, so I cant help but rub it in when we later see this spot from below. It's hard to miss as some of the third floor ceiling has made it onto the floor and is now a sizable pile that I step over tentatively, always a bit unsettled when I cant see the floor under my feet. From beneath, this spot looks very bleak, and I'm happy I did my best not to step on it.

Sensitive me picks up even the slightest change in solidity underfoot, and is now moving increasingly slowly and silently, favoring the doorways and the sides of the rooms, while Ramona walks straight across the floor as though nothing is off, like this is just a stroll in the park. This is one of many times I've wondered what on earth is going on in her head. “Better safe then sorry” I think to myself. It's not as though I'm missing anything by choosing a slightly different route through the rooms. Come to think of it, to be safe would probably mean to be somewhere else entirely. I am well aware that many people would consider this utter stupidity, and not even faintly worthwhile. If they were to think nice and rationally though, they too would know that life is dangerous, and my 40 000+ km on the road in the last year is surely a much bigger threat to my safety. My insurance company realize this at least, that's why they keep demanding more and more money for my car insurance.

We find the library pretty easily and it is indeed splendid. Though fairly small, it stretches the full height of two floors with a gallery up top. Further up there is a rectangular hole in the ceiling (maybe 1,5x3 meters?) through which we can see the attic windows and the sunlight. Strangely unfazed by this (this would be the building layout of my nightmares, as it is very difficult to survey) I exclaim:

“I want a library just like this one!”

Before I even manage to cross the room and set up the tripod, Ramona is way ahead of me, wanting to show me the distinctions of oak, as she has tried to explain this before. As I realize the amount of plain, proper wood (oak even) in this room we are both a bit astonished. Ramona is the expert (at least I'm trying to stick her with the task as my expert consultant), but even I can tell that this must have cost a small fortune.

“You could put anything in here! Anything! A full collection of encyclopedia or what ever, this is so strong, it could hold just about anything!” Ramona's joy at seeing something so properly and nicely made is obvious.

“I don’t really want to leave. Maybe we should just stay here for ever and ever!” I giggle.

On the forth floor we run into the guided tour yet again the very helpful make shift guide gives us another tip: the most haunted spot is on the third floor around where there is a big hole in the floor he assures us. And we head down.

We work our way through the third floor as well and eventually arrive at the spot where a long strip of duck tape and a cheerful note used to mark the beginning of the off limit section of the floor. It now hangs limply down along the wall, so I venture a few steps further, rounding the corner to see that a big portion of floor has come undone. Later on, on the second floor, we realize that the hole is 2 floors deep, as the destruction has continued on through the second floor while it was at it, and ended in a big pile on the first floor. The latter remained solid. This stuff can not have been here the first time I realize, as it dawns on me exactly where we are. Surly I would have notice a big hole over head while walking on thin air down the second floor hallway. Thinking back, I remember being pointed to a section of the floor to feel it with my foot. The floorboards were all soft. Overhead, a dark area of the ceiling was already giving away the condition the upstairs floor. The blackening 110 years old floorboards looked pliable enough to give way to anyone insisting enough. That section of the third floor was already off limits due to safety. It is very peculiar to observe such changes. It doesn’t really unsettle or frighten me, as we are not particularly dim and have been thoroughly informed of the risks at hand and what to look out for, but it's sad. 110 is no age for such a structure. The grand dame could easily have been thriving still, but unaccustomed to the presence of humans in the last 20 years, this building has become a place for something else entirely. The lady in white flies again, but on weathered wings, as though in remembrance of a past life. Though in a once proud creation of mankind, we are strangely out of our element. As this all was neglected, nature itself has been pulling the strings.

“I might cry if this place is demolished” I say, not for the first time that day and only half joking.

But there is a lot of work to be done. Windows all around are leaking furiously and the woodwork is slowly coming undone. It's very cool that someone would dare to take on such a daunting task.

Checking out the rest of this side of the second and third floor, I stumble upon a familiar sight. With my recollection mostly revolving around stills from previous trips, this whole section of the house is familiar, but this room captures me instantly. I remember the pix I took here and decide that they didn’t do it justice. The pix weren’t bad, but this room is soooo nice. I lean on the doorway, feeling so very strangely at home. This room isn’t particular in any sort of obvious way, but I feel that this room is a very good place to be. Might be the calm blue paint and the big windows with the sunny, breathtaking landscape outside that is eating at my brain, but this is very nice. I snap a few more pix, but I instinctively know that this isn’t the sort of stuff that attaches to pixels. Oh well, wouldn’t stop me trying.

We find a few more interesting pieces of furniture on one of the upper levels and I carefully place the tripod, instruct Ramona on which button to push, and then head on up in front of the camera, not for the first time that day. I feel so embarrassed, but I feel very strongly that some of my shots need people and I have, as of yet, not been able to convince any of my friends to take up a career in modeling. Also, I hate asking people for help. I will just have to do. Ramona is having a blast as I am chit chatting, trying to excuse my behavior.

“I can see you like taking pictures of yourself” she says laughing.

I'm wondering if she really knows this little about me, or if she is merely pretending, so she can make me even more ill at ease (if even possible). Most of the pictures are useless though, as my discomfort is very visibly present in my posture. This, needless to say, works very badly when you are supposedly a fearsome, supernatural being.

I did take one self portrait I was happy with though. It was me sitting on the stairs in the basement, looking sort of happy. It was hard-won though as I nearly smashed in the back of my head a few seconds earlier, slipping on the damp stairs. It was also by the way much too damp to actually sit on, so I had to pretend to sit on it instead. My head was even lost in a sort of blue haze that looks way funny. I wasn’t aware of any fog on the lens at that point, and there seems to be non on the pix before nor after. But this place was much to damp to trust anything coming from a camera, especially anything back-lit by a window.

We check back with the guy who is in charge before leaving. As we talk for a while about photography, exploring and so on, me and Ramona (mostly me I suppose) becomes thoroughly convinced that we should come back in a few weeks. So one more trip it is I suppose. I did say that this would be the very last trip, but than again I've said that every time we've been here. We've spent a good four hours, and then even rushing a bit at the end. We head on over to the car and drive home in silence mostly. It always gets like this as I'm the one that talks usually, but after visiting such places I have too much to think about to even realize I'm being dead quiet. Luckily, Ramona is like that always so she hardly notices. This time I stay thoughtfully quite for days though, only speaking when prompted.

Luster and Lier

Made my forth visit to Lyster Sanatorium yesterday, so there is probably going to be even more on that soon. Till then, I've finally managed to upload the movie I was working on at Lier last time. It's just a sort of presentation for my contribution to the IKEA-hacking project me and my fellow product design students did at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. We were all given a set of Lupin blinds from IKEA and could make what ever we wanted with them. I made a bridge, and later decided to make a monster and set the movie to Lier to define a purpose for it. The movie is sort of non-sensical and a bit rushed since it could not be longer then 1 minute, and I was sort of running out of time and motivation at the end there :P

 

The music is the theme from Shutter Island and "Cure for the itch" by Linkin Park.

How not to go exploring

For all of last week I had been thinking I needed to talk to Ramona about hanging out on Saturday. Sadly, in between shaping steel, relearning to weld and tackling the complexities of SolidWorks, I was way too tired to remember to do this. So it was not until Friday that I did, and not until about 9 PM that it was established that be would go to Sweden the next morning. Being a semi-organized duo of urbexers, we had had this spot in mind for a while and I had already pinpointed it on Google Maps long ago, luckily.

Almost at once it started getting a little interesting though. Have you ever tried reading Google's directions for a route you already know? Notice how they somehow manage to confuse you anyway? 

We made it to Sweden okey, then we drove around aimlessly for a while (according to the GPS, the place we were heading simply does not exist) and when we finally got too worried that we would get lost in the cobweb of roads out in the woods, we headed back to town and went candy shopping. Eventually, I got in touch with my dad over the phone and by the combined forces of Google Maps and the NAF-bible (the Norwegian Automobile Association’s book of road maps) we got back on track.

(a few weeks earlier)

Dad : *wathching TV, looks at me, looks back at the TV, and back at me again* “Is that the NAF-book you're reading?!”

Me: “Yeah, I'm looking for an abandoned hotel I saw...”

Dad: “Oh... “

Finally back on track, Ramona is clearly getting used to the NAF-book and is buzy keeping track of where we are on the map, while I have the unsettlig feeling that while we drive slowly in my little Ford Focus (no off-road truck to say the least) the locals drive just like my local locals (myself included) on the dodgy roads at home: in a way that suggests you know every corner, which is supernaturally fast. 

“So now you have lost your way and cant find the pile of trash you were looking for?”.

My dad wasn’t too far off with this sarcastic attempt at guessing what I wanted when I called.

So what is it we have come for exactly? Cars, a whole bunch of cars rotting away slowly. This has been called a car cemetery by many and is supposedly the biggest collection of decaying cars in all of northern Europe. Different sources give different numbers, but 500+ is not a bold guess to the number of cars, maybe ever as much as a thousand. All from the forties, fifties and sixties, when this was a flourishing business. Now photographers and nostalgic car enthusiasts thrive instead. Before we exit the car, I look at my watch and declare that we have half an hour, tops. This is not enough, by any means, but we need to be back at Eidsvoll by 8.09 pm. “Why haven’t you gotten your lens out yet?” Ramona wants to know.

We track around the woods and see a fraction of it. I take about 150 pix. Even such noobs as us can see all sorts of familiar shapes around us. The VW T1 (van), the old school VW Beetle, a Mini Cooper (a car involved in almost all my dad's tales of his youth) and one that looks like the car Mr Bean drives. The cars are piled up, some missing a lot of major parts, some smashed quite a bit, and they have stuff growing on, in, around and through them. Beetles are smiling wide from bushes, from atop other cars and from between the trees, because it's the only expression they have. We'll be back for sure!

The next morning I woke up anxious and depressed, only halfway recovered from a sugar induced coma-like sleep. This clearly could only be mended by some more candy.

Explore

I have been thinking hard all day, I even dreamt about it last night! I will not tell you exactly what it was, because that would make it worse, but I will shed some light on the matter so you can see what I'm on about.

One day I landed myself in a bit of a tangle with my new found mischievous hobby. I spotted a building a while ago that was clearly out of business, because, well, all the windows were broken. Pretty much every single one. In between planning for bigger missions, we decided to have a look at it one day. The first door we tried had clearly been forcefully opened at some point, but now it was shut properly. The second one was open. Which I found slightly odd, but didn’t really take the time to reflect on it before slipping inside. Almost instantly, when inside, be realized we might have made our first blooper. Abandoned places hold all sorts of strange things, and some are like time capsules, but this didn’t seem right for some reason. First of all, there were forklifts. We had seen that before, but those had come trough hell (or rather a massive fire) while these looked fully operational. Also, the floor looked to have been swept recently. Which is something people don’t just happen to do to abandoned buildings. People might board up windows and door out of the goodness of their hearts, but they don’t sweep. There is just no meaning to it.

As you might have already gathered, this place was slightly less abandoned then we would have liked. It was certainly out of business, but it seemed someone was still using this place for storage if nothing else. At this point in the story (I'm sad to say you are not the first to hear it) my mother was slightly outraged over the phone: “Someone could have walked in on you! They could have been angry! It could have been dangerous!”. And yeah, someone could have very well arrived just then and it would have been very bad.

For fear of saying to much, I will not elaborate any further or go into details of the appearance, type or whereabouts of this building, so this is where I switch back to my pondering. As I may or may not have described at great lengths before (not sure actually), we do not steal, break stuff, break and enter, vandalize or any of that stuff. Outside of the constant presence of expensive (and quite heavy) photo gear, our objective is mostly to see and to make more or less qualified guesses as to why things are the way they are. We are good guys we feel, though you might not be able to tell if you ran into us in a dodgy place. I don’t care so much for labels, but I want to be good and not bad, not rude. But I feel that this whole situation is rude. To be in someone's space unbidden. It is at best, very rude. This is indisputable to me. However accidental, the result is still the same to the subject of out involuntary rudeness. Believe me, I would love to write this off as someone else's fault or problem, but there is no two ways about this. So what is there to wonder about? Well... I was wondering what to do with the pix. We were in agreement at once that we should not give out this location to anyone, not even almost, or accidentally, or partially, or by way of cryptic clues, as is the way of urban explorers. The pix would be published (the least incriminating ones, mind you) and no one would be any the wiser as to were they came from. After all, what were the odds that the wrong people would see them???

The I went on to the mental experiment of what would happen IF the wrong people did see them. “I would feel so bad” I though, and felt some of the imagined shame wash over me. Then I swiftly carried on deciding which pix would be published...

This is when the bullshit detector went off in my head, clearly, or it wouldn’t be a very good one. The consept that all reasoning seemed to travel in big circles around was this: If I know I'm going to feel bad about this later, then why on earth am I doing it? I would apologize with feeling I imagined, but all the while my subconscious was miles ahead of me, repeating a specific line from a song, for a suitable soundtrack (this is actually, I regret to inform you, no joke! I actually ended up having to download it). A fitting answer to my future plea for forgiveness: “Don't tell me you're sorry cause you're not. I know you're only sorry you got caught” (“Take a bow” by Rihanna). There is no real damage done, and this is an honest mistake so long as no one knows. But I wouldn’t be able to convince anyone (especially not myself) that I accidentally uploaded the pictures to the web. After all, I have to remember what so few people seem to realize; that the web is not like my diary at all. People can see and read, and respond and spread this stuff! So, what is not yours to share, do not put it on the web! Tell your trusted friends and your mum and all that, but do not put something on the web if you cant honestly defend it without blushing. And try not to step on peoples toes to much when they have done absolutely no harm to you. And preferably, don’t do stuff at all if you cant justify it.

In other news, this is our second explore in a row that has ended with someone asking us for directions.
“Why does this keep happening?” I wondered aloud.
“It's because we look so at home everywhere” Ramona concludes.

Later on we go to a store, and I smile at people. I only recently figured it was okay to spontaneously smile at strangers and now I do it all the time. Who know it was this easy to be just slightly more outgoing?! My lack of understanding for what falls withing the boundaries of normal conversations, still seems to confuse people, but when you smile a lot, random people might say hi or even start talking to you, which is nice :)

The story of Lier, in engligh finally

I'm talking with Ramona about rugs. The sort of rugs that cover the entire floor and are glued to it. We both feel that these are the work of the devil and should be outlawed. It suddenly occurs to me that we are on the third floor of what is said to be one of Norway's most hunted buildings and we are talking about rugs... right. This is our third time in the abandoned buildings of Lier Psychiatric Hospital.

Earlier that day we were driving and driving some more. Our normal parking spot (it seems somewhat disturbing that this is an appropriate way to phrase it) was covered in snow so we had to continue along. It had taken us two hours longer then last time when we finally rounded a corner and a monstrous building straight out of the movies appeared when I had just been hoping for a sign.

Well, quite so monstrous I suppose it wasn't, it was just the strike of unexpected recognition that took me by surprise. Still, patients arrive here and if I suffered from, say severe anxiety, I feel the look of this place would not be helping in the least. I'll have to say it does look severely haunted. As though for effect, there is even steam coming out from somewhere just in front of the first decaying building you see. In my head, this moment belonged on the silver screen. Ramona on the other hand, felt nothing, being Ramona and all. Then we drove around some more looking for somewhere inconspicuous to park, and ended up looking pretty conspicuous in the process. It turned out our original route was way inconspicuous indeed, but only because it was mostly the wrong way to get there. That's Google Maps for you. Now we were all up in their faces which saved us some walking but eliminated the cleverness of it all. Eventually we made it in unseen though. This was important, not just because we would rather not get caught, but also because parts of the hospital is still in use and we had heard that this coming and going of thrill seekers, vandals, graffiti artists, photographers and all sorts of freaks like ourselves around the clock is not ideal for the treatment of minds in the next building over. Which I can quite frankly understand, as the horror look this hospital is sporting is probably weighting them down enough as it is.

The night before had left an additional 10 cm of fresh snow on top of any recent footprints, so ours were conspicuous to say the least, if not straight up incriminating, leading trough the woods, right through the fence right next to the sign that said “Keep out! Dangerous area.” and in through the open door. We looked around the first floor a little bit to observe the changes from last time. A few things had moved and new things had appeared. Signs of life like paper cups and a apple frozen solid on the windowsill, and then stranger things like a towel that was covering something and a window frame up against the wall, like someone was redecorating, or securing the place, who knows. There are rumors going around the underground community of urban explorers that this place has been stripped, and that seemed to be holding up. Aside from these few objects that were obviously from the outside, we saw only one chair (truthfully I only ever saw it in my own pix, not on the sight :P) and a rather ordain looking machine of sorts.

I had this funny feeling like something heavy came over me. I had read about people having similar experiences in this place before, so I attributed it to my imagination. My overly imaginative brain supplied the image of a heavy rug falling on me and weighting me down in an attempt to define this feeling. Later I came to believe it was due to the mold, which I absolutely cannot handle.

Further down the hall we saw the first mold too. I had a mask to protect me from this shit, but it was nicely stuffed away back home. Ingenious indeed. Later on I saw a shadow move and studied it for a moment until I became disturbed enough by it that I stepped into the next room and declared that I was seeing things. I was absolutely seeing things, and it must be all down to the mold, because I had no intention of thinking up any other explanation at that point. It would simply not serve any purpose. Come to think of it, I stepped into the next room to talk to Ramona, who I had naturally thought to be the owner of that shadow, which doesn’t make any sense at all. But this is how I went along. When I though I saw something disappear behind a door, I was also very much not having a supernatural experience I resolutely decided and tuned away. This is an acquired skill that comes in super handy. I can always speculate later.

The same skill compelled me to not have a closer look when, on the second floor, I took a picture that at first glimpse just wasn’t right. I thought of the rotten, wooden stairs we had just ascended, the weak point to a building that would otherwise hold up for a long time, it was absolutely a safer bet to hang around a ghost for a while, then to have a go at running back down, out of my mind with panic, I'd just rather not know about it, that's all. When I think about it real good, the panic is actually the worst possible outcome I can imagine here. I was saying to my good friend Janne the other day that “det er beire å vete enn å springe rundt som ei haudalaus høne” (it is better to know then to run around like a headless chicken) but this place requires some special tactics, which is non of the above. Not to know because this is a dangerous place to run around, like a headless chicken or otherwise. Once you're at the whims of a rotten staircase, you've best stay calm. I mean, I wouldn’t be so bold as to say 'bring it on', but what can a supposed ghost really do to me anyway? I have no concept of the power of the supernatural (if such things are even real) and don't know if it can do anything to me, but there are definitely several things a failing staircase and a multiple story drop can do to a person, non of which are pleasant. I try not to think this too loudly though, as not to challenge anyone in mental hearing shot. I find myself involuntarily weighing my words as one might do when in the presence of strangers, avoiding talk of “crazies” and “lunatics” and talk more in terms of “patients” and “inhabitants”. This is only polite after all, and I do feel genuinely sympathetic towards those who belonged in the long lost past of these rooms. I have read quite a bit on the history of this place, and it is a dark one. Also, I decide not to look at my pix at all till later, but I did non the less. The light is dim and difficult and I don’t want to use the flash more then needed (for fear of being caught) so I've locked the exposure time and constantly need to review if they need extra attention. Also my hands were trembling bad. From the cold or adrenalin or the combo, I do not know. This place is creepy as shit.

First I try to stop our advance up from the second floor, thinking I might gain some leverage from the fact that I'm the one with a car and a driver's license, but I lose this one, as I'm not good at threatening people and Ramona wouldn’t think twice about tracking this entire building complex, at night, by her lonesome if she could only find the motivation to do so. Also, I'm just not going to stand around alone, or walk back down alone, or really, let her go alone where I think it's not good to go. So I tag along, while the wood work bend under my feet and I cringe as the setting gets darker and more rotten. I place my feet carefully as we climb the last staircase, but halfway up I see a picture in the making in stop to shoot, forgetting yet again the worries at hand.

We don’t go everywhere though. I have established in advance that we will not go into the basement under any circumstances... just cause. I further my list as we go along. I quickly change my approach though. As we find the attic and later a room that I harbored particularly bad feelings for, I plead and beg. It was apparently undignified enough that Ramona decided not to press me on it. I probably wouldn’t have freaked, but I was getting dangerously close. Just the look of the attic stairs gives me the creeps and I can barely stand just walking past the door, which is slightly ajar, revealing a steep, narrow staircase. I don’t know why this is, but some things I feel acutely bad about, and these stairs and that one specific room are two such places. The stair in this case looks strangely distorted. Like they had a spare room big enough for a latter but insisted on building a proper set of stairs in there. Real proper stairs compressed and forcefully fitted. The room in question sits in a section of the building half a level lower then the rest of it, and it's full of wooden closets. From the top of the short stairs, I watch it worryingly while I hastily snap a few shots of it, only reluctantly employing the flash. I feel as though I might disturb something and that I should get a move on, so I'm getting very frustrated and stressed up there with nothing suitable to bounce the flash off. Just cause I feel it is important to do things properly in such situations to avoid freaking out, I linger till I get something vaguely resembling a sensible shot of it from above. I guess standing still just generally upsets me though. As long as I'm moving along, it's all OK, but whenever we linger for a while, whether it is to work out a difficult shot or to work on my stop-motion-animation (an endlessly time consuming pursuit, let me tell you) I get nervous, maybe because I have to focus on something besides my surroundings, and the sound of our footsteps cease, and the conversation dies. And it all so unnerving.

The lack of a tripod makes everything more difficult too. I'd left it in the car for our mission to be less obvious to onlookers. There is just no way people would miss the fact that I had a big, silver tripod attached to my little black backpack, and with only one credible reason known to us to be wondering around this particular neighborhood with suck gear, well, it wasn’t exactly rocket science to connect the dots. While this had seemed completely sane on the outside, I now could hardly believe my own stupidity. We had taken care not to be seen from the hospital, and though anybody else might suspect what we were up to, the chance of them actually taking action against us is extremely slim. So mostly, this meant there would be additional quality time spent with a building suitable for nightmares and populated with little black things only visible to cameras (more on this later). Also, it is astonishing what a metal object of this size and shape in hand will do for your nerves. Even a pacifist like me might feel thankful for a make shift weapon, if only to discourage potential aggressors.

I'm somewhat relieved as I'm setting up one last stop-motion shoot with my little wooden toy just inside the front door, much to Ramona's dismay as she finds this pursuit incredibly frustrating and, I suspect, a bit dim. Also, this means she has to handle my stuff, either the camera or the homemade monster, which she seems incredibly reluctant to do. But I'm relaxed jet again and feel like I have all the time in the world. My jeans still has a few stains from whatever covered the stairs I was hunched down on and the plastic bag I sat my camera on collected a few flakes of paint from this creepy sight. I didn’t get much time though. A moment later we have slipped into the next room in a hurry and are straining our eyes and ears. At first, Ramona though I was imagining things again, but then she heard it too, and now we have both seen it: hikers out in the woods. The excess adrenalin as I'm calming down is making me all giddy and even Ramona is giggling now. Though only guilty of curiosity, we feel like a pair of criminals and it is surreal. Awesomely surreal. I cant help but hope that these people are not the likes of us though. I would feel really bad if they walked in here and spotted us first thing, that would have been an unpleasant surprise I think.

A few minutes later we are hurrying across the yard in the window of time that could be just a few seconds or hours and hours. Ramona is cursing me for securing the fence when we went in, but I refuse to apologize as I still feel this was the right thing to do. Less conspicuous, and no one really wants kids and animals to find their way in here by accident. We find our way back and decide to walk back down the easy way. On our way out a car pulls up to us. I think to myself that we are just out for a hike, nothing weird about that. But they just want to ask for directions. “See, that's how at home we look” Ramona giggles as they drive off.

Mission accomplished, we finally wind up at Eidsvoll Station waiting for a train, and this is when we finally have a look at the previously mention picture that was just a wee bit off. It still isn’t right when I can compare it to the pictures that came before and after in close succession. Hadn’t I had like a million pix of that same room for my stop-motion-animation I would have just dismissed this as nothing, but something is definitely out of place here. Something small, shapeless and pitch black appears to be flying past just a meter or so in front of us. There is just no way we could have missed it in complete silence while both of us were looking in that direction. It's not a person, a bird, an animal or curtains moving in the wind. If it could be the works of my worn out camera, I do not know, but it looks very strange.

One of them days

<< Fiction >>

I looked down into a black hole, at the fancy looking diesel engine who runs all smooth and soft and seemingly perfect and currently only has one disturbance: me. My fingers were frozen solid and I was frowning and cussing, shivering from the tremendous cold. Suddanly I hear someone snorth. I look up. There was a man walking by. He looked at me as though he thought I might be trying to give the engine a manicure. For a moment I saw myself reflected in his eyes. Though helplessly tom-boy-ish, I am of the sort that will never pass for a guy, ever. Kiss-mouth, like a baby, knees locked together and helplessly facing each other as though in constant acknowledgment of their shortcomings, and my facial expressions ranging from scared to looking like I want to cry. I probably looked like an idiot, like a dog trying to walk on his hind legs and failing miserably. Up until it actually manages it's not merely a pioneer, it makes people sad and angry and embarrassed and frustrated. I sighed and slammed the hood down hard, too hard, audibly like an idiot now. I step around the car to get in. I knew how to drive at least, reverse all good even. Some guy I didn’t know even looked all starry eyed and waved once when I pulled a complicated maneuver reversing and skipping between cars to get out of an overcrowded gas station. But just now I'm feeling so stupid, so empty.

But what is it to be whole, and what is it to be empty or incomplete? After all, as far as I could tell, I still had all my body parts with me. Nobody had taken them from me, I'm almost certain I would have noticed. It would have registered on the scale if nothing else I figured. So this funny feeling of emptiness must be a hoax, a fraud, a trick that someone is playing on me. But who? The spirit of the times I should think... I've heard talk of it and it sounds awfully scary to me! I look around hastily, worried at this point! But how could I tell were it was so I could chase it off with a stick?! Man, does it play dirty. It's probably here, right next to me in the car, whispering to me, planting ideas in my head that I can barely register, not until they've grown and intertwined and mixed with my own at least. When they've grown into dark, live shadows that tint my every thought and poison my perceptions with their phony illusions of truth and reality. Someone is out to get me, and it's that stupid thing I cant even see. Where is that stick now, cause I really feel like something to grab onto. This whole situation had taken on the feeling of a scary movie and I could have been running around like a headless monkey by now, trying to outrun my own mind. But there is one thing that is absolutely crucial to remember in such times of despair, and it is that though we might be seemingly at the whim of the forces of our minds, we are in the end the only creator and master of our own inner world and we need to kick out any fools that think they're entitled to pulling our strings.

Come to think of it, if one were to measure my head, it would be evident that it is in fact massive. Though you might rightfully argue that this would not stop me being an airhead, I once hit my head real hard, and when I stumbled into the doctors office, going on 5 days in a mindless haze, he said I had a concussion, also known as mild “traumatic brain injury”. See? There is the magical B-word! Right in the middle even. I do believe one needs to have a brain to actually injure it.. Also, I would argue that it is a clear indication of dimness to assume you are right to pass judgment on anyone's thinking machine without even having a proper look at it. Anyone would be out of their capacity there.

I smiled and suddenly an idea struck as I spotted my purse beside me, where the supposed mental spectrum had be present just a second ago. I looked out the window and spotted the man from before across the lot. I narrowed my eyes. What had I been thinking? He looked downright harmless now. Surely he wouldn't jump me or anything, so long as I didn’t hassle him. I reached into my purse and I pulled out my multitool and opened the hood again. By help of pliers and sheer force, I finally managed to wedge the reluctant cap off so I could empty a bottle of windshield liquid into it. That wasn’t too hard, was it? I'm not helpless in the least after all. I know nobody can tell, but I put these tires on the car myself, and they even went on the right way, cause I'm not an idiot, and contrary to popular belief, no given set of body parts are required to do this job, besides maybe your hands.