Update: Waiting for the School Bus (Photos)

I was fortunate enough to get permission to go back on the property and take pictures.  


With the first pic, I tried to stand where I was when I first saw the apparition.  This pic shows you how narrow our yard was and how sudden the drop off is from this angle. 

Next up we have two more pics looking down from the edge to help give perspective on how steep it is.

I took another picture of what the other side of the road looks like.

I knew that I would have to find the tunnel from my childhood, the tunnel that spooked me to no end. I set off into the wilderness.  The path from my younger years was no more. Now the area was covered in brambles. I could barely go a yard without having to pull a briar off me.


Nevertheless, I soldiered on. And then I found it. 

However, it didn't look anything like my childhood memory. I didn't recall having to slide into it when I was younger. I decided to take a closer look at my surroundings.  Suddenly, the answer was clear. 

Time had not been kind to this place.  Part of the tunnel had collapsed. The idea of being caught in a cave in frightened me more than any booger I might encounter inside.  I readied myself and pressed forward.

It would appear I wasn't alone.  No, I didn't see these guys when I went in. Besides, a few creepy crawlies aren't too unexpected. I didn't have to travel far before I started seeing obvious signs that someone had been in here.

The weirdest part of the items found here was the remains of a fireplace someone had built and abandoned. There were hardly any ashes. Why would someone set up shop in a dank old tunnel that is no more than 5 feet high?


I kept moving hoping to see the end of the tunnel soon enough.

I apologize for the shoddy camera work.  I was a little spooked by the whole ordeal and the fear of being crushed by a cave in was actually looming over my head.


But I reached the end of the tunnel. The clay sediment made it appear that there was a corner at the end of the passage, but it was just an optical illusion. I took one last picture as I turned around and faced the entrance.

It is both creepy and beautiful.  


When I emerged from the hole, I was very relieved that I managed to escape without causing a cave in. Once outside, I noticed something odd.  There was no noise. No birds, no critters going through the brambles. Stillness. 


I decided that now was as good a time as any to get the hell out of there. And I made my way through the overgrowth as fast as I could, which admittedly wasn't as fast as I would like it to be.

When I got back, I showed the owner of the property the pictures.  He didn't even know the tunnel was there.  It was then that he shared something with me that I never knew.  He said that he wasn't surprised that something like the tunnel was there, since the whole lot was on top of a gold mine at one point. In fact he almost lost his car to a sinkhole that developed in his driveway a few years back. 


My next step of this mission is to look up the gold mine and see if anything went awry during its operation. 


Upon retrospection, this tunnel still seems out of place.  The height of the tunnel seems too small. It ends abruptly and there seems to be shelves dug into the wall.  The fireplace also seems off. I think someone tried to live here.  


Here are some more pictures that I took that don't really belong anywhere else.