Every
so often, my online family’s nightly communications manifest into
an actual gathering, usually in our beloved New Jersey. Recently, our
friends from Ocean County needed a whole group of extras (a
Lovecraft-esque cult for those reading who are curious) and this
more-or-less created our last de facto gathering.
Well, the video shoot goes off without a hitch, and after a few days of lounging and taking the out-of-towners around the local fare, we realize that a decent number of us had never seen a particular site in their town. And by “decent amount of us,” I mean Ryan (who hails from Maine) and myself. So, after we get the night’s bounty from a 7-11, we decide to walk over to this site, on foot, since it is only a neighborhood or so away. They affectionately had been referring to it as “the Atlantic Test Site” – a name which returns absolutely nothing sans the video publication in which they use the name in their fictional universe on Google.
I
believe we were on the side of a park when we started our initial
approach. There were no streetlamps on the paved road that jutted
from the major one and the first buildings were a solid quarter mile
in. I could see a large darkened building with a handful of other
buildings, with accompanying streetlights a few hundred, feet beyond.
But as I’ve said, the prominent building was completely dark. As
we got closer, we could see a large, probably ten-or-so feet tall
chain-linked fence around the perimeter of the building. The seasoned
gang informed me that this was it: the Atlantic Test Site.
Adam
and Alex remained outside, while Greg guided Ryan and I around the
side touching the dense forest. We had small flashlights (and I used
my cellphone’s flashlight application) so seeing where we were
going wasn’t the problem. It was more so exactly what
we
were heading towards that provided dilemmas. Gigantic spider webs,
with their respective hosts, knee-high weeds, and a small cut opening
in the fence were just the beginning of our trials. We poked through
the established entrance, blazed by the pioneers before us, and found
ourselves in a small yard. There were wooden rafters and what
appeared to be a porch above us, with plenty of old, rusting
equipment on the ground around us. Of course, when such a building
went off the grid, you know, stopped being used by the local
government, the stairs were probably the first things to be removed.
Either that, or nature had taken its course.
Regardless,
the stairs were gone, and our only alternative (and according to
Greg’s instant navigation, another previously established route)
was a haphazardly stacked pile of wood and concrete bricks. But it
gets better: the pile was realistically only a foot or two of boost.
The remaining five feet of clearance was up to the plastic chair
balancing precariously on top of the stack and your own upper-body
strength. This configuration was under a square cut into the porch
above us. The only way up was to grab ahold of the ledge and maneuver
yourself up. Somehow, all three of us got up, and I took a look
around. We could still see the main road from up here, so I had to
keep shushing at Ryan and swatting away his flashlight which would
have given us away from a mile. Greg had moved towards the opening in
the wall and when Ryan motioned to follow him, we all stopped dead.
The entire level of the wooden porch shifted and Greg braced himself
against the wall and muttered, “No, no, look for the solid
rafters.”
So
long as we followed a strict path from the hole in the floor to the
building, we would be fine. Otherwise, we risked shifting the entire
structure down (just the old wooden entrance, not the actual brick
and concrete building) or having one of our legs blow through the
wood and falling through into the mess below. Oh, how terribly
exciting it all was, you know, being that close to a trip to the ER
along with trespassing fines. Regardless, we pressed on.
The
interior of the structure was your typical abandoned industrial fare.
Concrete floors, chipped generically-painted walls in shades of
white, grey, and turpentine green. You could almost imagine the dull
florescent lights that lit this places just decades before. Slowly
making our way through the second floor, there were plenty of rooms
that seemed to be play-rooms and day-rooms of either a summer camp or
some sort of daycare. There were plenty of video game paintings and
vague popular culture references, such as Pac Man and billiards.
These weren’t bits of graffiti from modern day, these were very
much here “on purpose,” inevitably painted by hourly camp
counselors looking forward to autumns away at college.
As
I said, it was your pretty standard abandoned building. Once we got
beyond the whimsical second floor, most of it was clusters of office
furniture and discarded paperwork. Much of this was old county maps
and zoning ordinances and the files we found were mostly health code
registrations and the like. The only thing that really stuck out was
the distinct spine of some medium-sized animal at the top of the
stairs leading into the darkened first floor. So, even though we were
sifting through standard local government paperwork and absolutely
nothing worth alarm, the finding of an organic vertebrae had us on
edge. All the while, we were surrounded by a dim, distant buzz of
something electric.
After
sidling along a wall of stacked plastic buckets, we found a door that
seemed to house this humming. Greg had warned us of a “part that
still seemed to be functioning” when we were first approaching the
building, but we did not really pursue further explanation probably
due to excitement. We opened the door and stopped cold. We opened a
door from within a dark, dilapidated building to find ourselves in a
freshly painted hallway with emergency exit lighting and another,
smaller room within. The humming was definitely coming from within
this second set of doors. It was probably some sort of generator, as
we couldn’t enter the locked door. Outside of this smaller
compartment was another door that would not open. We decided that
since this was very obviously a modern installation, that it was best
to leave, now. The last thing we wanted was to be discovered by some
chance worker clocking in for the night. So, we quickly
double-dutched back and quickly glanced into the basement, of which
was flooded and completely beyond our exploratory nature that night.
As
we cleared back the way we came, I took a few glances back down the
dark hallways. Because I was bringing up the rear, it was
particularly horrifying to glance back, seeing no companions behind,
and witnessing your petty flashlight (produced by my cellphone)
barely illuminating fifteen feet back, beyond that, dark doorways
seeming to reach for our retreating party.
After
we escaped safely and descended the faltering porch once again, we
met up with Alex and Adam once more and left the confines of the
chain-lined fence. Alex briefly showed us another piece of local
legend, a painting of a rabbit on the side wall of the facility. He
was holding an umbrella and was dressed like a Disney character. Alex
said that sometimes, randomly, this painting would be altered, and no
one knows exactly who did it. Some days he’d be holding flowers,
some days the umbrella we saw now, some days nothing. I thought that
was adorable and did not put too much faith into the fable.
We
quickly got back to the main road and I was satisfied that we lived
another night of adventure without repercussion. The Atlantic Test
Site was quite the experience and I do not believe a second visit
will ever come to fruition. It is still, quite obviously, still in
some sort of use by the local government, and we are lucky to have
gotten out of there without penalty. But hey, at least we were a
respectable group and did not, heaven forbid, burn down the structure
or perform some other bit of primitive destruction and vandalism.
I
have posted ten screenshots from a lengthy video clip that Ryan
captured on his Flip. I do not know if posting the entire video would
be wise, due to (honestly) the boring nature of many of the shots and
the establishing clips that may provide some real-world direction to
the building. I do not wish to bring any harm (indirectly or
otherwise) to the property, so I will withhold the address, etc.
Thank you for understanding.