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RETURN TO RACCOON CASTLE -- JAN. 2004. So we're driving around the hospital campus getting nostalgic. How long has it been since we were last here, I ask RastaMan. A long long time, he says, kicking off what it was like back then... Marcin was still alive, during the height of the days of "The 4". We all used to hit like 3 or 4 places to explore every weekend. We wouldn't stop until we were knocked out and bloated from too much fast food. Ah, the memories... Coming back to this hospital was like coming back to see an old friend. these previously posted exploits are of different parts of the same campus: Tunnel Madness & The Quest For The Profit: Mental Ward . We had been planning this trip for awhile now, especially since the news of the moment is that a portion of this campus may be cleared and used for an LIRR layup yard. I doubt it will come to pass, but stranger things happen in this area. We find a nice place to park way out of the way. 'Hiding' the transport is usually the first challenge of going into anyplace like this, because in the suburbs, parking on the street usually looks weird, and thus requires you to walk a long ways to get where you want to go - and when the campus is at least a mile wide and long, the second challenge is obvious: endurance. If you can't walk far without getting tired, your screwed. Thus enters the next challenge, at least for us on this frigid cold night: getting to our target entrance building without being spotted. Avoiding the roads, we went straight for the brush and had to pass an active building on the campus (the only one there - perhaps a halfway house?). it was here that lights came on, and we could hear something going on. This is going to be interesting. So we froze in place. Walking on icy snow is not exactly quiet or stealthy. We wait and break -- out the gear that is. Visual gear: long camera lens, binoculars, and night vision. from our vantage point we can see a guy smoking a cigarette behind the building. I can practically read the label off of his Cig box with the scope, and I can practically hear him toke even though he is a good distance away.And he has no friggin' clue he's being watched, Soviet Style. Finally he goes back inside and we continue on our way. We arrive at a building, find an open door (very random - security must be laxed these days as this would never have been the case 2 years back) and go in. We pick our way around up and in. We stumble across the Morgue, and I half expect to see Bob laying on one of the slabs drinking another 6 pack. We go down and into the tunnel system. This is where the fun is to be had. the tunnels are compact and dusty. Proper breathing equipment is used here. We walk forward a good distance, take a few turns, climbing into a few places not worth bothering much with, and keep on going. Finally we find the right spot and are immediately inside of the big building. There's one problem though, and that is there's no stairs going up. So we find an elevator shaft and a means to get to the next floor up - and here is where it gets really interesting. I stick my head out and I can hear something walking around. I call out to it, and there's no answer. I crawl back into the shaft and we all agree: it's not human, and we don't do that ghost shit. We've come far too far to be stopped right about now. So into the equipment cache we go again, this time arming ourselves with more weapons than a Muhjadeen on a Suicide flight. .We joke a bit about if it is human and turns out to be other explorers: who would they be? What would happen if it were people we like? People we don't like? Would we have to share our beer, or kill someone? Of course, it doesn't matter at all ....either would be equally fun and routine. ( I'm kidding... or am I? What is routine, anyway? Surely we all have a problem with that one... elsewise we wouldn't be in a friggin' elevator shaft of an abandoned building, arming ourselves for godd only knows what in the middle of the night. ) Up and in we go, patrolling the halls. Where is it? We stop and hear something right over us. Is it on the floor above? we follow the direction of it's footsteps and we end up in this room, looking for steps up and ready for anything. Finally, rastaman yells something along the lines of "shit" and we all gather around - and there it is. the biggest, fattest Raccoon I eva did see. Shooo-wweeeyy! He's looking at us as if we're in his yard. So we walk around more, checking everything out - and that's when we notice more and more and more of them. This fucking place is infested with raccoons. If Marcin were here, he'd surely complain about how everything good to explore always involves a nature walk to get to, and how this was taking that scenario a little too far. It's one thing to move soviet stealth style through the brush to get where you want to go and see some wild animals, but it is something of an enitrely different order to get into that location and have mother nature look at you as if you don't belong. That said, Enough with the blah blah blah, and more with the photos:
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