Boseman High School Shenanigans: Episode 1

It’s an accurate and surprisingly violent blow that Zach strikes — the boy puts his all into it, and in one stroke the steel doorknob is torn free and goes bouncing down the hallway. It was frightfully loud, but exposed the inner-working of the lock and in seconds the group has the mechanism defeated and the door opening.

To perhaps their surprise, behind it they find a short hallway and then a set of concrete steps that descend down twenty feet or so… where it carries on straight, out of sight. A bare lightbulb overhead lights the top landing, and light from below indicates the tunnel or passageway also looks at least dimly lit.

After trying to re-attach the doorknob, down the steps go the teens. It is hot in the confined space. The humidity is stifling; moisture beads on the painted cement walls and their footsteps scuff and echo slightly as they reach the bottom of the steps and peer down the passage. It goes and goes… stretching on ahead of them for what looks like hundreds of feet — at least! The corridor appears to have something to do with the school’s heating system, as large overhead ducts and a tangle of pipe work line the low ceiling, running in the same direction as the passage itself.

Zach discovers he doesn’t need the light from his phone, as there are ancient-looking sconces with dim yellow light bulbs every fifty or seventy five feet. The place is noisy — there is the general hum and buzz of heavy equipment filling the air.

The armed group advances down the old tunnel without hesitation, coming upon a four-way intersection fairly rapidly. Fred knew there were rumors of tunnels beneath the school — something to do with the heating system and the old steam plant that was located a half-mile away. Newer to the school, Emily and Zach had both had it explained to them better when they toured the campus.

The building that is now Boseman High was originally part of a much larger campus of medical, academic and research buildings built back in the early part of the twentieth century, the twenties and thirties. A central steam plant heated all the buildings, and a system of tunnels connected each of the structures. In addition to Boseman, there was the hospital, Boseman General, and the old and now long-abandoned asylum on Birch Street.

Old metal placards with chipped paint on the walls mark clear directions for each of the four passageways: left to the hospital, straight on towards the plant, right to the boarded-up sanitarium, or back the way they had come for the high school.