With your heart pounding in your ears, you push yourself over the wooden fence, landing with a thud on the other side. Standing up, you gather your bearings, reaching for the flashlight in your pocket. As it illuminates your surroundings, you see the large buildings towering in the distance, with only a dark and grassy expanse between you and your destination.
Not wanting to waste any time, you head off towards the large brown buildings at a jog, your breath visible in the light as you dodge the large oak trees scattered through the darkness surrounding you. Even though you'd only been here two hours earlier, the place looks entirely different.
As you get closer to the buildings, the voice of your tour guide rings out through the silence: "This lunatic asylum was home to over 30,000 patients in its 125 year history...13,000 people died here... several hundred were also buried on the grounds...there have been hundreds of ghost sightings of these residents... some are quiet volatile... tonight, we may be lucky enough to see some of these apparitions..."
Snapping back to the present, you realised you've reached the towering brown building, which looked much smaller earlier in the evening. The full moon above illuminates the aging façade, the brickwork beginning to wear, window panes threatening to fall off, and glass missing on the majority of the windows.
Looking around, you check that you are alone, ensuring that the tour guides have gone home. You walk over to a large, glassless window next to the door and push back the board filling the gap. It lands on the dusty floor inside with a loud thump, echoing throughout the empty room. You quickly climb in and place the board back, hoping that everyone has truly gone home.
You turn back to the dark room, seeing the dust settling in the moonlight streaming through one of the unbroken windows. Trying to remember the way you'd gone during the tour, you cross the room to the closed door, grateful that you'd climbed into a room that had a latch on the inside. Unlocking the door, you quickly grab your torch, shining it up and down the hall.
Realising your heavy breathing, sweaty palms and beating heart, you take a moment to catch your breath and calm your nerves. You realise how easy it was to get into the building, and that the hard work has been done – no need to worry now. Now it's time for the fun part – exploring the entire building, looking for its hidden secrets you were not allowed to find on the tour. And if you're in luck, you really will come across one of those elusive apparitions.
Carefully and quietly, you make your way down the long, dark hall, shining the torch in every direction, and checking each of the windows – "Make sure you look at and take photos of the windows as that's where a lot of people see the faces of the residents..." Reaching the door at the end of the corridor, you pause for a moment, listening for any peculiar sounds. In the distance you hear creaking floorboards, but take them as the regular sounds the building makes – it is over a century old after all, there's bound to be creaks here and there.
Shining the torch around you, you try to work out where you are, thinking back to the tour. Sadly, everything looks the same in the dark, and you begin to wonder if you made a mistake coming back. The thought is only fleeting as you tell yourself that it doesn't matter where you went on the tour, because you're going over the entire building, not just a room here or there.
Just as you're about to head off down the next hallway, you hear a door close in the corridor you'd just walked down. Funny, all the doors had been closed when you walked past. You shine to torch down, wondering if there is someone still here, checking that the doors are secure, and that nothing has been left behind from the tour. But there's no one there. Your heart is beating in your ears, but you decide that the door mustn't have been fully closed, and the wind outside had simply pushed is shut.
