Most of us have encountered security at some point. Evading capture sometimes is as simple as leaving out the back door before they see you, however in some situations, greater measures are required. So, what is your greatest escape?

I suppose I'll start:
So VAD, Phoenix7, Jono, Catdog23, me, and a few others were leading a ue tour called the Orange tour (named after MITs tour) at a well known educational facility. We had 40 participants, and 12 leaders, so it wasn't exactly easy to stay under the radar. So we've got everyone up on a roof, its going perfect, when we get told that somehow the authorities were tipped off, and they're searching the whole building. We quiet everyone down, and when they finish the search and find no one, they decide to set a perimeter on every exit to the building. So there happen to be tunnels under this building going to countless other buildings. Normally they carry utilities, but in this case they functioned perfectly as an escape.
And that is how with over 50 people we evaded a building search, and escaped despite a building perimeter.

lol. were you guys stampeding on the roof hinting the housekeeper like a class was just dismissed above the top floor?

Posted by Deuterium lol. were you guys stampeding on the roof hinting the housekeeper like a class was just dismissed above the top floor?

There was a mechanical room below us that would probably block out most noise going to the floors below, so my best guess is that someone reported seeing a large group of people.

Posted by Darthbindy There was a mechanical room below us that would probably block out most noise going to the floors below, so my best guess is that someone reported seeing a large group of people.

So, how long did they wait around for?

Posted by Deuterium So, how long did they wait around for?

They took around an hour for the search, and we didn't come back to see how long the perimeter was there after we escaped, I'd assume at least an hour though.

That rooftop sucked.

After finishing my Quest for Collaro I spotted another abandonment while crossing the bridge. In order to actually get to this place I had to walk behind a brewery and past some contractors towards a boat dock and took a long path along the river in order to seem like someone who was just going to their boat. I circled back and explored the place, and as I was going towards the end that was closest to the brewery I thought it would be a good idea to climb on the bracing to get the the roof.

When I got the the top I realized there were only some trees between me and the contractors. One of them clearly spotted me and started walking over, yelling, "Can I help you?" into the bushes. I knew that I really wasn't trespassing or anything, and I could've just showed my camera and explained everything and I would've been totally fine, but for some reason I was too mentally tired to want to go through the hassle, plus I had plenty of distance to escape so I just got down and took off running into the bushes. He clearly tried to follow but I was too far gone. I went up a hill and into a random parking lot. My two options were to take a long way around and avoid the entire area or to just walk back along the shorter road that went in front of the brewery and back to my car.

I took the shorter road thinking thinking the guy thought I was just some young punk, and as I was getting to the intersection of the main road I saw a black minivan pull around the corner with what I thought was the guy. I stood behind a parked car and waited for him to pass, but after a minute I thought I was just seeing things and continues walking, only to find out he was waiting for me! He yelled out to me but I ignored him and just kept walking. Since he had just turned the corner I knew I'd have a bit of extra time to make my escape, and turned into a restaurant not far from the corner. It was a relatively upscale place so to maintain my asylum I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu (a $6 soup!) and stayed there for about an hour.

I went to the front lobby area and started scanning for an escape route when out of the alley I planned to dash into a cop came out holding a pair of handcuffs in his right hand! Although I'll never know if he was looking for me or just came back from the adult boutique I decided to wait a few minutes. Eventually I had to leave so I took a very large circle around the outskirts of the town, scared that the man in the black minivan would still be circling around looking for me. Unfortunately for me there was only one bridge across the river to where my car was and it was right beside the brewery! I took my chances and kinda tried to stick with a large Arabic family that was having some reunion or maybe a rest stop. Apparently it worked and I made it back to my car without being arrested.

I have only had one epic close call in the past, but I think it is worthy of this thread.

So over the summer, Me and 3 other friends who usually explore with me decided to hit a local demolition site, which was a high school being razed upon the completion of the new one. It was a good time to go, after they took out the windows and cut power, including to the security cams. Everything was going smooth until it was time to leave.

To give an idea of the layout, looking in one direction, the parking lot our car was hidden in is on the far right, the fields are in the middle, main road in front, side road on the left, woods on the far left, dirt piles in the back, and behind it all is the school. Nice and secluded.

Because we had to cross the open fields, and because it ended up as a night explore, we split into 2 groups of 2 to cross. The first 2 got across the first field, and took shelter behind the dugouts on the baseball field. We paused behind some porta potties and waited. We started to cross field 1, but I noticed a car parked across the street, and it didnt seem right, so we quickly dove (and I mean DOVE) behind the porta potties. As we did, spotlights hit the fields, confirming the car was a cop patrolling. When the lights stopped, we crawled back for our backpacks. We waited a minute, then sprinted across the left road and into the woods. From there we camped for a couple hours in a ditch, waitng for the cop to leave, though he didnt. As it got close to 4am, we knew it would get light soon, so we took off through a series of peoples yards and woods, until we got back to a main road, where we had a friend scoop us. Ultimately we had to use google earth to navagate through all the woods. Thats how me and the other guy got out, the other two had their own experience with that too.

Not a really an "escape" but one time me and a friend climbed on top of a train bridge. While taking some pictures, my friend says "do you hear that" nahhh bro its nothing. Looked behind me, what do you fucking know theres a freight train. We ran as fast as we could and then tumbled down a steep hill filled with rocks to not be spotted. Was kinda fun actually

Posted by Leopard18 I have only had one epic close call in the past, but I think it is worthy of this thread. So over the summer, Me and 3 other friends who usually explore with me decided to hit a local demolition site, which was a high school being razed upon the completion of the new one. It was a good time to go, after they took out the windows and cut power, including to the security cams. Everything was going smooth until it was time to leave. To give an idea of the layout, looking in one direction, the parking lot our car was hidden in is on the far right, the fields are in the middle, main road in front, side road on the left, woods on the far left, dirt piles in the back, and behind it all is the school. Nice and secluded. Because we had to cross the open fields, and because it ended up as a night explore, we split into 2 groups of 2 to cross. The first 2 got across the first field, and took shelter behind the dugouts on the baseball field. We paused behind some porta potties and waited. We started to cross field 1, but I noticed a car parked across the street, and it didnt seem right, so we quickly dove (and I mean DOVE) behind the porta potties. As we did, spotlights hit the fields, confirming the car was a cop patrolling. When the lights stopped, we crawled back for our backpacks. We waited a minute, then sprinted across the left road and into the woods. From there we camped for a couple hours in a ditch, waitng for the cop to leave, though he didnt. As it got close to 4am, we knew it would get light soon, so we took off through a series of peoples yards and woods, until we got back to a main road, where we had a friend scoop us. Ultimately we had to use google earth to navagate through all the woods. Thats how me and the other guy got out, the other two had their own experience with that too.

Stuff like this makes a good story to tell later only when things pan out well, but I hate it when it happens. Not bringing backpacks at all is the best way to avoid looking like vandals.

I've had a couple of 'great escapes' I know I've outlined one of them on here before so I'll go over that one briefly first.

Years ago a few months after I had started exploring places me and my mate went to check out a girls school which had closed just a few months before. It was a former manor house in a very well-off expensive area, sat in it's own private grounds. We got in and all was fine for half an hour or so, until we heard a car pull up coincidentally right outside the room we were in. We heard the doors open and close and a dog start barking so at this point we were both getting ready to move. We headed into the corridor and as we stood there a key turned in a lock at the end of the hallway, so at that we legged it upstairs and hid in a small shower room. We spent a few minutes listening to whoever it was walking around downstairs and the dog barking before we realised we needed to move as if they came upstairs we were trapped. We realised that they were between us and the access point, so we moved along the top floor and down the main staircase trying to get as far from them as possible. We reached the old cafeteria area and I went to open another door and as I grabbed the handle a fuckload of barking suddenly erupted from right behind the door. At that me and my mate ran at lightspeed through the building to the big meeting rooms at the front, and we spotted a tiny little door set into one of the big bay windows. He flung it open and we leapt over the wall onto the old field and caned it all the way down the drive to the road. Talking to people afterwards, it turned out that the building was used for police dog training and we nearly became live training aids.

The second one which I don't think I have posted about on here before was as follows...

A few years ago now me and the same guy from the story above went on a trip to what was regularly said to have been the best derelict hospital in the UK, the old Mansfield General Hospital which closed in 1992 with most of the stuff left inside and which is now sadly demolished. Now saying this hospital was in a residential area falls short of just how residential it was. Pretty much the entire site was surrounded by houses, with some residential streets having houses just feet from the fence around it and the frontage of the hospital opposite an entire street of nosey neighbours, including the security guard who lived in a house opposite the main gate into the place. Getting in was very dicey, as there simply was no way into the site without being in full view of people living in at least some of the houses.

We turned up and decided to just go for it. Climbed up the fence at the end of one of the dead-end streets that backed onto the hospital, and sitting atop the fence I realised I could, if I wanted to, have reached out and touched one of the houses bedroom windows it was that close. We got in fine and found our way into the building quickly but after half an hour or so heard a noise at the front gate. From out the window we saw a couple of policemen and the security guard with dog in tow had entered the site so we legged it upstairs to a top floor office so we could try and keep track of where they were. They had focused their searching on the much larger 1950s extension and we could see them as they walked through the rooms from our vantage point in the other building. Amazingly they must have got bored because after half an hour or so the police left without even bothering to check the building we had been hiding in, so once that happened we got on with the rest of the explore undisturbed

It was just starting to get dark in North Jersey, and my friend and I were I the roof of the Overbrook Hospital. We were messing around, I was probably smoking a bowl while she was tossing little pieces of metal off the roof. A car was driving through campus, and spotted us. Ordinarily, nobody cares if you're inside other than the cops. So we decided to just go right back to our business. She throws a piece of a skylight off, and we hear a car floor it and pull up right where I knew there was an open door the police knew about. This is before I believed that they still went inside the buildings, but I was nervous. I suggested we go to another building. We made it to the roof of building 3, and now it was really dark. I'm up there saying "I don't think anyone knows we are..." And all of a sudden I saw something that almost made me faint. A spotlight was moving from roof to roof, and came within inches of hitting me. We hurried back into the attic, and I told my friend, "Well don't worry, I doubt they are going to come in after us". As we sat and waited, we heard more cars roll up, while one circled the wards. I still wasn't that worried. Until one officer got on the loudspeaker. While we couldn't make out every word, we heard enough to figure our what was going on. The officer on the loudspeaker was directing a group of officers officers through the wards of the building we were in. I went pale. I told my friend that we needed to just stay put for a little while. It wasn't long before we could hear the officers in the building just below where we sat. An hour passed. Then another. Then another. Finally, we stopped hearing all the yelling and pounding. After hiding for a few hours, we decided to make our move. We went down the ladder, opened the door that the cops never thought to check in, and ran straight down the stairs and into the tunnel. We were outside in about three minutes. After this we decided to take it easy at Overbrook. My friend would go on to be my girlfriend, and we eventually would be caught inside by a police officer a few years later. But it doesn't matter. I have these awesome memories and they are well worth the small fine.

This is escape from cops. I have nothing to add. Continue.

Posted by Darthbindy Most of us have encountered security at some point. Evading capture sometimes is as simple as leaving out the back door before they see you, however in some situations, greater measures are required. So, what is your greatest escape? I suppose I'll start: So VAD, Phoenix7, Jono, Catdog23, me, and a few others were leading a ue tour called the Orange tour (named after MITs tour) at a well known educational facility. We had 40 participants, and 12 leaders, so it wasn't exactly easy to stay under the radar. So we've got everyone up on a roof, its going perfect, when we get told that somehow the authorities were tipped off, and they're searching the whole building. We quiet everyone down, and when they finish the search and find no one, they decide to set a perimeter on every exit to the building. So there happen to be tunnels under this building going to countless other buildings. Normally they carry utilities, but in this case they functioned perfectly as an escape. And that is how with over 50 people we evaded a building search, and escaped despite a building perimeter.

That's pretty awesome.

Posted by EsseXploreR It was just starting to get dark in North Jersey, and my friend and I were I the roof of the Overbrook Hospital. We were messing around, I was probably smoking a bowl while she was tossing little pieces of metal off the roof. A car was driving through campus, and spotted us. Ordinarily, nobody cares if you're inside other than the cops. So we decided to just go right back to our business. etc.

That's pretty stupid, and vandalism is a dick move.

I had a recent escape, which may have been from cops. I was casing a place for entrances and it involved entering in to an area with active train tracks. I had ventured a ways from the opening in the fence and I turned around and saw headlights of a car coming towards me. It was going slow, so I slowly walked towards the exit. I had to judge the right time to run, because I was sure the car would speed up and close the distance. When I was around 5-10 feet from the fence I started running and got out of there. Luckily they did not pursue.

That rooftop sucked.

Yup, but it makes for an awesome story =P

I went to the front lobby area and started scanning for an escape route when out of the alley I planned to dash into a cop came out holding a pair of handcuffs in his right hand! Although I'll never know if he was looking for me or just came back from the adult boutique I decided to wait a few minutes. .

It seems odd that they would go to that much trouble just cause they saw someone. Do you know if they'd been having recent problems with vandalism?

Posted by Seventh Stage I had a recent escape, which may have been from cops. I was casing a place for entrances and it involved entering in to an area with active train tracks. I had ventured a ways from the opening in the fence and I turned around and saw headlights of a car coming towards me. It was going slow, so I slowly walked towards the exit. I had to judge the right time to run, because I was sure the car would speed up and close the distance. When I was around 5-10 feet from the fence I started running and got out of there. Luckily they did not pursue.

Good call not running immediately, there have been a few times where people I'm exploring with will run right away at the sight of a car, and although so far it hasn't caused much of a problem, I'm dreading the day it inevitably will. (Also, running indicates feeling guilty, which would probably be the difference between a warning, and a ticket)

As should be expected.. "nothing glamorous". Me hiding inside of an eaves rolled up inside a rug for 4-5 hours in the very freezing cold waiting for search dogs to leave, punctuated with the occasional re-visit of an authority looking for me. Around midnight, the dogs finally left and I left in the most awkward way possible, twisting my knee and losing my glasses in a fucking tree in the escape. After dinner around 4am all of this shit came out in the wash. Luckiest day ever.

Posted by Shawn W. That's pretty stupid, and vandalism is a dick move.

I'm not really understanding how you think tossing some pieces of metal off a roof equals vandalism. Do you actually know for sure that's what was happening?

It's vandalism, look up the definition. More importantly it's dangerous.

Posted by ZenCanadian It's vandalism, look up the definition. More importantly it's dangerous.

Really? That Depends... if your GF "throwing" a small metal part off a roof suddenly qualifies as "vandalism" then please keep me updated on this new knowledge.

What's next? Someone flicking ashes off the roof of a historical building now counts as arson? I swear that taking everything completely out of context seems to be the "new norm" It's really sad.

Posted by ZenCanadian It's vandalism, look up the definition. More importantly it's dangerous.

I don't condone vandalism, but on the flip side this takes it way too far. Nobody wants people maliciously destroying places. But who hasnt picked something up, kicked a stone across a street, moved some broken glass a bit to avoid getting cut. By your definition, next skipping stones on a pond will be disturbing a wetland reservation. Picking up stones or small pieces of loose metal and tossing them? Give me a break. Its not like shes up there breaking holes in the roof. As for being dangerous, its not like anyone is supposed to be there anyways, and since the pieces probably werent much bigger than a pebble, that's no risk increase than the possibility of a roof collapse or falling plaster. Again, I despise vandalism, but I also dont like people so quick to elevate themselves on pedestals and criticize everyone that doesnt agree completely.