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2024-05-02 02:17:56
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Is Gopher Ordnance Works Haunted?
Most Minnesotans here know well my interest in a place called Gopher Ordnance Works, in SE Minnesota. There are so many urban legends assosciated with this place, it makes your head spin. It's 11,000 acres of ruins, barbed wire fences, the occasional tunnels, and oh yeah, the smokestacks. The smokestacks, five at one site and 3.5 at the other, were powerplants that powered the facility before it shut down in 1945. Anyways, it's a generally creepy place to be, and my friends and I spent a period of three years compiling research, talking to people at the UofM (which owns most of the land these days for agricultural, animal, and cancer research), and checking out original blueprints.
The semi-final results of this research can be found here, on my crapsite http://heartless.d...explore/rosemount/
Long story short, it's 2002, we've been in and out of the place a hundred times, we were finishing up the research, and were just there on this particular night with some friends poking around out of boredom. The 3.5 stack area has always given me this...vibe, this feeling of uncertainty, and here we are in the middle of the night walking along the treeline near some ruins. Four friends, one of which is a veteran of the place, all of a sudden stopped in their tracks, turned and looked at me, and whispered, "Did you just fucking hear that?"
I did not. They swore they had heard voices coming from the woods which weren't ours. Naturally, I told them to shut up, but they insisted on leaving, like right now. So we left, and to this day they still swear that what they heard were voices, although none of them could make out what they were saying. My friend N-Dog (aka Drugs) thinks he heard them say something along the lines of, "You guys need any help over there?"
Fast forward. It's spring break 2004, and I'm out near the 3.5 stacks with Krazy (mcgyver) taking some night photos of the smokestacks. Now Krazy didn't know about the voice incident from a few years ago, as back in high school we didn't know that the other was into this exploration stuff, so he never spoke of his adventures and I never spoke of mine. We're standing around the tripods letting the cameras expose, and I'm just taking in that disturbing feeling that this place gives me. The rest of the 11,000 acres are cool and creepy and all, but this site in particular is just...wierd, and I can't really explain it.
All of a sudden Krazy snaps around and peers into the woods, then turns to me, asking, "Did you just hear that?" He had heard the voices, too. Again, I heard nothing, but I must admit, it kind of freaked me out. I filled him in on the incident from a few years ago, managing to freak myself out even more, but we continued shooting anyways. I should probably point out that after the second world war when this place was just sitting there abandoned, the state of Minnesota suffered a tremendous polio outbreak. The infamous State Fair was actually cancelled in 1946 because of it. Given the nature of the Gopher Ordnance Works property, a lot of the buildings were used as hospitals and infirmaries to treat the sick and dying patients in seclusion.
On a later trip to Gopher that week, Katwoman pointed out to me a "wierd feeling" she got at the 3.5 stack site. She knew nothing of either voice incidents, nor my strange feelings about that particular site, either. Given the location of this area, which can only be accessed by driving down a trail through the woods in four wheel drive, it is a lesser known area of the property; where the crazies like to hang out. We always find strange, almost biblical writings on the walls inside Building C, and someone has been whitewashing the interior walls. Every time I go back, a little more has been done, and done in a hack-job manner. I should also point out that this power plant was never completed before the war ended (hence the 3.5 stacks instead of 5), so the ruins standing in the woods are ruins of a never-finished project, which adds to the creepiness, in my opinion.
Over Easter weekend, actually Saturday night, I was at Gopher's 5 stack site taking night photos with a friend from high school, who basically knew nothing about the place. There was a helicopter approaching from the distance, which isn't uncommon, except it was flying really low. We paid it little notice. Then it started circling over the western end of the property (where the 3.5 stacks are), and scouring the ground with a giant searchlight. Those 3.5 towers being lit momentarily by the helicopter from a half mile away is probably the creepiest thing I have ever seen. Now I started to get a bit nervous. Then, a car flew past us on the road (we were about 50 yards into the woods) at high speed and turned on a road which leads to the trail and the 3.5's, but I couldn't make out if it was a cop or not. Nonetheless, we decided to hightail it out of there immediately.
The same friend, who'd never been to the place before I took him out there for some photography, also reported that the 3.5 stack site sent strange feelings throughout his body. "Something just tells me that I shouldn't be there," he said. "The other place we were at (referring to the 5 stack site) is cool but that one with the four towers is just fucked up."
Some veteran members of the Midnight Group and myself spent the night inside of Building A in the spring of 2003, and recorded nothing out of the ordinary. We did it because of an ancient high school dare that still stood valid (although the actual dare was to sleep in one of the buildings alone). Hopefully, sometime within the next few months, M.G. will set up camp somewhere at the 3.5 stack site and see what we can find.
Not that we believe in ghosts, but we're always up for some adrenalin chasing. And who knows, we might just discover something interesting...
--Heartless
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