Who in thier right mind could resist the threat of toxic chemicals or asbestos? The approach was difficult as the access road goes by the Army Corps complex, complete with "No Tresspassing - Government property" signs. Just past the Gasworks building was another undetermined company very much at work, even at midnight. Just for good measure a guard shack was in full view of where we wanted to be. To make things even more exciting, the entire place was surrounded with a very high fence with a barb/razor wire combo. The razor wire wasn't as difficult to negotiate as I originally thought it would be but I still wish I had worn gloves.

Once on the right side of the fence we walked around the building (all 3 sides that were in shadow anyway) looking for a way in. Unfortunately getting in involved quite a bit of bruising.

Once inside, I noticed the floor was quite crunchy and it took me a few minutes to figure out that we were actually walking on a thick layer of guano..bat shit. The smell was quite sharp to say the least. We had warning of the possible toxicity of the place so it was a bit alarming that with this amount of guano that no bats were around. The second floor was fairly empty so we ventured downstairs. That's when we started seeing little crunchy bat bodies. Yuk.

The first floor yielded evidence that a female had been living there some time ago. There was a fold out couch, Scorpions cassette, a purse, and a suitcase. There was a layer of silt on everything so we knew she hadn't been around in a while. But who would just leave thier purse behind? What happened to the girl? I just *knew* we were going to find her body elsewhere in the building. (Turned out we didn't so calm down.)

We went down to the basement and found several walls with drippings that didn't make sense. There would be horizontal crack with black shit dripping out of it (dried mind you), but the wierd part was the dripping went both down *and* up. It was like a horror movie where the blood goes the wrong way on the walls. You can see this in some of the pictures. The only explination for this I can com up with is that whatever this black stuff is (by product of the gas making process I'm sure) was at one point under some kind of pressure. I don't really get it though to be honest.

We decided to try to get up on the roof. On the upper floor there was an unusual, creeky, wooden structure, reminescent of the inners of a belltower or possibly a hangman's rafter. It turned out to go up inside of where the clock used to be. It was unfortunate that the clock face openings were heavily tarred in because the view would have been very cool. The little room was, however interesting in it's own right as several messages had been left by the people who removed the clock. The messages said that time had officially stopped and that the clock had been donated to OMSI (local museum) in '97. There was also a rather cryptic message scrawlled over the ladder which you could not see until you were fully inside the room. The message said something about unleashing a curse on all mankind. Too bad my pictures of that never showed up on the camera. I had taken two. Wierd.