Nov. 4, 2004

Beginning of the Road

by Dane Sorensen

By now all the ghosts and goblins have eaten the best pieces of candy from their prolific haul on Halloween 2004. However, just because it is no longer the 31st of October doesn't mean that there aren't some forces of darkness still about. I am not talking about candidates for public office, but something far more mysterious. Every community has a bit of mystery.

Ask any 7 year old, most buildings that have been abandoned by the living are naturally sublet by the unliving. Some would think the old Tanner Hospital should be the spot for this sort of thing. What saves the Tanner Hospital from being a focus of evil is that it is next to a church. The only way spooks can live by a church are in a graveyard. Those are the rules, you know.

I have discovered which building in Ely is the preferred haunts for the immaterial. It is the old Pioneer building that is between the elevator shaft and the old boiler house. For over thirty years it has been neglected and left to decay.

This building has been locked for years as any one who walks on the Trezona Trail will attest. If you try and open the big rusty steel doors all you hear are the flapping wings of the pigeons flying out of the broken windows.

Some how the doors were wide open a few weeks ago. This reporter who happened to be photographing the colors of Fall took advantage to enter and explore the mysteries of that old building. Inside it is musty and dark. I do not think a broom has been pushed about the floors since the mines closed so long ago. There is none of the massive equipment used for mining. They were stripped out long ago.

The only things I saw that were very curious and mysterious were a field of abandoned bicycles. All over the floor are bikes and bike parts. Some of the bikes look as if they met a violent end. It leads this reporter to ponder the mystery of these dusty bicycles.

Could this be some dark underside to what is normally considered a good and wholesome small town? What dark mystery is responsible for this killing field of spokes and handle bars? Why has no one talked about this before?

After careful and serious thought I think I have a good theory. For the first time in print it is revealed what probably has happened. Bad boys and girls beware. Every town has a few bad apples. Kids that pick on smaller children, kids that shop lift or steal cigarettes from their parents, and kids that cheat in school exist in every town. No one really likes them and even their parents would like to sue the stork for consumer fraud.

I think the old abandoned Pioneer building is our community's secret solution to getting rid of these naughty youngsters. Ely has made a bargain with the devil's minions to control the town's population of rotten apples.

Think of it, what better way to fix a problem kid than by giving them to the ghosts and spirits that dwell in that building. I know they are there. I heard them when I was inside. My salvation in not being grabbed myself was that it was still daylight. If I had entered at nightfall, I would not be here to write this column.

What better magnet for bad kids than a building that is always locked up. Sooner or later a couple of bad kids will contrive to bike over with a saw or hammer in their backpack and break into the most mysterious building in Ely.

Once these bad creatures break in they push their bikes inside so no one will see them. It is then that the only living witnesses fly off, for even dumb pigeons have a sixth sense that danger is near.

At the west end of the building is a big dark stairway going down. It is from there that the demons come and grab these trespassers and haul them down the stairs to their doom. I dared not go down the stairs myself. My knees were knocking too much. For at the bottom of the stairs was another bike. No doubt some poor bully refused to let go of his bike and was dragged kicking all the way down the stairs….never to be seen again.

Let this be a lesson to any of you children out there who think stolen candy is sweeter. No one would miss you if you dare enter this lair of evil. The police will not be bothered. Your parents will sell your stuff on ebay.

Mend your ways and stay out of haunted buildings. Stay on the narrow path or you too may be dragged down those dark stairs. You have been warned.

 

 

 

 

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