So, I was in Dallas the past four days. And on Monday, something went down. My friend (referred to as Bibby hence forth) wanted to show me this abandoned facility. Apparently it had been shut down almost a decade ago. It was original going to be a particle collider that lost it's funding before it was even half way complete. So we hopped on in Bibby's truck and drove to the site.
We made a few laps around all the buildings. It was really interesting seeing all these buildings and absolutely no one around. There was weeds and vines growing on most of everything. He found a place between two buildings and parked. We got out and everything was dead silent. Just standing there felt as if we had entered the remains of a zombie apocalypse and were in a ghost town. It's a very weird feeling.... you feel rather creeped out, but are curious to keep looking around. Which is what we did. We found one of those garage sliding doors that was open, so we crawled under into the pitch blackness (save for the light from said door).
Inside, we used the flashlight apps on our phones to see what was inside. And there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was a wide open storage shed of some sort. There were two giant holes in the ground. They were square and had guard rails around them. The holes were quite deep. And we were sitting (standing there) speculating on what they could possibly be before we heard what sounded like a car. We are a good ways from the interstate, so we know it wasn't just some passing buy vehicle. That's when we realized that we are probably in trouble...
We left left that garage and sure enough, there was a cop car driving towards us. Crap. The officer approaches us and asks us what we are doing here. Which the answer is honestly "nothing" but you can't really get away with saying that. So we had to say something that made us sound even dumber like, "Just looking around." He then checked us for anything. He asked if we had any weapons on us as well. I always carry a pocket knife on me. At work I use it to open up boxes for new computer parts, cut lines free from zip-ties, cut ends off of internet cables if I need to put a new end on one, you know... just stuff. So I held my hands up and told him that I had a little pocket knife in my front right pocket. He took it and then proceeded to check all our pockets. Everything we had aside from that little knife was our keys, wallets, and cell phones. While he was searching us, other cop cars arrived. Before this was all over, there would be around 7 of them. They then took our wallets and pulled our drivers licenses from them. And then came the questions. They asked us where we had all gone, if we had taken anything, how long we had been there, if anyone was with us, you name it, they had asked us. We answered everything honestly, and they went and looked around the one place we entered to verify our information. They then told us that this place has been broken into sever times and has had almost a million dollars worth of stuff taken from it. This just about blew my mind as there was absolutely NOTHING here. The only thing you could pick up is loose gravel from the ground really. There was some random junk were people were obviously dumping things they didn't want anymore like couches and broken TVs and such, but to think there was anything of significant value was just beyond me.
Anyways, during this time, they took my buddy Bibby off to where he had parked. He later told me that he got drilled with several more questions. I guess trying to see if we told separate stories to catch us in a lie. They also searched his truck as well. Of course they found nothing that shouldn't have been there and of course our stories matched up... because we did exactly what would have been the first answer I would have given... which was "nothing."
After radioing in to get a check on our records (the worst either of us had on our records were speeding tickets) they decided that they were going to get what they called "trespassing forms." We are told these are basically warnings. And that if we were caught here again, we go straight to jail (without passing go or collecting 200 dollars). The worst of this is that we were told that if anything was to get stolen after this, we were going to be suspects in it. I'm fairly sure I'll be fine as most the time I'm right here in Arkansas either at work or at the house. And the entire time we were there we never saw a single thing that looked like it would be worth absolutely anything. But then again, we weren't looking for anything to take. We were just looking around just to feel the emptiness of it all. Remember that video someone took of the
Six Flags theme park after the flood in New Orleans? The feeling you have watching that video was much stronger actually BEING somewhere so run-down and supposedly abandoned. I say 'supposedly' due to the high security placed around it. In hindsight I would haven't bothered. And all I got out of it was worrying about if I'm going to be suspected of someone else's theft... and they kept my little pocket knife.
So yeah, the moral of the story is to f*ck around in places you don't need to be. =/