It's funny because it's Talk Like a Pirate Day, and that reminds me of Talk Like a Pirate Day of 2007. Arrrrr, ahoy matey, I'll regale ye with an old sea chantey about The Elko Tract.
Okay, so it's not a sea chanty, but it is kinda creepy, so I figure I'd post it. For anyone who lives in or around the Sandston, Virginia area, near Richmond International Airport, the Elko Tract may be a familiar subject.
A Google search for "elko tract" and/or "lost city" will turn up a great deal of information from people who have been there and explored the place. Also, this page has a good rundown:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elko_Tract
(Open in a new tab if you want some interesting info, but not required reading.)
Some quick background:
In WWII, it was believed that if the Krauts might fly over to try to bomb the airport. So the military set up a fake city largely devoid of any real structures, but complete with streets, streetlights, and fake parallel lines of lights made to look like an airfield. The idea was, if German planes were on their way in for a bombing run, the airport and surrounding homes would cut all their lights out, and they'd turn on the lights in the Lost City, and the Nazis would bomb the fake airfield.
Of course, the Germans never flew over Richmond, and the Lost City never had to be used for such a thing. But the streets all laid out like a city grid were still there, with the street lights and everything.
In 1953, they even put in water and sewer systems in anticipation of a state mental hospital that never ended up getting built. There was even a water tower, which is still there to this day. Later on, it became a sort of "lovers' lane" where teenagers would park and make out. Someone on the internet says that the "hook-handed serial killer" urban legend got started based on a true event there, and since it's on the internet, it must be true! But srsly, it was a grid of several blocks with sewers, street lights, a water tower, and almost no buildings, so what's not cool/creepy about that?
Anyway, wtf does any of this have to do with Talk Like a Pirate Day? Well, it was was TLAPD 2007 that I went to visit the Lost City. That's right. Exactly two years ago today, I made my way into the bowels of the Elko Tract. Actually, "bowels" may be a bit intense and dramatic. It's mostly overgrown forest now. The original streets are nearly invisible due to the growth of the forest. You can still find manholes and fire hydrants with "1953" marked on them, and there is at least one concrete structure there.
Some conspiracy theorists speculate that in the 1960s and/or 1970s, there were secret CIA operations, alien autopsies, nuclear missile silos... you name it, supposedly the spooks and/or men in black were doing it there on the Elko Tract. Highly unlikely, given its relative unimportance in the whole military strategy realm, but it made for good smoking-pot-around-the-campfire stories.
The only buildings that were there were the few concrete maintenance shed type buildings and the one old shack. None of the accounts I've read on the internet ever mention the shack. I'm guessing I'm the only one who found it.
The concrete sheds are nothing special. Less than the expected amount of graffiti and trash, tbh, and otherwise pretty boring, although they're kind of dark and creepy. But the shack would be great nightmare fuel for the faint of heart.
The shack was right in the heart of the tract and, like I said, I've never read anyone else's account that mentioned it, which is why I think I'm the only one who's found it. If the battery in my Garmin hadn't died right when I found it, I might have had some coords cuz, try as I might, I can't find the thing on Google Maps, but you can't really see much except for the water tower and a shload of trees anyway.
But one of the weird things about it is how rickety the whole structure looks on the outside but, once you go inside, it looks pretty solid. I don't know what shape it's in now (and I'm sure it's still there, as it was pretty solid like I just said) but when I saw it, it looked like it was slapped together with pieces of plywood, particle board, some thrown-together bricks and cinder blocks, and had vines growing all up through it. It was maybe ten by eight feet, and might have looked like a third world hut save for the metal door in the front, that looked to have been pilfered from one of the maintenance sheds. I'm thinking some homeless person had built this structure, probably over the course of a day or more, but why they couldn't have just moved into one of the concrete sheds, I don't know.
The door was not locked (as if it even could be). In fact, I'm surprised it held considering the rusted condition of the hinges. Once inside, I was impressed by how tidy it was. In retrospect, I'm sure it was stupid of me to just fling open the door and waltz in, as some knife-wielding madman could have been waiting for me, but the place was deserted. The walls were fairly smooth planks of wood, if a bit dusty. The floor was concrete. I marveled at the hypothetical transient's ability to poor concrete before realizing the shack had simply been built on one of the old sidewalks. Less than a second after making this realization, I noticed that near the back corner, probably fifteen or twenty feet away.
Okay, now I'm having to rethink that. I'm really wishing I'd brought a tape measure with me, because I realize there's no way it could have been 15 or 20 feet, as the outside didn't look anywhere near that big. And I'm really bad with eyeballing measurements like that. So, either the outside was bigger than I originally thought, or the inside was smaller and the relative darkness was playing a trick on me.
Anyway, the manhole cover was partly off. I probably wouldn't have even thought to try to move it if that wasn't the case. But I did. That booger was heavy, but I got it off and stared down into the Stygian depths below. I saw the ladder descending downward, quickly lost to the darkness. So, I did what every stupid character in a horror movie does. I stepped down into the manhole and...
I hit something. At first I was terrified, wondering what had stopped my foot. Then I realized that this manhole was stopped up. I don't know if it was runoff that had collected debris, or what, but my foot had just landed on fairly solid earth, not two feet down. It was just dark enough that my eyes and imagination told me that it was much deeper. I laughed at my own foolishness, then retrieved my foot. And then the door slammed.
I nearly jumped out of my skin, adrenaline pumping through my body, startled silly at the WHAM of the door shutting, but no sooner had I feared myself locked in the shack by some unseen villain, the door calmly creaked back open. Funny thing was, I noticed a bit of graffiti on the door I had not caught on the way in. Just the number 731 painted crudely in dark brown paint that had dripped and run before it had dried, like most bad graffiti.
I had to laugh at my own nervousness, but I was a bit spooked so I decided to call it a day. It's funny how something like that can make you notice things around you in a new light. You know when you just learn a new word, or hear a song you haven't heard in forever, suddenly you see references to it in everything that happens for the rest of the day? I made my way back to my car (in a "special" parking location, NOT the Qimonda parking lot). I noticed my trip meter and my odometer were in sync, sort of. I always gauge when I need to do an oil change by when my trip meter resets three times, which means I've gone 3000 miles. Funny thing was, my trip meter was at 731.0. The last 3 digits of my odometer ended in 731. (No I don't remember the exact mileage, which is why I use the trip meter trick.) But wait, it gets better. I went to a Sheetz later that day and bought lunch. My ticket number was 731. I don't remember exactly what I bought besides the sandwich and a drink, maybe some gum, but my total rang up to $7.31. On my way back to my car in the Sheetz parking lot, I almost stepped out in front of a big box truck that was moving way too fast. I stopped just in time to avoid getting hit, and when I saw the "How's my driving?" number on the back, I was sorely tempted to call it and report the vehicle number which was... you guessed it! Vehicle #731.
So I did what any suspicious, superstitious, and paranoid idiot would do: I played the lottery. I played the Virginia Lottery Pick 3 day and night. Of course I didn't win anything on either. But a couple hours before the night drawing, I was keeping a sharp eye on my watch. At 7:31 PM...
Nothing happened. And after the late night drawing was confirmed to be a bust, I realized that the number 731 likely held no real significance.
In fact, the next day, I kept looking for references to the number, and never saw any. I flirted with the idea of buying more lottery tickets and playing that number again, but I already knew what the outcome would be, so I didn't bother. That evening, just when it was almost ready to get dark, I decided to play a game with myself: I would glance at my watch when I thought it was time, and see what it said. And when I finally looked, I had to laugh at how close I had come. It was 7:30.
I didn't even think about the whole thing until about a month later when I was flipping channels and the remote died right as it landed on the 700 Club. I shuddered at the thought of having to sit through Pat Robertson's diatribes, so I turned off the TV altogether. But seeing the "700" reminded me of the whole 731 thing.
Months went by without any other reference to any 3-digit numbers beginning with 700. Maybe a month or so after that, I remember 666 showing up everywhere one day, and my friend and I joked about it, and chanted "Satan" most of the day, but there were no demonic possessions that I noticed. But seeing the same number show up again and again made me think about it, but I didn't dwell on it much.
I completely forgot about the whole incident until Talk Like a Pirate Day last year. That morning, my trip meter was at 365.0 and my odometer ended in 365. And when I hit the road to head to the office, I realized that the speedometer in my old truck was busted. Of course, the odometer didn't turn either so for the rest of the day, 365 faced me on my dashboard. And then, 365 started showing up everywhere. My breakfast total came to $3.65. I had spent the night in Wytheville the night before, so I took a road to get to work I had never noticed before: Rt. 365. At work, a customer brought in a Blackberry that wouldn't turn on. It just displayed "Device Error:365". The frat house next door to my office was having a "grog party" in celebration of the holiday, and after work I went over there and drank some beers with the brothers. They had an old Sev CD playing (anybody remember them?) and the song "24/7/365" was playing. And right when it got to the chorus, where it says, "twenty-four-seven, three-sixty-five" the CD started skipping and just repeating "three-sixty-five" over and over and over again.
I have to admit, I was a little creeped out by this. But I could not figure out what (if any) relation it had to the 731 occurrence I had exactly one year before. And then I realized that it had been 365 days since I had been to that old shack.
So now, here I am, one year after that, and I realize it's been 730 days since since I was there. I have to wonder, what will happen on day 731? Probably nothing, as it's all probably just a big wild cosmic coincidence. And if the few number occurrences I have had over the last 2 years were some sort of "countdown", then what was it
Okay, THAT's fucking weird! I'm listening to a random playlist in Winamp and "The Final Countdown" just came up as I typed that. I have always read stories about people who have shit like this happen, and something terrible always happens to them on the last day, like they kill themselves, or they disappear, or they mumble weird shit and stare at the walls or whatever. Well, it looks like I have one more day, so at least I'm not gonna die on a silly holiday like Talk Like a Pirate Day, right?
I think I'm going to throw up.
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