Page 45 - the NOISE December 2013

tos insulation. There were also large bundles of multicolored electrical wires attached to the tunnel wall. The floor was concrete, and I noticed lots of leaves and trash in the beam of my headlight as I trudged along. Crickets chirped and the sound echoed through the corridor. I used a pedometer to count my steps as a way to roughly judge the distance I traveled, figuring I covered about two-and-a-half feet per step.
The tunnel was straight for 40 yards, but as the main tunnel extended through South Cam- pus many side tunnels branched off. I investigated each one in turn and found they all led to campus buildings. Back in the main tunnel I trudged on until I was below what I identified as McConnell Hall (I used a campus map to chart my progress). According to one of my resources, in the 1980s some students discovered the tunnels and used them to move between buildings on campus in the winter when it was cold.
A small group of larcenous students used them to access dorms, steal whatever they could carry, and then disappear underground. They were caught eventually when one of them was arrested for an unrelated crime and he dropped a dime on his cohorts to avoid going to jail. Most of the campus legends about buildings being haunted are just silly stories someone made up, but some may be related to the antics of mischievous students who used the tunnels to pull pranks.
A little further along I came to a side passage that sloped downward toward the east; at this point I was heading at an angle under the Walkup Skydome. To enter the passage I had to pry a metal gate off its hinges. Gradually the passage became tighter, and I began feeling claustro- phobic. I noticed numerous cobwebs and spiders on the damp walls. There were no pipes or cables or wires in this tunnel; what could it be for? Finally I arrived at another locked iron gate blocking any further progress.
I used my trusty crowbar to whack the rusty lock a few times and was soon on my way. The dank passage narrowed even more, but finally it opened up into a room that appeared to be carved from volcanic rock. In the center of the small room was a large black box like a reliquary resting on a pedestal. I approached it slowly, not sure I wanted to know what was inside. Could it be the remains of past NAU president J. Lawrence Walkup himself, buried deep below his best and final construction on campus (students joked that it was his “last erection”). Was this hidden structure beneath the Skydome an inverted pyramid, with a sarcophagus at the apex? I shoved the heavy stone lid of the box aside and there, in the dim light from my headlight, I saw
— something. I would like to describe it, but it is as if my memory were wiped by men in black. Thinking about it now it seems like a dream, but I’m pretty sure there was some sort of large spinning crystalline sphere in the box. I stared at it, transfixed. As my flashlight played over it, flashing needles of surreal color seemed to jump out and bore directly into my brain. I felt a sick sense of dread at the core of my being, my stomach roiled, and I vomited, covering the beautiful sphere with last night’s pizza. Then I must have fainted or had a seizure, because I fell
to the ground.
I woke up after just a few minutes. It was so quiet I could hear the rapid thumping of my heart. I coughed and stood up and replaced the lid on the stone box and shuffled back up the slanted passageway until I was back at the main tunnel. I felt like some primal chthonic force had thrashed me. I almost abandoned my journey, but I turned right and walked north, paus- ing under the Astronomic Research Observatory. I took a quick look in the basement laboratory, which was filled with workbenches loaded down with odd-looking equipment.
As an engineering major I was able to identify an oscilloclast, a dynamizer, and a psionic motor. There was also a gurney with straps; I wonder if they use human subjects in their bi- zarre experiments. There was a large Van de Graff generator and a monitor to measure “eloptic emanations.” The walls were covered with posters of circuit diagrams in shiny ink labeled “Hi- eronymous Machines.” In one corner of the lab there were stacks of cages with rabbits. Most looked healthy, but some had antennas sticking out of their heads. The workbench nearby had gadgets with lots of dials and buttons and switches and homemade labels glued on. They said things like “time-shift phaser,”“chronoscope,” and “timewave selector.” A red button on a circuit board said “abort temporal recycle,” whatever that means. I flipped several of the switches, just to mess with the scientists and their precious little secret experiment.
I returned to the main tunnel and continued on, passing under Allen Hall and the University Union. Side-tunnels led off every few hundred feet, and I explored all of them, making notes on my map. Soon I arrived at the side passage to Cline Library. I walked quickly, sometimes crunching beetles under my boots, until I reached the library’s basement. Inside there were thousands of boxes and wooden crates full of old books. I saw a crate that had a heavy lock on it. I forced it open and noted the titles of some of the leather-bound books inside: Codex Arcanum; Necronomicon; Malleus Maleficarum; Cardenio; Gospel of Eve. Nothing interesting here, I thought to myself, and I turned to leave.
Then I noticed an old newspaper on the ground and picked it up. It was dated 1909, and on the front page was a photograph of two dudes, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, standing on the rim of Grand Canyon. I remembered their names from my psychology class. The story said Freud had been lecturing at Clark University, and he and Jung came out to Arizona to see the Canyon. I think Freud was the guy who was famous for saying “Women be crazy” or “Who knows what women want?” or something like that. I stuffed the paper in my pack and left, re- tracing my steps to the main tunnel through campus. I kept as rapid a pace as possible, until I arrived at a huge sub-basement under the Old Main building.
I had heard a rumor on campus that Old Main was originally built as an insane asylum, and students who lived in nearby Taylor Hall said sometimes they could hear the faint screams of children in the middle of the night. According to the history books I read, the building was constructed in 1893 as a reform school to house “vicious youth.” Later in the first decade of the twentieth century it served as a psychiatric hospital for orphaned children who were schizo- phrenic. My exploration confirmed this history.
... TO BE CONTINUED NEXT MONTH ...
| Cayce Thomason is known for his bold adventures on the überground of campus as well. thomason12345@gmail.com
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