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The Abracadabra Adventure Deaths
I’ve always loved old things.
Most guys in their mid thirties aren’t overly sentimental schmucks like me, but I’ve just always been this way. I cherish every vintage knick knack handed down to me from my grandparents, and I love spending my Sundays roaming the aisles of thrift stores and estate sales, musing over the tangible remains of people I’ll never get to know.
I guess that’s one of the reasons I got into urban exploring. You see, I love old things, but they also kinda creep me out. They’re odd in a way that can’t be fully described, a way that makes you always want to dig a little deeper. I hate the creepy porcelain dolls that line the shelves of my local goodwill, but I always have a hard time looking away from their watchful eyes. I know there’s a story hidden inside each of them, a young girl or an old woman who loved them, and I want to know every detail.
I loved the twilight zone when I was a kid. A lot of the time, I would watch through my fingertips and wake up in the middle of the night from some haunted doll or airplane yeti related nightmare, but I would always sit back down on the couch for more the very next night. I would always crave another dose of that sense of foreboding. I loved every strange episode, but no episode impacted me the way the first one did.
Where Is Everybody?
I thought about those 25 minutes of television for weeks. If you aren’t familiar, the episode basically follows a man wandering around an abandoned town until he loses his mind. There’s just something so off putting about the absence of human life in an environment that feels so human. It’s like a dead body, a carcass without its soul. To exist within that liminal space feels like trespassing atop bones.
As soon as I gained free will, a bike, and a shred of independence from my parents, I was chasing that haunting feeling as far as my legs would take me. I found myself in the depths of online forums, sharing cool spots and tips for exploring with a community of other young urban explorers. I visited abandoned houses, churches, malls, and tunnels with a variety of different misfits in my area who I met in online chat rooms. Imagine a parent’s worst nightmare of what their child might be getting into on the internet. That’s basically what I was doing, spending my afternoons after high school and eventually college breaking into unsafe buildings with unvetted creeps I met on the internet.
And I loved every second of it.
Every new location sent prickly, addictive shivers up my back that had me craving for the next strange thrill. I just couldn’t get enough of the stuff. It was like getting to walk into a moment frozen in time, no limitations to your exploration. Each spot was a reflection of a single moment, untainted by the human performance. It was the pure definition of anthropology, the study of human societies and their cultures.
This all came to head in my mid twenties when I visited Tornado Land.
I heard about the abandoned amusement park on a forum, saw it was in my area, and decided to check it out with a few of my buddies. Apparently, some guy thought it would be a good idea to open up a tornado themed amusement park in the middle of tornado alley. In a completely unshocking turn of events, the place got severely damaged by a tornado, the owner went bankrupt, and the park had to close down.
The moment I heard the story, I was hooked. The moment I set my eyes on Tornado Land, I was enraptured. The odd, tilted, hulking shapes of the park existed in shadow, revealed only under the cold, overexposed glare of our flashlights. The chained chairs of the Sky Screamer squeaked and rattled in the wind. The coasters were stopped still, permanently halted, unaware that their last ride would be their last. Stuffed toys hung limply over the stalls of carnival games, depicting the forgotten mascots and heroes of the day Tornado Land froze in time.
It was truly something to see, because what reflects an era’s zeitgeist, the defining spirit, obsessions, and morals of a generation, better than an amusement park? The place where you flock to turn your dreams into a reality.
That day sent me down a new rabbit hole: amusement parks. I found myself in a whole new batch of forums, learning the intricate lore of the haunted mansion, gawking at horrifying carnival ride deaths, and studying the advancements of animatronics.
That’s how I first heard about The Abracadabra Adventure.
The story of The Abracadabra Adventure is a mess of third-hand accounts, miscommunicated details, and internet conspiracy, but I’ll try to recount the basic story for you all, to the best of my ability. The Abracadabra Adventure was a classic dark ride that opened in 1976. It was the kind of ride that uses some sort of vehicle to send passengers into an indoor environment, through a series of scenes and tableaus set aglow in the otherwise pitch black expanse. In this instance, the ride used little, two-person cars on a track to ferry passengers through a warehouse transformed to showcase the wonders of magic.
The Abracadabra Adventure was a part of a very small, rinky dink amusement park in New Jersey, so the ride was pretty cheaply constructed overall. The thing about dark rides, though, is that lighting and movement can make even the most basic props seem to come to life.
The ride’s visual spectacles consisted of a variety of cheap magic props intended to evoke the feel of a behind the scenes look at a magician’s performance, but the main attractions of the ride were the four mannequins that were spread out throughout the journey. First, was an off brand Houdini replica, a still mannequin seated upright in his chair, a straight jacket chained around his torso and shackles around his feet. The second figure you would come across on the ride was a woman in a box who had seemed to be sawed in two, just like in the classic magic trick. The mannequin lay still on her back as the two boxes she was contained in separated and snapped back together on moving platforms. The third figure was a classic magician’s assistant, standing tall in her sequined dress, a large grin painted on her plastic face, her arms outstretched, as if to gesture to the main performer. Lastly, was the magician himself.
The magician was the only animatronic figure. He stood tall in his suit and bow tie, and his only movement was the jerking twitch of his right arm to reveal a rabbit from a hat.
The only photograph that I’ve found on the internet of The Abracadabra Adventure is a grainy, black and white picture from a local newspaper article covering the ride’s opening. The picture shows a mom and her son standing outside the warehouse where the ride was contained. A hand painted billboard adorned the top of the building, showcasing the name in big, blocky letters along with a painted magic wand and a white rabbit.
This is where things get a little murky. It was so long ago, and Internet forums are hardly sticklers for fact, but my understanding is that the ride operated without a hitch for almost ten years.
Until 1983.
I think this is a good time to mention that I’ll be changing all the names in this story, including my own. I know this forum has rules about doxxing, and it honestly just feels gross mentioning real people’s real names in my flawed, third person account of events. As for my own identity, I don’t want any of this tied back to me. I want to be as distant as possible. I want to pretend this all happened to someone else.
I wish I didn’t have to tell you any of this.
But I do.
In 1983, a little girl named Lilly was riding the Abracadabra Adventure with her mother. The mother recounted that her daughter was having a wonderful time at the park. The two of them had ridden the Farris wheel, done the bumper cars, and even gotten cotton candy before getting in line to board The Abracadabra Adventure. Once inside the dark ride, sat side by side in the small car, mother and daughter marveled at each scene spotlighted for them in the darkened warehouse.
According to her mother, Lilly was an especially big fan of the ride’s grand finale, the magician and his white rabbit.
When she spotted the animatronic and his fluffy white accessory, Lilly reached out as far as her little arms would stretch, trying to snatch the bunny from the magician’s stiff grasp. Horrified, Lilly’s mother held Lilly in her seat, reprimanding her for being so disobedient, trying to take something that wasn’t hers. The mother sighed and sat back in her seat, turning to admire the scenery on the opposite wall, but when she turned back to check on her daughter once again, Lilly was gone.
This is where the mother’s account stops. Her cart reached the end of the ride, and she was deposited back into the daylight of the real world, dazed and confused, her daughter no longer by her side.
The next witness account is from a young man riding in the cart behind Lilly and her mother. He recounts the track turning to reveal the final scene of the ride, the magician and his white rabbit, but the rider was distracted from the animatronic by a shadowed shape on the track in front of him. By the time his eyes adjusted from the fluorescent glow of the magician to focus on the darkened figure on the tracks, it was too late to stop what was about to happen. Little Lilly was sitting on the tracks, slumped over, crying into her hands, her pigtails obscuring her face. The witness said she didn’t even look up as his cart barreled toward her and crushed her small body beneath its wheels.
He jumped out of his cart as soon as he realized what was happening, but it was already too late for Lilly. Parts of her tiny body were completely crushed by the cart, while her left pigtail and left hand remained stuck in one of the cart’s churning, sparking wheels. The cart continued its journey forward, dragging the girl along as it went, the fingers of her hand mangling themselves with every rotation, the length of hair between the wheel and Lilly’s scalp growing shorter and shorter as her snagged body was pulled along by the wheel.
In a few short seconds, Lilly reached the end of The Abracadabra Adventure. The cart deposited her back into the real world, into the daylight where her mother and the rest of the onlookers could see the full extent of what the ride had done to her. A trail of blood had followed Lilly’s body, and the cart finally slowed to a stop as her mess of mangled fingers jammed the wheel and her pigtail finally pulled free from her head, along with a chunk of her scalp.
Lilly was rushed to a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead one day later, unable to recover from her extensive injuries.
What interests me most about the tragedy is the missing chunk of time between the mother’s account and the account of the second rider. Did Lilly mean to slip from her carriage in pursuit of the magician’s rabbit, or was it an accident as she reached out once again and fell? Did the ride not have any sort of safety bar, or was Lilly simply too small for it to fully contain her? It was the 80s after all, so I can’t imagine safety laws are as strict as they are now.
What happened after that? Did Lilly seek out the rabbit? Did she reach it? Did she tug on the magician’s silky sleeve with her sticky fingers, or did she get immediately lost in the dark warehouse that surrounded her? Why was she crying? Did she trip and fall on the track or was there something else she found in that ride that frightened her?
Me and the rest of the guys on the forums can debate these questions forever, but we’ll never get the true answers. The truth of what really happened inside The Abracadabra Adventure that day died along with little Lilly.
After what happened, the ride obviously closed down, and the tiny little park in Jersey closed down along with it. I don’t know if the owner went bankrupt from a lack of business after the tragedy, or if he closed down preemptively to run from the bad press. Either way, the park disappeared.
And that was that. End of story. Even now, knowing everything I know, The Abracadabra Adventure doesn’t feel entirely real. The story feels much more like an early-internet creepypasta or urban legend than reality. If not for the single photo of the ride I was able to find, I could almost be convinced that someone on the internet made the whole thing up.
It’s funny how time can turn fact to fiction like that. A real tragedy can become a ghost story. I have no doubt, in ten or twenty years time, the story of The Abracadabra Adventure will be lost forever, forgotten in the crowded annals of the internet. Little Lilly will be left behind as we move between platforms, as technology advances and she stays hauntingly still.
For now, though, the weird little corner of the internet where I spend most of my time is obsessed with this tragedy, not just because of what it is, but because of what happened after.
In 1987, a popular amusement park in Maryland opened up a new attraction, Mission to Jupiter.
This was a fully indoor rollercoaster, no doubt trying to copy the success of Disney’s Space Mountain. The park already had a few larger coasters, but the purpose of Mission to Jupiter was to be a smaller, family friendly coaster with a more theatrical theme. The warehouse where the coaster was contained was pitch black, but the ride utilized a variety of neon lights and props to give the rider the feeling of journeying through space.
The coaster had two corkscrews and two big drops, the second drop descending into a metal grate tunnel, decorated with light up stars that the rider would fly through. The space around the track was decorated with different lit-up tableus, containing a total of nine mannequins.
Two mannequins stood up side by side in cryogenic sleep pods, their painted-on eyes closed, the second mannequin standing slightly crooked. Two astronauts sat in the open cockpit of a spacecraft, one with his hands on the wheel, his copilot sitting with his arms crossed stiffly across his chest. A family of three aliens, a dad, a mom, and a little girl, could be seen on the blue foam surface of “Jupiter” as you exited the second corkscrew. They all smiled, the mother’s arms outstretched toward you as you whizzed past them, their plastic bodies clad in shiny, Jetsons-style outfits, the little girl’s arm raised to hold her father’s hand.
Finally, as you crested the summit of the final drop into the star spangled tunnel, a spotlight shone on two astronauts walking the surface of “Jupiter,” the second astronaut’s arm moving up and down to plant the American flag into the blue foam surface of the planet.
This ride was a huge hit when it opened, increasing attendance to the already popular park, and it ran without issue until 1999.
Now, I know you’re probably wondering what this unrelated ride has to do with The Abracadabra Adventure, but just trust me, soon you’ll see.
In 1999, a group of three friends got in line to ride Mission to Jupiter. Among the friends was a 14 year old named Gavin. The cars on the coaster only fit two riders, so Gavin was left to ride by himself in the car behind his two friends, the last car on the coaster.
The coaster took off without issue, the guests hooting and giggling as they sped past the mannequins in their cryogenic chambers and spun into their first corkscrew. They crested and descended the first drop, whizzing past the astronaut pilots and the family of aliens.
As they spun into the second corkscrew, Gavin’s car began to rattle and shake. Little did he know, one of the essential bolds keeping the wheels of his car in place was slowly shaking loose from its socket. As they spun upside down in the second corkscrew, the bolt came loose and fell to the cement floor below the twisting coaster.
Gavin’s car had officially become derailed from the track, but as the front of the coaster dragged him skyward for the second drop, he had no way of knowing the danger he was in. There was nothing holding Gavin’s car to the track except for the gravity of the climb, and as the final car crested the summit and began to fall, its momentum continued upward, flying off of the track below it.
The front of the coaster continued downward, shooting its passengers through the metal grate tunnel of stars with unrepresentative shouts of glee. Gavin had no choice but to watch helplessly, bound to his seat, as his car flew above the rest, too high to fit into the tunnel.
Gavin’s head hit the sharp, metal entrance to the tunnel and he was decapitated instantly.
His friends had no idea what had happened until the coaster docked and they looked behind them to see what was left of Gavin’s body bathed in blood.
Obviously, a lawsuit and investigation followed, and the incident was blamed on a lack of proper ride maintenance.
Another child died, and my corner of the internet got another horror story to obsess over.
Still, you might be wondering, how are these two tragedies connected.
But maybe I haven’t given you enough credit. Maybe you’ve managed to figure it out already.
Do you see it? Have you spotted the familiar faces?
Do you remember how the second body from the cryo chambers stood ever so slightly crooked, as if her torso and legs had been lazily glued together beneath her space suit? Or did you catch how the co pilot in the spaceship sat oddly stiff, as if his arms were used to being constricted beneath a straight jacket? Did the friendly alien mother’s beckoning arms remind you of the magician’s assistant’s signature flourish? Did you pause when you read that the astronaut was an animatronic with a twitching, jerking arm?
The Houdini, the girl in the box, the magician’s assistant, and the magician himself were all there, hidden in plain sight, redressed and repainted but still recognizable to those who knew what to look for.
This is all speculation, of course, but you have to admit, it can’t just be a coincidence. It makes sense, too. The owner of Abracadabra Adventure probably went bankrupt. He closed his park quickly and would have been desperate for cash. Why wouldn’t he sell the mannequins to the first bidder he could find? And why wouldn’t a larger park take advantage of the tragedy to score a few cheap figures to repurpose for their new ride?
The Disney parks actually do this kind of thing all the time, repurposing old animatronics from old or shut down rides for newer, more important projects. Just a few years ago, when engineers needed a pair of droids for a new Star Wars ride, they ventured into America Sings and stripped two of the singing bald eagles of their feathers, extracting their exposed endoskeletons and moving them across the park into their new home. Only true diehard fans seemed to remember the old birds or notice how the skeletal droids seemed to mimic their movements.
The tragedy at Mission to Jupiter was a bit more publicized and more recent than the Abracadabra Adventure Death, so pictures of the mannequins exist online if you know where to look. The pictures focus on the rusted bold laying on the cement floor beneath the corkscrew and the blood stain below the tunnel of stars, but the mannequins are there too, smiling in the background of the shots.
I’ve seen them all in their space suits, holding still in their signature poses. I imagine they looked quite different in the pitch black void, illuminated only by neon spotlights as you whizzed past. They look a little off putting in the photos I’ve seen. The warehouse was lit up and you can see the coaster’s twists and turns in all their glory. They look uncanny in the fluorescent light, just like the broken coaster does, like something you aren’t meant to see in the light of day. They’re all just a little bit off. Their costumes are ill fitting and their paint jobs are sloppy, like whatever was underneath was hastily covered up.
Like I said, this is all speculation. We’ll never be able to prove that the mannequins are the same, but the forums I go on like to run with this story like it’s the gospel, and I can’t exactly blame them. I’m not sure who originally made the connection between the two rides. I’m sure their post is forever lost in the internet archives. But, whoever they were, they managed to convince everyone of their little theory, even me.
By the time I joined my communities of urban explorers and theme park fanatics, the forums were already running wild with these theories, dissecting every photo and news article they could find, looking for connections between the mannequins and the tragedies. Everyone was convinced the figures had to be the same. That left only one question. Where were they now?
Mission to Jupiter obviously shut down after the derailment, but the park itself managed to stay open. They obviously spent a lot of time and money trying to shove the tragedy under the rug, which is why news around it is somewhat hard to find. The old Mission to Jupiter warehouse was actually turned into a 60s themed restaurant where waiters and waitresses on roller skates dance and sing, wearing blue gingham and overly wide smiles while delivering trays of mushy fries. I think even the park developers had become a bit superstitious, not wanting to risk constructing another ride atop the bones of the fallen coaster.
So, where did the mannequins go? Years later, once the conspiracies made their rounds online, fanatics scoured the park in search of them but came up empty handed. None of the park’s other figurines seemed to match the four distinct characters.
It turned into a sick sort of scavenger hunt. Weirdos from all around the world would post pictures of mannequins from local amusement parks or fairs, claiming they had finally found a member of what the internet had deemed “The Abracadabra Quartet.” All of these were ultimately debunked, of course. The poses were off or the mannequin wasn’t the right size. Some people guessed they were just in some landfill somewhere, and other theorists were convinced the quartet had to be out there somewhere, resold to a new home.
It was 2012 when they were finally found.
There was this weird little themed motel in Georgia. It was the kind of place where each room had its own campy gimmick. It was named The Love Shack, and, of course, the overall theme of the place was romance. Some rooms had heart shaped jacuzzis, some had giant clam shaped beds, they were all decorated with massive gaudy mirrors, and the grand suite was covered from floor to ceiling in horribly dusty red velvet. Oddest of all, The Love Shack had its own attraction, a dinky little water ride back behind the rooms.
It was called The Tunnel of Love. It was the classic, hokey dark ride that you’d expect it to be. Couples would clamber into a little canoe and be pulled through the water by a conveyor belt, entering into the enclosed building through a heart shaped tunnel. The ride was dimly lit with sappy music blaring through the speakers, and onlookers could choose between admiring the cheesy tableus or making out with whoever they shared their canoe with.
If you chose to look away from your date and admire the scenery, you’d see a total of six mannequins. First, there was a little girl, one of her arms raised to hold a bright red, heart shaped balloon. Then, you’d see a young couple, the girl standing up stiffly with her eyes closed, the boy leaning in to give her a kiss, a bouquet held in one of his plastic hands. Next, was a beautiful, female Cupid. Her outstretched arms held a bow, ready to shoot an unsuspecting man sitting in a chair with a love arrow.
The last spectacle was a giant teddy bear juggling a trio of pink balls. Two were held aloft in the air by string while the third was in the process of being tossed by his jerking right paw.
I assume, by now, you’re able to spot the Abracadabra Quartet amongst this motley crew. Well, the internet was able to spot them as well.
As soon as someone posted pictures from the ride onto the forums, the post blew up and the hotel became a hot spot for weird internet fanatics. It was a dream come true for people to finally be able to see The Quartet up close and personal. The hotel owner even had to board the ride up for a while due to creeps trying to sneak onto the ride at night to get an even closer look at the figures.
Amidst all this hype, people traveling across the country to ride the tunnel of love, another interesting discovery was made that threw the online theories into a tailspin.
The little girl mannequin, the one with her arm raised to hold the red balloon, wasn’t new. She didn’t originate in the Tunnel of Love. She came from Mission to Jupiter. She was the little girl from the alien family, the one with her arm raised to hold her father’s hand. It seemed she had been sold and traveled with The Quartet to their new home.
The original clan of mannequins was growing.
Nobody knew what this meant, but the discovery felt significant nonetheless.
Eventually the hype around these discoveries in our weird little corner of the internet died down. The hotel owner opened the ride back up, and Tunnel of Love was frequented only by the occasional couple or the rare internet weirdo. I would still see the occasional picture posted in the forums, an upturned shot of one of the figures, lit in a foggy, red glow, their faces overly shadowed and blurred with movement as the rider passed by and the figure remained stuck in their pose.
It was quiet. It felt like the mystery had been solved.
For some reason, it made me think of Tornado Land. I wondered if this is what it felt like the day before it closed forever.
The calm before the storm.
A heavy question still lingered on all of our tongues, afraid to be asked.
Would the curse continue? And if so, when?
We got our answer in 2019.
The Tunnel Of Love was left running by the hotel owner 24/7 so guests of the hotel could hop on and enjoy the ride whenever they felt like it. The canoes were left to follow their conveyor belt in an endless circle, most of the time with nobody present to monitor them.
One night, Jake and Rebecca, a young couple on their honeymoon, decided to end their night with a quick trip around The Tunnel of Love. They hopped in one of the canoes and sat side by side fastening their seatbelts as they entered the tunnel through the heart shaped doorway.
We’ll never know what happened inside the tunnel that night. There was no ride operator, no other guests around, and the teenager working the front desk was taking a nap. But, based on the evidence, here’s what I think happened.
The song that was reportedly always played within the tunnel was “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn.
I’m sure you’ve heard it before.
We’ll meet again. Don’t know where. Don’t know when. But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.
I’m sure the couple sat side by side and happily listened to the familiar oldie as they watched the scenes around then, probably completely unaware of the history behind the figures they passed.
The issue arose when they reached the end of the ride. There was some sort of problem with the conveyor belt track that kept the canoes moving in an endless circle, some glitch in the connection between the first track of conveyor belts and the last track. Instead of spitting the canoes back out to the front of the ride for new passengers, the boats had become stuck, forming a backup at the end of the ride. A pile of stalled boats lay between the couple and the end of the ride, blocking the path, but the conveyor belt beneath them continued to pull, forcing them forward into the impasse.
As soon as their boat hit the one stuck in front of it, it’s tip began to rise into the air, the conveyor belt continuing to push it forward even as it had nowhere to go. The canoe flipped, forcing Jake and Rebecca into the tepid, murky water.
Jake unfastened his seatbelt and swam to the surface, only to find that his wife hadn’t followed him. Braving the hazy water once again, he found Rebecca trapped in the canoe, her seatbelt somehow stuck. I don’t know how long they struggled to unbuckle that jammed belt, but I hope it wasn’t long. I hope they didn’t suffer.
We don’t know who died first. We don’t know if Jake watched his wife die, unable to save her, or if Rebecca watched her husband die, sacrificing himself in a doomed attempt to rescue her.
They couple wasn’t found until around noon the next day when someone finally noticed canoes were no longer exiting from the other side of the tunnel. Jake was floating face down in the water next to the canoe, and Rebecca was still stuck upside down in her seat.
The hotel shut down almost immediately, and the owner tried his best to bury the story, but he couldn’t stop it from finding its way onto my side of the internet.
The forums erupted with the news. And a fresh wave of weirdos flocked to the hotel to get a peak at The Tunnel of Love. The hotel itself was boarded up, of course. And the few explorers that made it inside found that the tunnel itself was boarded up as well, and a moat of murky water stood between them and the entrance. The Abracadabra Quartet hunters weren’t easily dissuaded, however, and they quickly pivoted, resuming their search for the mannequins’ new home.
I was at the center of it all, sharing theories and thoughts with the rest of the small community. From behind my computer screen, it was so easy to forget that Jake and Rebecca were real people who had died. They just felt like characters in our weird internet horror story. I don’t think any of us held reverence as we typed out sick speculations of their final thoughts. I know I certainly didn’t.
I was in a discord group with a few acquaintances I had explored an abandoned factory with a few months ago, and we would chat every couple weeks about the latest accident and where we thought the mannequins might have ended up.
Paul: They're definitely just in a landfill somewhere. Those things are probably so gross and old by now. I can’t imagine anyone would actually buy them.
Kevin: No way, man. I bet a bunch of guys from our forum reached out to the owner and made offers. He probably sold them all to a collector.
Me: Ugh. I hope not. That would mean we never get to see them again.
Julie: Are you sure they’re not still inside the tunnel? I haven’t seen any posts from anyone who’s actually managed to get inside to check.
Paul: No way. We’d know by now if they were still there.
Kevin: My second guess is that they ended up at the six flags that’s nearby. I’m gonna drive down there this weekend and check it out if anyone wants to join. I’m gonna sneak in after hours and check out all the buildings where they might store extra decor and parts.
I decided to message Julie separately. I had only met Julie once, when we explored that factory, but she had left a lasting impression. She was tiny. She couldn’t have been more than 5 feet tall, and she looked more like she belonged on the sidelines of a college football game with a pair of pom poms than in the middle of an abandoned factory with a gang of greasy guys she had met on the internet.
Julie was new to exploring, and I got the feeling that the other guys in the group didn’t respect her very much. Yet, while Paul and Kevin were busy taking selfies and jumping at every creak and bump we heard, Julie was prying open drawers with her crowbar and engrossing herself in old factory documents. She seemed to really care about the history of what she was exploring, and she did it without an ounce of fear.
Me: Hey. Do you really think The Quartet are still in the tunnel?
Julie: why wouldn’t they be? It’s only been a couple of months since the accident. And it’s like Paul said, who would want to buy those things anyway?
Me: And you’re sure nobody’s managed to get inside yet?
Julie: Not from what I’ve seen.
Me: Would you want to go check it out?
Julie: Seriously?
Me: Why not? Someone’s gonna get in there eventually. Wouldn’t you like to be the first?
Julie: Yeah. I would.
So, that’s what we did. I picked up Julie that weekend. She pranced out of her house, her golden curls bouncing around her head. She plopped herself down in my passenger seat with a huge grin on her face, and the two of us drove all the way to The Love Shack.
I was so excited. I had a beautiful girl next to me and a terrifying mystery in front of me.
I was so naive and stupid.
I wish to God I had turned that car around. I wish we had gotten into a wreck and never made it to that God forsaken place. I wish what happened next was just some sick nightmare and not a memory I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.
I’m nearing the character limit on here, so I’ll have to finish my story another time. It’s been hard reliving all of this, but it’s important.
It’s time that I finally tell the truth. There’s so much more I need to confess, and so much more I need to warn you about.
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I’ve always loved old things.
Most guys in their mid thirties aren’t overly sentimental schmucks like me, but I’ve just always been this way. I cherish every vintage knick knack handed down to me from my grandparents, and I love spending my Sundays roaming the aisles of thrift stores and estate sales, musing over the tangible remains of people I’ll never get to know.
I guess that’s one of the reasons I got into urban exploring. You see, I love old things, but they also kinda creep me out. They’re odd in a way that can’t be fully described, a way that makes you always want to dig a little deeper. I hate the creepy porcelain dolls that line the shelves of my local goodwill, but I always have a hard time looking away from their watchful eyes. I know there’s a story hidden inside each of them, a young girl or an old woman who loved them, and I want to know every detail.
I loved the twilight zone when I was a kid. A lot of the time, I would watch through my fingertips and wake up in the middle of the night from some haunted doll or airplane yeti related nightmare, but I would always sit back down on the couch for more the very next night. I would always crave another dose of that sense of foreboding. I loved every strange episode, but no episode impacted me the way the first one did.
Where Is Everybody?
I thought about those 25 minutes of television for weeks. If you aren’t familiar, the episode basically follows a man wandering around an abandoned town until he loses his mind. There’s just something so off putting about the absence of human life in an environment that feels so human. It’s like a dead body, a carcass without its soul. To exist within that liminal space feels like trespassing atop bones.
As soon as I gained free will, a bike, and a shred of independence from my parents, I was chasing that haunting feeling as far as my legs would take me. I found myself in the depths of online forums, sharing cool spots and tips for exploring with a community of other young urban explorers. I visited abandoned houses, churches, malls, and tunnels with a variety of different misfits in my area who I met in online chat rooms. Imagine a parent’s worst nightmare of what their child might be getting into on the internet. That’s basically what I was doing, spending my afternoons after high school and eventually college breaking into unsafe buildings with unvetted creeps I met on the internet.
And I loved every second of it.
Every new location sent prickly, addictive shivers up my back that had me craving for the next strange thrill. I just couldn’t get enough of the stuff. It was like getting to walk into a moment frozen in time, no limitations to your exploration. Each spot was a reflection of a single moment, untainted by the human performance. It was the pure definition of anthropology, the study of human societies and their cultures.
This all came to head in my mid twenties when I visited Tornado Land.
I heard about the abandoned amusement park on a forum, saw it was in my area, and decided to check it out with a few of my buddies. Apparently, some guy thought it would be a good idea to open up a tornado themed amusement park in the middle of tornado alley. In a completely unshocking turn of events, the place got severely damaged by a tornado, the owner went bankrupt, and the park had to close down.
The moment I heard the story, I was hooked. The moment I set my eyes on Tornado Land, I was enraptured. The odd, tilted, hulking shapes of the park existed in shadow, revealed only under the cold, overexposed glare of our flashlights. The chained chairs of the Sky Screamer squeaked and rattled in the wind. The coasters were stopped still, permanently halted, unaware that their last ride would be their last. Stuffed toys hung limply over the stalls of carnival games, depicting the forgotten mascots and heroes of the day Tornado Land froze in time.
It was truly something to see, because what reflects an era’s zeitgeist, the defining spirit, obsessions, and morals of a generation, better than an amusement park? The place where you flock to turn your dreams into a reality.
That day sent me down a new rabbit hole: amusement parks. I found myself in a whole new batch of forums, learning the intricate lore of the haunted mansion, gawking at horrifying carnival ride deaths, and studying the advancements of animatronics.
That’s how I first heard about The Abracadabra Adventure.
The story of The Abracadabra Adventure is a mess of third-hand accounts, miscommunicated details, and internet conspiracy, but I’ll try to recount the basic story for you all, to the best of my ability. The Abracadabra Adventure was a classic dark ride that opened in 1976. It was the kind of ride that uses some sort of vehicle to send passengers into an indoor environment, through a series of scenes and tableaus set aglow in the otherwise pitch black expanse. In this instance, the ride used little, two-person cars on a track to ferry passengers through a warehouse transformed to showcase the wonders of magic.
The Abracadabra Adventure was a part of a very small, rinky dink amusement park in New Jersey, so the ride was pretty cheaply constructed overall. The thing about dark rides, though, is that lighting and movement can make even the most basic props seem to come to life.
The ride’s visual spectacles consisted of a variety of cheap magic props intended to evoke the feel of a behind the scenes look at a magician’s performance, but the main attractions of the ride were the four mannequins that were spread out throughout the journey. First, was an off brand Houdini replica, a still mannequin seated upright in his chair, a straight jacket chained around his torso and shackles around his feet. The second figure you would come across on the ride was a woman in a box who had seemed to be sawed in two, just like in the classic magic trick. The mannequin lay still on her back as the two boxes she was contained in separated and snapped back together on moving platforms. The third figure was a classic magician’s assistant, standing tall in her sequined dress, a large grin painted on her plastic face, her arms outstretched, as if to gesture to the main performer. Lastly, was the magician himself.
The magician was the only animatronic figure. He stood tall in his suit and bow tie, and his only movement was the jerking twitch of his right arm to reveal a rabbit from a hat.
The only photograph that I’ve found on the internet of The Abracadabra Adventure is a grainy, black and white picture from a local newspaper article covering the ride’s opening. The picture shows a mom and her son standing outside the warehouse where the ride was contained. A hand painted billboard adorned the top of the building, showcasing the name in big, blocky letters along with a painted magic wand and a white rabbit.
This is where things get a little murky. It was so long ago, and Internet forums are hardly sticklers for fact, but my understanding is that the ride operated without a hitch for almost ten years.
Until 1983.
I think this is a good time to mention that I’ll be changing all the names in this story, including my own. I know this forum has rules about doxxing, and it honestly just feels gross mentioning real people’s real names in my flawed, third person account of events. As for my own identity, I don’t want any of this tied back to me. I want to be as distant as possible. I want to pretend this all happened to someone else.
I wish I didn’t have to tell you any of this.
But I do.
In 1983, a little girl named Lilly was riding the Abracadabra Adventure with her mother. The mother recounted that her daughter was having a wonderful time at the park. The two of them had ridden the Farris wheel, done the bumper cars, and even gotten cotton candy before getting in line to board The Abracadabra Adventure. Once inside the dark ride, sat side by side in the small car, mother and daughter marveled at each scene spotlighted for them in the darkened warehouse.
According to her mother, Lilly was an especially big fan of the ride’s grand finale, the magician and his white rabbit.
When she spotted the animatronic and his fluffy white accessory, Lilly reached out as far as her little arms would stretch, trying to snatch the bunny from the magician’s stiff grasp. Horrified, Lilly’s mother held Lilly in her seat, reprimanding her for being so disobedient, trying to take something that wasn’t hers. The mother sighed and sat back in her seat, turning to admire the scenery on the opposite wall, but when she turned back to check on her daughter once again, Lilly was gone.
This is where the mother’s account stops. Her cart reached the end of the ride, and she was deposited back into the daylight of the real world, dazed and confused, her daughter no longer by her side.
The next witness account is from a young man riding in the cart behind Lilly and her mother. He recounts the track turning to reveal the final scene of the ride, the magician and his white rabbit, but the rider was distracted from the animatronic by a shadowed shape on the track in front of him. By the time his eyes adjusted from the fluorescent glow of the magician to focus on the darkened figure on the tracks, it was too late to stop what was about to happen. Little Lilly was sitting on the tracks, slumped over, crying into her hands, her pigtails obscuring her face. The witness said she didn’t even look up as his cart barreled toward her and crushed her small body beneath its wheels.
He jumped out of his cart as soon as he realized what was happening, but it was already too late for Lilly. Parts of her tiny body were completely crushed by the cart, while her left pigtail and left hand remained stuck in one of the cart’s churning, sparking wheels. The cart continued its journey forward, dragging the girl along as it went, the fingers of her hand mangling themselves with every rotation, the length of hair between the wheel and Lilly’s scalp growing shorter and shorter as her snagged body was pulled along by the wheel.
In a few short seconds, Lilly reached the end of The Abracadabra Adventure. The cart deposited her back into the real world, into the daylight where her mother and the rest of the onlookers could see the full extent of what the ride had done to her. A trail of blood had followed Lilly’s body, and the cart finally slowed to a stop as her mess of mangled fingers jammed the wheel and her pigtail finally pulled free from her head, along with a chunk of her scalp.
Lilly was rushed to a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead one day later, unable to recover from her extensive injuries.
What interests me most about the tragedy is the missing chunk of time between the mother’s account and the account of the second rider. Did Lilly mean to slip from her carriage in pursuit of the magician’s rabbit, or was it an accident as she reached out once again and fell? Did the ride not have any sort of safety bar, or was Lilly simply too small for it to fully contain her? It was the 80s after all, so I can’t imagine safety laws are as strict as they are now.
What happened after that? Did Lilly seek out the rabbit? Did she reach it? Did she tug on the magician’s silky sleeve with her sticky fingers, or did she get immediately lost in the dark warehouse that surrounded her? Why was she crying? Did she trip and fall on the track or was there something else she found in that ride that frightened her?
Me and the rest of the guys on the forums can debate these questions forever, but we’ll never get the true answers. The truth of what really happened inside The Abracadabra Adventure that day died along with little Lilly.
After what happened, the ride obviously closed down, and the tiny little park in Jersey closed down along with it. I don’t know if the owner went bankrupt from a lack of business after the tragedy, or if he closed down preemptively to run from the bad press. Either way, the park disappeared.
And that was that. End of story. Even now, knowing everything I know, The Abracadabra Adventure doesn’t feel entirely real. The story feels much more like an early-internet creepypasta or urban legend than reality. If not for the single photo of the ride I was able to find, I could almost be convinced that someone on the internet made the whole thing up.
It’s funny how time can turn fact to fiction like that. A real tragedy can become a ghost story. I have no doubt, in ten or twenty years time, the story of The Abracadabra Adventure will be lost forever, forgotten in the crowded annals of the internet. Little Lilly will be left behind as we move between platforms, as technology advances and she stays hauntingly still.
For now, though, the weird little corner of the internet where I spend most of my time is obsessed with this tragedy, not just because of what it is, but because of what happened after.
In 1987, a popular amusement park in Maryland opened up a new attraction, Mission to Jupiter.
This was a fully indoor rollercoaster, no doubt trying to copy the success of Disney’s Space Mountain. The park already had a few larger coasters, but the purpose of Mission to Jupiter was to be a smaller, family friendly coaster with a more theatrical theme. The warehouse where the coaster was contained was pitch black, but the ride utilized a variety of neon lights and props to give the rider the feeling of journeying through space.
The coaster had two corkscrews and two big drops, the second drop descending into a metal grate tunnel, decorated with light up stars that the rider would fly through. The space around the track was decorated with different lit-up tableus, containing a total of nine mannequins.
Two mannequins stood up side by side in cryogenic sleep pods, their painted-on eyes closed, the second mannequin standing slightly crooked. Two astronauts sat in the open cockpit of a spacecraft, one with his hands on the wheel, his copilot sitting with his arms crossed stiffly across his chest. A family of three aliens, a dad, a mom, and a little girl, could be seen on the blue foam surface of “Jupiter” as you exited the second corkscrew. They all smiled, the mother’s arms outstretched toward you as you whizzed past them, their plastic bodies clad in shiny, Jetsons-style outfits, the little girl’s arm raised to hold her father’s hand.
Finally, as you crested the summit of the final drop into the star spangled tunnel, a spotlight shone on two astronauts walking the surface of “Jupiter,” the second astronaut’s arm moving up and down to plant the American flag into the blue foam surface of the planet.
This ride was a huge hit when it opened, increasing attendance to the already popular park, and it ran without issue until 1999.
Now, I know you’re probably wondering what this unrelated ride has to do with The Abracadabra Adventure, but just trust me, soon you’ll see.
In 1999, a group of three friends got in line to ride Mission to Jupiter. Among the friends was a 14 year old named Gavin. The cars on the coaster only fit two riders, so Gavin was left to ride by himself in the car behind his two friends, the last car on the coaster.
The coaster took off without issue, the guests hooting and giggling as they sped past the mannequins in their cryogenic chambers and spun into their first corkscrew. They crested and descended the first drop, whizzing past the astronaut pilots and the family of aliens.
As they spun into the second corkscrew, Gavin’s car began to rattle and shake. Little did he know, one of the essential bolds keeping the wheels of his car in place was slowly shaking loose from its socket. As they spun upside down in the second corkscrew, the bolt came loose and fell to the cement floor below the twisting coaster.
Gavin’s car had officially become derailed from the track, but as the front of the coaster dragged him skyward for the second drop, he had no way of knowing the danger he was in. There was nothing holding Gavin’s car to the track except for the gravity of the climb, and as the final car crested the summit and began to fall, its momentum continued upward, flying off of the track below it.
The front of the coaster continued downward, shooting its passengers through the metal grate tunnel of stars with unrepresentative shouts of glee. Gavin had no choice but to watch helplessly, bound to his seat, as his car flew above the rest, too high to fit into the tunnel.
Gavin’s head hit the sharp, metal entrance to the tunnel and he was decapitated instantly.
His friends had no idea what had happened until the coaster docked and they looked behind them to see what was left of Gavin’s body bathed in blood.
Obviously, a lawsuit and investigation followed, and the incident was blamed on a lack of proper ride maintenance.
Another child died, and my corner of the internet got another horror story to obsess over.
Still, you might be wondering, how are these two tragedies connected.
But maybe I haven’t given you enough credit. Maybe you’ve managed to figure it out already.
Do you see it? Have you spotted the familiar faces?
Do you remember how the second body from the cryo chambers stood ever so slightly crooked, as if her torso and legs had been lazily glued together beneath her space suit? Or did you catch how the co pilot in the spaceship sat oddly stiff, as if his arms were used to being constricted beneath a straight jacket? Did the friendly alien mother’s beckoning arms remind you of the magician’s assistant’s signature flourish? Did you pause when you read that the astronaut was an animatronic with a twitching, jerking arm?
The Houdini, the girl in the box, the magician’s assistant, and the magician himself were all there, hidden in plain sight, redressed and repainted but still recognizable to those who knew what to look for.
This is all speculation, of course, but you have to admit, it can’t just be a coincidence. It makes sense, too. The owner of Abracadabra Adventure probably went bankrupt. He closed his park quickly and would have been desperate for cash. Why wouldn’t he sell the mannequins to the first bidder he could find? And why wouldn’t a larger park take advantage of the tragedy to score a few cheap figures to repurpose for their new ride?
The Disney parks actually do this kind of thing all the time, repurposing old animatronics from old or shut down rides for newer, more important projects. Just a few years ago, when engineers needed a pair of droids for a new Star Wars ride, they ventured into America Sings and stripped two of the singing bald eagles of their feathers, extracting their exposed endoskeletons and moving them across the park into their new home. Only true diehard fans seemed to remember the old birds or notice how the skeletal droids seemed to mimic their movements.
The tragedy at Mission to Jupiter was a bit more publicized and more recent than the Abracadabra Adventure Death, so pictures of the mannequins exist online if you know where to look. The pictures focus on the rusted bold laying on the cement floor beneath the corkscrew and the blood stain below the tunnel of stars, but the mannequins are there too, smiling in the background of the shots.
I’ve seen them all in their space suits, holding still in their signature poses. I imagine they looked quite different in the pitch black void, illuminated only by neon spotlights as you whizzed past. They look a little off putting in the photos I’ve seen. The warehouse was lit up and you can see the coaster’s twists and turns in all their glory. They look uncanny in the fluorescent light, just like the broken coaster does, like something you aren’t meant to see in the light of day. They’re all just a little bit off. Their costumes are ill fitting and their paint jobs are sloppy, like whatever was underneath was hastily covered up.
Like I said, this is all speculation. We’ll never be able to prove that the mannequins are the same, but the forums I go on like to run with this story like it’s the gospel, and I can’t exactly blame them. I’m not sure who originally made the connection between the two rides. I’m sure their post is forever lost in the internet archives. But, whoever they were, they managed to convince everyone of their little theory, even me.
By the time I joined my communities of urban explorers and theme park fanatics, the forums were already running wild with these theories, dissecting every photo and news article they could find, looking for connections between the mannequins and the tragedies. Everyone was convinced the figures had to be the same. That left only one question. Where were they now?
Mission to Jupiter obviously shut down after the derailment, but the park itself managed to stay open. They obviously spent a lot of time and money trying to shove the tragedy under the rug, which is why news around it is somewhat hard to find. The old Mission to Jupiter warehouse was actually turned into a 60s themed restaurant where waiters and waitresses on roller skates dance and sing, wearing blue gingham and overly wide smiles while delivering trays of mushy fries. I think even the park developers had become a bit superstitious, not wanting to risk constructing another ride atop the bones of the fallen coaster.
So, where did the mannequins go? Years later, once the conspiracies made their rounds online, fanatics scoured the park in search of them but came up empty handed. None of the park’s other figurines seemed to match the four distinct characters.
It turned into a sick sort of scavenger hunt. Weirdos from all around the world would post pictures of mannequins from local amusement parks or fairs, claiming they had finally found a member of what the internet had deemed “The Abracadabra Quartet.” All of these were ultimately debunked, of course. The poses were off or the mannequin wasn’t the right size. Some people guessed they were just in some landfill somewhere, and other theorists were convinced the quartet had to be out there somewhere, resold to a new home.
It was 2012 when they were finally found.
There was this weird little themed motel in Georgia. It was the kind of place where each room had its own campy gimmick. It was named The Love Shack, and, of course, the overall theme of the place was romance. Some rooms had heart shaped jacuzzis, some had giant clam shaped beds, they were all decorated with massive gaudy mirrors, and the grand suite was covered from floor to ceiling in horribly dusty red velvet. Oddest of all, The Love Shack had its own attraction, a dinky little water ride back behind the rooms.
It was called The Tunnel of Love. It was the classic, hokey dark ride that you’d expect it to be. Couples would clamber into a little canoe and be pulled through the water by a conveyor belt, entering into the enclosed building through a heart shaped tunnel. The ride was dimly lit with sappy music blaring through the speakers, and onlookers could choose between admiring the cheesy tableus or making out with whoever they shared their canoe with.
If you chose to look away from your date and admire the scenery, you’d see a total of six mannequins. First, there was a little girl, one of her arms raised to hold a bright red, heart shaped balloon. Then, you’d see a young couple, the girl standing up stiffly with her eyes closed, the boy leaning in to give her a kiss, a bouquet held in one of his plastic hands. Next, was a beautiful, female Cupid. Her outstretched arms held a bow, ready to shoot an unsuspecting man sitting in a chair with a love arrow.
The last spectacle was a giant teddy bear juggling a trio of pink balls. Two were held aloft in the air by string while the third was in the process of being tossed by his jerking right paw.
I assume, by now, you’re able to spot the Abracadabra Quartet amongst this motley crew. Well, the internet was able to spot them as well.
As soon as someone posted pictures from the ride onto the forums, the post blew up and the hotel became a hot spot for weird internet fanatics. It was a dream come true for people to finally be able to see The Quartet up close and personal. The hotel owner even had to board the ride up for a while due to creeps trying to sneak onto the ride at night to get an even closer look at the figures.
Amidst all this hype, people traveling across the country to ride the tunnel of love, another interesting discovery was made that threw the online theories into a tailspin.
The little girl mannequin, the one with her arm raised to hold the red balloon, wasn’t new. She didn’t originate in the Tunnel of Love. She came from Mission to Jupiter. She was the little girl from the alien family, the one with her arm raised to hold her father’s hand. It seemed she had been sold and traveled with The Quartet to their new home.
The original clan of mannequins was growing.
Nobody knew what this meant, but the discovery felt significant nonetheless.
Eventually the hype around these discoveries in our weird little corner of the internet died down. The hotel owner opened the ride back up, and Tunnel of Love was frequented only by the occasional couple or the rare internet weirdo. I would still see the occasional picture posted in the forums, an upturned shot of one of the figures, lit in a foggy, red glow, their faces overly shadowed and blurred with movement as the rider passed by and the figure remained stuck in their pose.
It was quiet. It felt like the mystery had been solved.
For some reason, it made me think of Tornado Land. I wondered if this is what it felt like the day before it closed forever.
The calm before the storm.
A heavy question still lingered on all of our tongues, afraid to be asked.
Would the curse continue? And if so, when?
We got our answer in 2019.
The Tunnel Of Love was left running by the hotel owner 24/7 so guests of the hotel could hop on and enjoy the ride whenever they felt like it. The canoes were left to follow their conveyor belt in an endless circle, most of the time with nobody present to monitor them.
One night, Jake and Rebecca, a young couple on their honeymoon, decided to end their night with a quick trip around The Tunnel of Love. They hopped in one of the canoes and sat side by side fastening their seatbelts as they entered the tunnel through the heart shaped doorway.
We’ll never know what happened inside the tunnel that night. There was no ride operator, no other guests around, and the teenager working the front desk was taking a nap. But, based on the evidence, here’s what I think happened.
The song that was reportedly always played within the tunnel was “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn.
I’m sure you’ve heard it before.
We’ll meet again. Don’t know where. Don’t know when. But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.
I’m sure the couple sat side by side and happily listened to the familiar oldie as they watched the scenes around then, probably completely unaware of the history behind the figures they passed.
The issue arose when they reached the end of the ride. There was some sort of problem with the conveyor belt track that kept the canoes moving in an endless circle, some glitch in the connection between the first track of conveyor belts and the last track. Instead of spitting the canoes back out to the front of the ride for new passengers, the boats had become stuck, forming a backup at the end of the ride. A pile of stalled boats lay between the couple and the end of the ride, blocking the path, but the conveyor belt beneath them continued to pull, forcing them forward into the impasse.
As soon as their boat hit the one stuck in front of it, it’s tip began to rise into the air, the conveyor belt continuing to push it forward even as it had nowhere to go. The canoe flipped, forcing Jake and Rebecca into the tepid, murky water.
Jake unfastened his seatbelt and swam to the surface, only to find that his wife hadn’t followed him. Braving the hazy water once again, he found Rebecca trapped in the canoe, her seatbelt somehow stuck. I don’t know how long they struggled to unbuckle that jammed belt, but I hope it wasn’t long. I hope they didn’t suffer.
We don’t know who died first. We don’t know if Jake watched his wife die, unable to save her, or if Rebecca watched her husband die, sacrificing himself in a doomed attempt to rescue her.
They couple wasn’t found until around noon the next day when someone finally noticed canoes were no longer exiting from the other side of the tunnel. Jake was floating face down in the water next to the canoe, and Rebecca was still stuck upside down in her seat.
The hotel shut down almost immediately, and the owner tried his best to bury the story, but he couldn’t stop it from finding its way onto my side of the internet.
The forums erupted with the news. And a fresh wave of weirdos flocked to the hotel to get a peak at The Tunnel of Love. The hotel itself was boarded up, of course. And the few explorers that made it inside found that the tunnel itself was boarded up as well, and a moat of murky water stood between them and the entrance. The Abracadabra Quartet hunters weren’t easily dissuaded, however, and they quickly pivoted, resuming their search for the mannequins’ new home.
I was at the center of it all, sharing theories and thoughts with the rest of the small community. From behind my computer screen, it was so easy to forget that Jake and Rebecca were real people who had died. They just felt like characters in our weird internet horror story. I don’t think any of us held reverence as we typed out sick speculations of their final thoughts. I know I certainly didn’t.
I was in a discord group with a few acquaintances I had explored an abandoned factory with a few months ago, and we would chat every couple weeks about the latest accident and where we thought the mannequins might have ended up.
Paul: They're definitely just in a landfill somewhere. Those things are probably so gross and old by now. I can’t imagine anyone would actually buy them.
Kevin: No way, man. I bet a bunch of guys from our forum reached out to the owner and made offers. He probably sold them all to a collector.
Me: Ugh. I hope not. That would mean we never get to see them again.
Julie: Are you sure they’re not still inside the tunnel? I haven’t seen any posts from anyone who’s actually managed to get inside to check.
Paul: No way. We’d know by now if they were still there.
Kevin: My second guess is that they ended up at the six flags that’s nearby. I’m gonna drive down there this weekend and check it out if anyone wants to join. I’m gonna sneak in after hours and check out all the buildings where they might store extra decor and parts.
I decided to message Julie separately. I had only met Julie once, when we explored that factory, but she had left a lasting impression. She was tiny. She couldn’t have been more than 5 feet tall, and she looked more like she belonged on the sidelines of a college football game with a pair of pom poms than in the middle of an abandoned factory with a gang of greasy guys she had met on the internet.
Julie was new to exploring, and I got the feeling that the other guys in the group didn’t respect her very much. Yet, while Paul and Kevin were busy taking selfies and jumping at every creak and bump we heard, Julie was prying open drawers with her crowbar and engrossing herself in old factory documents. She seemed to really care about the history of what she was exploring, and she did it without an ounce of fear.
Me: Hey. Do you really think The Quartet are still in the tunnel?
Julie: why wouldn’t they be? It’s only been a couple of months since the accident. And it’s like Paul said, who would want to buy those things anyway?
Me: And you’re sure nobody’s managed to get inside yet?
Julie: Not from what I’ve seen.
Me: Would you want to go check it out?
Julie: Seriously?
Me: Why not? Someone’s gonna get in there eventually. Wouldn’t you like to be the first?
Julie: Yeah. I would.
So, that’s what we did. I picked up Julie that weekend. She pranced out of her house, her golden curls bouncing around her head. She plopped herself down in my passenger seat with a huge grin on her face, and the two of us drove all the way to The Love Shack.
I was so excited. I had a beautiful girl next to me and a terrifying mystery in front of me.
I was so naive and stupid.
I wish to God I had turned that car around. I wish we had gotten into a wreck and never made it to that God forsaken place. I wish what happened next was just some sick nightmare and not a memory I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.
I’m nearing the character limit on here, so I’ll have to finish my story another time. It’s been hard reliving all of this, but it’s important.
It’s time that I finally tell the truth. There’s so much more I need to confess, and so much more I need to warn you about.
#entertainment
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