birmingham: scariest place on earth
so this weekend the infamous claire and i trekked up to bham to help hannah house/dog-sit. first of all, we get to birmingham city-limits just fine, but as soon as we get to mountain brook, all is lost. we called pretty much everyone we knew who lived in birmingham that we thought might be in town, but we were so lost that they didn't even know where we were, or how to get to a destination. we proceeded to be lost for TWO hours, WITHIN birmingham. at one point, we were out past the airport, and we passed what could be the scariest place in the history of the world, sloss furnaces. it is comprised of tall, multi-height brick chimneys and an under-lit water tower emblazoned with "sloss" (weirdest name anyways). think gotham city, only minus batman to save you and creepier. to say the least, we screamed loud and drove real fast past it.
FINALLY we were able to locate someone in the city who was there and wasn't going out to dinner with their parents or babysitting and could there fore rescue us from our lostness. (ps jen, you're our hero) so we finally ate dinner and hung out in a place where we weren't driving/riding.
we eventually located hannah, and she lead us to the official destination. we told her about our fear of sloss, and like a true friend, she made us take her there and show her why it was frightening. we just screamed more while she laughed at us (she's braver). at this point it was like, 1 am, so in order to scare us MORE, she took us to a place titled "cry baby bridge". it is called this b/c it is supposedly haunted by the crys of a baby that drowned there. sounds like a pleasant place, i know. we got like two feet down the road and started screaming so we turned around to leave. as i had my head covered with a jacket, once we were driving, i felt like we were sliding backwards towards the water in the gravel, as opposed to forward, away from the site. my life flashed before my eyes for a second time that night.
eventually we got back to normal birmingham (or so we thought) and decided to go to waffle house. we walk in, and someone has called a meeting of the sketchy-goth population of the city, and there they sat in their fishnets and safety pins and black clothing, and they were eyeing us oddly with their kohl rimmed eyes...when the guy walked in that immedeatly brought "slingblade" to my mind (not a goth, more like inbread...) we left/ran out the door as fast as we could to the car.
we then went to another waffle house, where we found an old lincoln towncar parked outside, COMPLETELY filled, minus the driver's seat, with old papers. FILLED. as in, TO THE BRIM. VERY strange. but we went in and got hashbrowns anyways, being jaded to weirdness after the other wafflehouse. anyhow, we eventually went to bed around 4.
the next afternoon when we woke up, we went to get halloween costumes and then to give out candy to the children/watch the auburn/ole miss game (9-0, war eagle!!!). i was a middle school cheerleader, which prompted hannah and claire to take my picture with two boys who came to the door dressed as middle school football players from the same school. (hannah claimed that she knew them from babysitting as they approached, but then stated that she didn't know them from adam after they left) i'm sure they weren't sketched out at all.
then later that night, tye called and started the problems. he told hannah some story about a schitzophrenic midget who hid in this friend of his' basement dressed as a clown for two months staring at people and giving the children nightmares. SO then hannah started freaking out about every noise we heard, so then we ALL started freaking out about everything...(this entailed screaming a lot and all jumping onto the same piece of furniture, as well as calling people and leaving very long, mostly screaming, messages on their voice mail, prompting questions like "what the hell?" as opposed to the aid we had hoped for) and we locked the basement door just in case there was a midget down there.
we eventually locked ourselves in the den once we realized that the front door wasn't locked, and started to call males that we knew were in the birmingham area as opposed to auburn or oxford, mississippi, to come and look for the midget/lock the front door. (unfortunately, george was "in a movie" and steven was somewhere in his underwear pretending to be tom cruise from "risky business" and without a car...good to know we have friends we can depend on) finally, brad came to rescue us, and upon inspecting the house, found that the basement door, which i had locked, was STANDING OPEN. sooo we all started screaming again and ran out of the house, minus brad who was like "i'm sure there's a logical explanation for this" (we reacted with, shockingly, more screams of disbelief and eyes wide with FEAR) which, it turned out, there was. the basement door apparently doesn't stay shut even when locked, and the dog pushed it open. yikes. needless to say, it took us a while to get to sleep.
but now we're safe and sound back in auburn, and we all took a trip to the coffee couch tonight to be productive and study. but mainly we were just loud and disturbed all the people who were working really hard. oh well, basically the story of my life. happy halloween everyone!!
FINALLY we were able to locate someone in the city who was there and wasn't going out to dinner with their parents or babysitting and could there fore rescue us from our lostness. (ps jen, you're our hero) so we finally ate dinner and hung out in a place where we weren't driving/riding.
we eventually located hannah, and she lead us to the official destination. we told her about our fear of sloss, and like a true friend, she made us take her there and show her why it was frightening. we just screamed more while she laughed at us (she's braver). at this point it was like, 1 am, so in order to scare us MORE, she took us to a place titled "cry baby bridge". it is called this b/c it is supposedly haunted by the crys of a baby that drowned there. sounds like a pleasant place, i know. we got like two feet down the road and started screaming so we turned around to leave. as i had my head covered with a jacket, once we were driving, i felt like we were sliding backwards towards the water in the gravel, as opposed to forward, away from the site. my life flashed before my eyes for a second time that night.
eventually we got back to normal birmingham (or so we thought) and decided to go to waffle house. we walk in, and someone has called a meeting of the sketchy-goth population of the city, and there they sat in their fishnets and safety pins and black clothing, and they were eyeing us oddly with their kohl rimmed eyes...when the guy walked in that immedeatly brought "slingblade" to my mind (not a goth, more like inbread...) we left/ran out the door as fast as we could to the car.
we then went to another waffle house, where we found an old lincoln towncar parked outside, COMPLETELY filled, minus the driver's seat, with old papers. FILLED. as in, TO THE BRIM. VERY strange. but we went in and got hashbrowns anyways, being jaded to weirdness after the other wafflehouse. anyhow, we eventually went to bed around 4.
the next afternoon when we woke up, we went to get halloween costumes and then to give out candy to the children/watch the auburn/ole miss game (9-0, war eagle!!!). i was a middle school cheerleader, which prompted hannah and claire to take my picture with two boys who came to the door dressed as middle school football players from the same school. (hannah claimed that she knew them from babysitting as they approached, but then stated that she didn't know them from adam after they left) i'm sure they weren't sketched out at all.
then later that night, tye called and started the problems. he told hannah some story about a schitzophrenic midget who hid in this friend of his' basement dressed as a clown for two months staring at people and giving the children nightmares. SO then hannah started freaking out about every noise we heard, so then we ALL started freaking out about everything...(this entailed screaming a lot and all jumping onto the same piece of furniture, as well as calling people and leaving very long, mostly screaming, messages on their voice mail, prompting questions like "what the hell?" as opposed to the aid we had hoped for) and we locked the basement door just in case there was a midget down there.
we eventually locked ourselves in the den once we realized that the front door wasn't locked, and started to call males that we knew were in the birmingham area as opposed to auburn or oxford, mississippi, to come and look for the midget/lock the front door. (unfortunately, george was "in a movie" and steven was somewhere in his underwear pretending to be tom cruise from "risky business" and without a car...good to know we have friends we can depend on) finally, brad came to rescue us, and upon inspecting the house, found that the basement door, which i had locked, was STANDING OPEN. sooo we all started screaming again and ran out of the house, minus brad who was like "i'm sure there's a logical explanation for this" (we reacted with, shockingly, more screams of disbelief and eyes wide with FEAR) which, it turned out, there was. the basement door apparently doesn't stay shut even when locked, and the dog pushed it open. yikes. needless to say, it took us a while to get to sleep.
but now we're safe and sound back in auburn, and we all took a trip to the coffee couch tonight to be productive and study. but mainly we were just loud and disturbed all the people who were working really hard. oh well, basically the story of my life. happy halloween everyone!!