On October 14, I was at my best friend Jillian's house with my whole friend group. Sam, Pierce, Lyriq and Jillian.
We wanted to find somewhere fun to go since it was a nice Saturday night. I was scrolling on TikTok trying to find a place in Atlanta when something popped up saying a group of friends died this Thursday from suffocating. But I didn't pay attention because I didn't know those kids. After looking for a while we ended up scrolling across an escape room but it was too far away, so we found another one way closer. About 25 minutes away. We ordered an Uber since we weren’t able to drive yet.
When we got there the place looked kind of old. It looked a little dim inside and was kind of dirty, the wind was blowing making a whistling noise but it was 9:00 pm in the fall. We went in anyway since we thought it was supposed to look that way. It was almost Halloween.
We went ahead and gave all of our money to this old man who looked 65. He was wearing an all white outfit but it was kind of ripped up. I was looking a little closer at him when I saw the tiniest red dot right under his arm. It didn’t look like paint. I kept it to myself because I was just here to have fun. The old man kept smiling at us which was creepy but again it was almost Halloween so we knew it was staged.
Since we were the only ones there he took us to the back room right away. There were only about 3 rooms that I could spot in our area. For some reason, the first room we passed was clean and looked ready to go but the old man took us all the way to the back and this room was way dirtier than the others. Lyriq, Me, and Jillian looked at each other a little concerned but Pierce and Sam weren't scared at all. They thought it was perfectly fine. He locked us in the room and we started putting things together.
The goal was to find the key to unlock the door. The room had a big brown old-fashioned clock on the wall that kept ticking and then stopped for 10 seconds. There was a table with lots of rusty wine cups and a huge chandelier with yellow lights. There were drawers in the back with lots of random things in them.
We all go our separate ways. Pierce goes into a room connecting to ours just a little smaller. Then the big metal rusted door closes behind him.
There were these imprinted squares on the table. There were 4 rows and I knew each row spelled a word then it would most likely tell us where the key was. The first word was 3 letters, the second word was 4 letters, the third word was 6 letters and the last word was 5 letters. About 10 minutes passed when Sam yelled out that he found 2 “T” s In the drawers. Lyriq screamed “Me too” because she had found 3 “I”s followed by Jillian finding 2 “E”s under the doormat. We were doing so good!
We tried to spell out some words with the letter we had but nothing was working so we had to keep looking. Jillian started coughing out of nowhere. We tried to give her some water but nothing was working. We sat her down hoping her lungs would calm down. We all noticed that the air in the room was a little thin and kind of hard to take breaths. But I told them it was probably because we were a little tired.
We found one more “E” in the chandelier and two “A”s in the clock that was still ticking very loudly. As time went by we started to take a break. Jillian was still coughing so we decided it would be best for her to sit in this escape room out and just watch. She wanted to try and close her eyes so maybe that would help. Lyriq Me and Sam watched Jillian fall asleep which was kind of funny and unexpected. We found two “L”s, one “R”, and two “T”s. We finally spelled out something. Not just one but two words! “Air” and “Little”. Super strange words but at least we figured something out. `
I started looking under the rusty wine glasses and I found two more letters! Sam Me and I had a whole dance party because we were almost done.
I found a “M” and a “H”. This word spelled out “time” we only had one more to find. Sam came over to me and said, "Where is Pierce?" That’s when we realized Pierce had been gone for almost an hour and a half. Sam quickly went to get Pierce.
Meanwhile, me and Lyriq decided we should wake up JIllian and tell her we were almost done. We shook her once, no response. Then twice she still didn’t answer. I put my hand on her chest and realized she wasn’t breathing. We started freaking out and called Sam right away. He came running in saying Pierce was on the ground not breathing at all.
Did two of our closest friends just die right in front of us? I ran to the words and put them together. It finally made sense. I rearranged them and realized the room was trying to tell us that we only had a little time with oxygen until we died. That was why Jillian was coughing so much and randomly fell asleep. That's because she didn’t go to sleep. She passed out! Meaning Lyriq Me and Sam only had a little bit of time until we were next.
Lyriq brought up the TikTok that we saw earlier about the group of teenagers dying from suffocation in our city. It was here. They died here. We went crazy running around the room throwing things. Moving things out of place so we could find this key! I started banging on the door screaming for help. Lyriq grabbed her phone and tried to call our parents but there was no connection. We started coughing and wheezing with the little air we had left.
All of a sudden I saw a piece of the wooden floor slightly lifted. I tried to pull it up to see what was underneath. Surprisingly it was a tunnel. A deep dark tunnel that I couldn't see the end of. The decision was hard, either follow a tunnel that we had no idea where it would lead us or, stay in this room that was trying to kill us more and more by the second.
We took the tunnel hoping it would lead us out. I was the first one out. Sam or Lyriq wasn’t behind me. I yelled their name into the tunnel and there was no response. I was alone. Alone in the dark, I ran from a place that just murdered all of my friends. I sprinted like my worst nightmare was chasing me. I looked back thinking about how I just left Jillian, Lyriq, Sam, and Pierce.
I looked back and saw the same old man in the all-white suit smiling at me through the window of the building. But this time there were more blood stains all over him. I found a spot around the corner down the road that looked like a bus stop.
It was around 1 am, I got out my phone and called my mom to come pick me up. It was so hard to tell her to just come and pick me up because I couldn’t get her to calm down. She was freaking out.
By the time she came to pick me up, she realized 4 out of 5 of us were missing. I told her I would explain on the way but she just needed to drive. Me and my mom called the police immediately and told them this place needed to be shut down. It sounded so ridiculous that they didn’t believe us. But when I explained more, they finally agreed to take a look. They brought 2 police cars and went into the building. I stayed outside and luckily they ended up finding Jillian and Pierce’s body but Lyrics and Sam’s were nowhere to be seen.
Sadly my friends weren't the only bodies they found in that old creepy place. They found over 200 in one room. Some with all of their body parts attached and others not. That is why the worker in all white had blood stains on him from dragging and messing with all the dead bodies in their worst state.
The Police and the FBI took pictures of the escape room we were in right after they cleared it. This place is still up today, just cleaner and turned into a skating rink. But hopefully, it doesn’t have the same curse. I'll never know though because I’m never. Ever. Going back.