The Dark Somnium - I'm an urban explorer and I'll never forget what I found in an abandoned factory

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

an experience in an abandoned factory--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/darksomnium/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My name is Wyatt, I'm 21 now, but this story happened last winter when I was still 20. I'm an urban explorer and nature photographer. That is about as much detail as I'll go into about myself, because I don't want anybody coming after me if they find out what I've seen. I know I'll never forget what I saw, but I can't risk telling anyone that I know. I'm not currently in any immediate danger, but there are too many unknowns. Back in early December of last year, I was looking through Instagram and saw some shots from an abandoned factory in Germany.

This place was so perfect. It was rusting and old, but still kept the same structure and shape as when it was in use. Some of the pictures were breathtaking, mountain views through decrepit old windows, things like that. I screen shot it and reversed image searched one of the pictures from Instagram and found a place in Germany. There was no name for the factory anywhere I looked, but I kept seeing that the town it was in was called Westian.

I looked it up on Google Earth and saw that it was in a mountainous region of northern Germany. As I swiped through the images on Google, one article stopped me. It claimed that the factory was going to be demolished in April of next year, meaning that it would be gone in just a few months. I was feeling impulsive and excited, so without thinking, I googled flights to Berlin. Looking back, I wish my phone would have died at that very moment. Anything to stop me from looking at the flights, I would do anything to go back and make me close that tab.

However, I found one flight leaving from my airport that Wednesday. It was only $600. I was just about to buy tickets when I remembered that my friend, Bryce, not his real name, was looking for somewhere to go for winter break. So I called him up and told him that there were tickets to Berlin for $600. I wish he would have talked me out of it, but instead he was all over the idea. Later that afternoon, we both bought our tickets and planned to leave on Wednesday. Adrian, also not his real name, was also coming with us, but was going to leave early on

Saturday to go see his family in Poland. Me and Bryce made plans to go to West Jen on Sunday and look around there for a few hours. So when Wednesday came, I packed up all my stuff. lenses, SD cards, respirators, flashlights, clothes, and met up with Bryce and Adrian. We took an Uber to the airport and quickly boarded the plane. Honestly, I don't remember most of the flight. I think I slept through most of it, but finally we arrived in Berlin. Honestly, the next few days it was just a normal vacation, nothing but sightseeing and

doing basic tourist things. On Saturday, we set our goodbyes to Adrian and he left for Poland. That night I made sure to get all my stuff ready for the next morning. We had a two-hour car ride from Berlin to Weston. I was hoping we would get there around two in the afternoon and explore until about eight that night. Playing it back in my head, I remember every little detail of that day. I remember the sound of my alarm, the excitement of waking up that day, the feeling of seeing

all my stuff packed neatly on the floor next to my bed. We got up and had breakfast in the hotel. lobby before walking to the car rental place. After we picked out a car and got the keys, I spent the next few hours driving through the green rolling hills of Germany until we finally got there. I felt nothing but excitement when we finally got into the town. I remember just driving and looking around for a while until we saw it there. Clear as day, the abandoned factory.

It sat at the bottom of a tall hill in the middle of a bright green field. The mountains were in the distance to the east opposite the factory. I started looking on Google Maps for a good place to park in order for us to walk there. There was a large parking lot next to the self-storage place that was only about a quarter mile from the factory. I pulled into one of the spots and looked around for people. Should be good, I told Bryce as we got out of the car. I grabbed my camera bag, my flashlight, and my respirator out of the back seat, and put it on.

For those of you who don't know, a lot of old buildings were built with toxic materials like asbestos, so it's just safer to not even risk it and wear the respirator. We began walking down this old, cracked, asphalt road that had grass and flowers growing through it. It led straight to the factory, which I remember finally having a good view of. It was brown and rusted, but still beautiful and majestic. It had plants growing in it, like it had been retaken by new. nature after people left it.

After a little walking, we reached a tall chain-link fence that was locked, but there was no barbed wire on top, so I considered just jumping it, but instead I decided to look for an easier way. After walking next to the fence, I saw part of it had been knocked from the metal frame by somebody else. We pushed the metal out of the way and just crawled through it onto the other side. Now we just had to get into the factory. It was already clear to me that the main entrance wasn't an option.

It probably had motion sensors anyway. I was looking around when I spotted it, a broken window. It was only about 10 feet off the ground, so I asked Bryson to help me up. He hoisted me up and I grabbed onto the window sill. I pulled myself up and threw the window frame, pushing aside the broken glass as I did so. I pulled Bryson up through the window and we both jumped down onto the ground inside the factory. Now, when I say this thing was massive, I mean massive, like probably the biggest single room

I've ever seen. It had so many levels and catwalks and bridges. This place was a gold mine. I immediately got out my camera and put on the lens and my best flash. I also put in a new SIM card just in case. We walked around the ground floor for a bit, mostly just looking up at the ceiling. I took one picture of all the catwalks and bridges leading up to a crack. in the ceiling, letting sunlight through.

We went up one of the staircases onto the second level. There were a ton of generators and turbines all over the place, with a thick layer of dust and rubble covering them. I took some pictures on this floor, but we quickly moved up to the next floor. It was more of the same stuff, but still beautiful. I walked to the edge of the floor and looked over the small balcony-like platform we were on. I immediately felt dizzy, looking all the way down to the ground level.

I'm used to that kind of stuff. I just didn't realize how high up we were. We climbed up the staircases to the next floor, and Bryce told me to look at the mountains out the window. That was the shot from Instagram that I wanted. I adjusted my settings and snapped the shot. I checked over them just to make sure it was good, because that's pretty much the reason I came here. Even though I'm explaining all of this pretty quickly, we just spent hours walking around this place and looking at every little detail. It must have had hundreds of different switches and buttons, all labeled with German that I couldn't read, or seemingly random numbers.

It was made clear by a thick layer of dust that this stuff hadn't been used in decades probably. That being said, I know I shouldn't have done this, but I took a small silver key from the control room as a souvenir. We left the control room and saw a ladder that went up at least two stories. It led straight up onto the roof of the factory. I hesitantly decided to climb it. Bryce said he'd do it if I did it first. The ladder wobbled from side to side as I hesitantly climbed up the steel bars.

Finally, I grabbed onto the roof and pulled myself up onto it. You'll be fine if he goes slow. I yelled down at him. Soon he joined me up on the roof and we looked out onto the rest of the world. It was just endless rolling green hills leading to the snow-capped mountains. I turned around and looked behind us. realized that the hill behind us was taller than the factory itself. If we could get to that hill before sunset, the pictures would be unbelievable.

I really, really wish I had just abandoned the idea. But instead we rushed back down the ladder and all the staircases to the ground level. We quickly leapt out the window and crawled through the fence. We walked across the grassy green fields and slowly walked up that tall green hill. I won't lie, it was tiring walking all the way up that. hill racing the sunset. When we finally got there, it was totally worth it. The factory, the mountains, and the sunset all matched together in this beautiful vista.

I took out my tripod and lined up the composition. When I finally snapped the shot, I took nine or ten of the exact same picture just to make sure I got it. It was incredible, but if I could, I would go back in time and leave that hill immediately. But unfortunately, Bryce looked behind us and pointed out another abandoned building to me. It was smaller, made of brick rather than steel. He was hesitant to go down there and check it out because it was getting late. I assured him we would be fine with flashlights and we wouldn't be long.

We walked back down the other side of the hill and over to the dilapidated brick building. By the time we got there, it was getting pretty dark already, but we had flashlights that worked fine. The only weird thing was that when we walked up to it, the gate was unlocked, like they weren't even trying to keep people out. I guess it was pretty hard to find, but still, we walked straight through the gate. I was scanning the area for motion sensors or alarms, but there was nothing. The same exact thing when we got to the front door. No lock, no bar, nothing.

We opened the metal door. It was heavy, hard for either of us to even move. We entered the building and it was dark, super dark. I immediately had to turn on my flashlight to even be able to see. The building looked more of the same, catwalks, machines, and the overall same vibe. There was a large circular door directly in front of us. It looked more like the entrance to a bank vault than any normal door you would find. At this point, I was stunned that we hadn't seen a single alarm or motion sensor in this place.

We were both immediately drawn to the vault door. I put my hand on it in awe. I never seen anything like this in all the places I've explored. It was barely cracked open, not open all the way, but definitely not closed. I put my hand in between the door and the vault and tried to pry it slowly moved open, showing us what was inside. There was a long circular tunnel that just led to another room. So far, this was looking like one of the best finds for me ever.

I took multiple pictures looking down that long hallway, the flash lighting up the area. We slowly walked down the hallway, flashlights in hand as we advanced towards the room at the end. When we got to the end of the hallway, there was another vault door that was swung all the way open. We walked through the open door into the room. It was seemingly empty, except for a small hatch leading into the ground. It was closed, but the lock and chain on it were broken.

Above it, there was an arrow pointing at the hatch that said, Projects knock Wolf. At the time, I had no idea what it meant. I didn't even take a second to put it into Google Translate. Nowadays the words still send a chill down my spine. Project Night Wolf, a phrase that sounds like nothing, but if you had seen what I've seen, You wouldn't be able to hear those words without shuddering. I slowly opened the hatch, the hinges squeaking as I did so.

I flipped it all the way over until it was on the other floor. I shined my flashlight down the hatch to reveal what looked like just a normal staircase. We began slowly descending down the stairs. As we got closer to the bottom, you could hear the drops of water hitting the floor and making a quiet sound. I was going first ahead of Bryson, so I saw it. first. A room that was all pitch black, with about two inches of water lining the whole floor came into sight. What horrified me were the piles of animal skeletons and bones lying

in the water, small rodents that had been mutilated, and sheep that had been torn apart. Some were just skeletons, but others were still decaying, rotting flesh, but it looked like they had been ripped apart, some of them torn perfectly in two. I struggled to hold back my vomit as the smell hit me. I was firing off my camera flash taking pictures all around us when I spotted another door just ahead of us. I remember Bryce telling me we should just leave, but I wanted to get to that last door. The room was made out of cement.

Stone pillars sat all around, although some of them looked like they were about to collapse. We finally got to the door and I opened it. It looked like just another control room, like the ones in the things. factory. The thing that was different though was that there were swastikas on a lot of the equipment and walls. Not ones that had been spray painted by some kids, but real-looking ones. It was as if this place hadn't been touched since World War II. I looked around at the equipment until I saw a journal. I opened it to find that it was unsurprisingly in German, but I stuffed it in my pocket to take it home. Just then I heard the sound of broken glass.

Like somebody dropping a wine glass, but like an entire window was just shattered all at once. I immediately turned off my flashlight and then I slammed the door behind us. We both melt down, breathing as silently as possible, not wanting to know what that sound was. Thoughts rushed through my head, possibly a bird, a mountain lion, but neither of those were possible. We sat in that room for about a full minute until I realized that it was probably just because of how old the room was. Some structural error or rotting metal probably caused it.

I worked up enough courage to go out there. Bryce said he would go if I opened the door first. I walked over to the door, still crouched on the ground, and I turned the handle. I slowly creaked the door open, and as if we were in a horror movie, my flashlight died. I was too committed at this point to go back, so I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed my camera and started blindly firing off the flash. It could only do it about every three seconds, but I slowly crept further and further into the room, and that's when I saw it.

It looked like a shadow crouched on the ground, but about ten feet away from me was this oily, black, skeleton-like creature. It slowly stood up, making cracking and crunching sounds that did so. Its lens snapped back and forth like they were breaking. When it finally got all the way up, I saw its mangled set of furrow. razor-sharp teeth lining a huge gash in its face. It was at least nine feet tall with its head almost hitting the ceiling. It was holding the body of a fox in its lanky, disgusting arms. It whipped the fox in two as it let out a horrifying, ear-piercing screech.

My flash stopped firing. I looked down at my camera to see the message SD card full. I quickly grabbed the one in my pocket and switched them out, but when I fired the flash again, creature was gone. I felt paralyzed when it suddenly grabbed me by the neck. Its hands felt wet and sharp as it pulled me towards it. Bryce immediately ran for the door, and I don't blame him for it. I was panicked. No rational thought ran through my brain except one. Survive. As I was brought closer to its face, I grabbed the pocket knife from my right pocket and plunged it deep into the neck of the creature. It dropped me and let out of horror and screaming.

My camera smashed on the floor, and I felt Bryce grabbed my arm and pull me up. We bolted to the door and slammed it behind us. We could still hear it screaming and screeching as we ran up the stairs. When we got up the stairs and above the hatch and the floor, I tied the chain around the lock, hoping to give us more time. After that, we just sprinted back to our car. It was pitch black by then, so when we got in the car we sped off and didn't look back for a second. It was a very silent car ride back to the airport.

We got on an earlier flight back home and left that night. We didn't talk about what happened until we got back. I didn't leave my room for the rest of that winter break. If it weren't for that journal and the pictures, I would have thought that I dreamt it. But no, the pictures showed the disgusting creature exactly how I remembered it. I am actually glad I switched out SD cards or I would have no pictures of it. I won't post any of them here, mainly because I don't want people finding this place and making the same mistake I did.

But I will post a section from the journal that I was able to translate. Most of the journal is illegible, but I could make out this small section. Our tests have not been getting better. It has become even more violent, no longer eating the rabbits, but just tearing them apart. Nobody here wants to get into the cage with it anymore because of the fact that it seems to find joy in destroying the animals. Also, the screaming. I will not forget the screaming until the day I die.

March 24th, 1942.