I'm here to set the record straight

In response to The Haunted Atchison Caves, I wanted to clarify a few things. First of all, the place was a limestone mine. On the first night of our great adventure, we were actually looking for another place. This place deemed to be satanic. It was supposed to be on River Road, but in actuality it was really close to our campus. You can literally walk to the cave from campus. The Monks of our Abby place crosses and other stuff in a Christian response to the satanic rituals. On the way to the cave, you will see a cross on the side of the road, which the monks put there.

Now once you’re inside the cave, it is said to have writings on the wall. Witch craft, and quotes like, "he’s watching you." But what we found was just the limestone mine. Yes there was a dog inside but it wasn’t that massive or aggressive. But the person who wrote the story wasn’t even with us the night we found that dreadful note and a METH LAB.

We decided to take a freshman recruit to the mines to show him how scary A-town was. When we got there, we just walked straight past the dog. It took us an hour and half to actually walk the whole left side of the mine. It was pitch black, though, and our cell phones didn’t work at all inside. The four flashlights we had with us were not as many as we should have brought – at one point, we shut off all the lights and it was so dark, you couldn’t even see your own hand in front of your face.

When we circled back around, about four hundred meters inside the mine entrance, we found a beat up truck and car. As we ventured over to the car, we felt like “The Goonies”. When we opened the car, we found it to be completely junked. Everything was smashed in and that’s where we found the purse in the backseat.

The writer of the letter, who will remain nameless, wrote about the kids and then on the back of the letter (which is the side that we read first) it read, “Mother died … I don’t know if you know yet!” When we dumped the purse on top of the car, we found an insurance statement that expired in 1998 and we later found out that she died in 1997 – the year the letter was written. There appeared to be dried blood on the insurance document; though, we would need to go CSI on it, to prove that it wasn’t just mud or something else.

After finding the letter, we became skeptical; wondering how and why somebody could leave a letter like that in a bashed up car, in a mine.

So we get back to the entrance of the cave and decide to go past the dog to the right side of the mine. Slightly beyond the dog, we came upon a couch underneath a canopy. Sitting in front of it was an old TV that looked like it came from the 1950s.

We decided to keep exploring and about a hundred feet further down the mine, we found: alkaline rechargeable battery strips, iodine, and some fertilizer. These are the key components of Methamphetamine, or Meth. We also found a table with lights all around it and we pretty much knew, we had stumbled onto a meth lab. Next to these items was a trailer and with fresh footprints leading up it.

We decided to leave the mine then because most Meth Labs are booby-trapped and there is usually somebody around guarding them. Back at campus, we told our RD what we had found. He told us to go to the police station and report it because it was too much to leave it alone. We went to the Sheriff’s Department and waited about an hour. Then after writing down our information and our police reports, we were escorted out to the mine by the Sheriff.

So we get to the top of the hill and the Sheriff decides not to go in. He hears the dog barking and then says, “this is private property … we can’t go in there.” He also said that there had been a lot of vandalism reports up there. After he escorted us all the way out there specifically to investigate what we found, he clearly got spooked at the last minute!

So we walk back down the hill with the Sheriff. He didn’t leave, like the other story said. He told us he would check up on our story and call us if there were any leads.

We never heard back from him.

I hope you never have to adventure upon a meth lab.