Let's see here, this week has been pretty great. Seeing Enter Shikari and A Day To Remember is always great. Exploring abandoned Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells with a group of drunk fuckers that were exploring it too is also always great. Anyways, where to begin?
I have started reading a comic series entitled "The Walking Dead", it was created by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, drawn by Charlie Adlard. If you like an in-depth story or zombies you'll love this damn comic. I was told a while back about it by good 'ol Balls and Josh Beck. I didn't really care for comics until recently when I realized, "I can just download all of this shit." Hence, the addiction grew and i'm hooked. Fifty nine comics in 3 days isn't bad... is it? I'm also checking out this other mini-series called "Crawl Space: Xxxombies", I don't expect it to be anywhere near the amount of awesome as "The Walking Dead", but whatever, I love zombie-lore.
So, you may or may not have heard of The Baker Hotel, it's a thirteen-story abandonment in Mineral Wells, TX. It is rumored to be "haunted", but in my opinion ghosts exist just about as much as god (that's not at all).
So yeah, pussies, it's got some creep-vibe to it. Myself, Shane Ray, Mike Wilson, Shane's boss, "Shane", and his wife decided to venture out there and see this motherfucker for ourselves Saturday night. We drove two bloody hours to shit-splat, middle of nowhere, Mineral Wells. The city itself looks abandoned, but I assure you after certain events, it's not. We finally arrive, park, get out, get ready. We parked in a "parking lot" thing around the back of the hotel, but not too close (didn't want to draw attention to ourselves). Just the sight of this place is enough to make you say "Damn... this is where Batman would hangout." As you can see I was only able to get a shitty picture with the 'ol iPhone, even had to tweek it a bit Photoshop to make it visible. Anyways, we hop into the courtyard over some busted down stone wall/fence. Once in there we explore the outside, we even went around to the front looking for a possible point of entry. No luck, it was locked down like a prison (well, a weak-ass prison, but yeah, you get the point). While heading back to the courtyard area, we hear some voices call out "POLICE! This place is off-limits!" We all bail as fast as possible, then I saw two heads poke around the busted ass stone wall/fence thing. I realize these people are not the police, we walk around the outside of the fence and we see three drunk sons of bitches, two in-shapers and a fatty. They clearly just got back from a sick round of beer pong, backed by some Lil Wayne-jammage (at least thats what there American Eagle shirts, said.) On a side note, those pussies were holding Heineken's. Now, I do not hate them, you'll see why when you continue on down.
Anyways, we start to talk to the drunk dudes, they cam from Ft. Worth, they told us they had also been wanting to explore The Baker for a while now, so what else could we do? We teamed up, hoped the fence and began a bigger search for a possible entrance. To our luck they were drunk enough to hoist each other up and through a broken window, of course cutting themselves up on the way in (unfortunately Fatty couldn't participate in this one). We told them to go find a way for us to get in, and sure enough they did (in no time at all actually). We had to climb this make-shift ladder, piece-of-dangerous-as-hell-shit, though a opening in the ceiling and down the other side, but it was well worth almost everyone dying (Fatty got though this one, too). Once inside we hit the check-in counter first like any guest of The Baker would, there was a lot of rooms, we could tell by the mail-cubbies behind the counter. After this, we proceeded up a flight of stairs, once on the second story, we heard voices. From out of a door emerged four other kids exploring also. These ones were younger, turns out we parked right beside them. We both carried on our separate ways, by now Team-Drunk had gone on without us (good thing, those fuckers were getting noisy). We explored every floor, almost in it's entirety. All of the rooms seemed to have the beds still intact, some had couches and television sets (mind you, this stuff is from the 1950's). We came across a ballroom and some beautiful suites on the sixth or seventh floor. Once at the top, we exited through a window and onto the roof, We crossed the roof to the (in my opinion) best part of the whole place, the Presidential Suite, this is the highest room in The Baker and the view from up there is astounding, you can see the whole shitty town from up there.
Then, all of a sudden, what do we have here? A police car cruising around the outside of the hotel, slowly circling it. He knew something was up when he spotting Team-Drunk's car parked in the street right by the damn Hotel (fucking retards). So he proceeds to search it with his flash light and call for back up. An SUV shows up, he pulls into a parking lot, beside where Team-Drunk's car is parked. We are all sitting up there, keeping our heads ourselves out of sight, but still observing everything that is going on down there. They got out the bullhorn and mumbled some shit, no one understood it. Then out of nowhere they hit us with the spotlight, we all hit the deck. I don't think they saw anyone, but they did something very, very fucking odd. The police (while the spotlight is scanning above out heads) cranked the radio, it was some creepy old song. I don't know if this was a tactic to get us to look up and be spotted, or they were just crazy.
Needless to say we did not fall victim to their antics. We decided to wait it out in the Presidential Suite until one of the other groups of people got caught. After about an hour of waiting, we decided that no one was going to budge, so what did we do? We waited it out even longer. Lucky for us, SHIFT CHANGE, it was around six in the morning by now, the police had left. We booked it down the stairs to the first floor, there we met up with Team Drunk, they were also ready to leave. So, like the test subjects we were using them as, we had them exit ahead of us. They got out fine, so about five minutes later we made a run for the car, we made it out. What a place. If you ever want to explore something amazing, this is the place.
Well, there you have it. My story of my experience at The Baker Hotel, many of you have asked me to spill the beans, there it is. Read it and weep. Tomorrow... well, later today is Mumtaz Monday, I can't wait. As always, i'd love some feedback. Any comments, concerns, or questions will be happily accepted.
