**Lmao I'm dumb. I should've done my research but Waverly Hills is in Kentucky so they definitely would've filmed that and Bobby Mackeys within the same few days.... ughhh I guess they're going back to Kentucky let's just ignore my screw uppp idk... At least this is one of the best eps! This is a longgg one though, might be a two-parter!
Shane seems to get better within a few days, and he thanks me for the ice cream when he gets back to the office. The 2 weeks between locations passes much faster than we expected and we finish off all the desk videos. Now it's time for traveling.
Our schedule looks like this: One night at Waverly Hills Sanatorium, than we're flying to Louisiana for a night in the Dauphine Orleans Hotel, we get a day off and then it's to the Lizzie Borden house where the boys will actually be staying alone for the first time. We'll do an episode on the voodoo world of New Orleans after that and then it's back on a plane and over to Massachusetts where we're going to check out Salem. Once that's done we're flying back to L.A and wrapping season two of Paranormal! We also start dropping weekly episodes this week and we're planning on starting a new segment called post-mortem this season, so like I said... we're gonna be busy.
TJ is picking us all up for the trip, and this time no one oversleeps. We all jump in his car and head to the airport. It's early in the morning and I'm sitting in the backseat squished between Shane and Ryan. The traffic is pretty bad today but luckily we woke up early enough to leave time for it. Ryan is in a pretty shitty mood because he made the stupid decision to go out with some of his "bro's" last night and now he's super hungover. So he just sits with his head against the window.
TJ and Devon are talking in the front seat about something they just heard over the news on the radio and Shane and I... well Shane and I are playing chopsticks. And I'm kicking his ass.
"Fuck!" He says, realizing I've got him pretty much trapped. Whatever he does on the next move it's over.
"Can you guys shut up, I feel like I'm in the car with two 10-year-old children," Ryan groans.
"Oh don't be such a baby Ryan, it's not our fault you're still not over your frat house days!" Shane says, I win the game right as he finishes, "Dammit!" He says. I hear Ryan laugh to himself and I know he's not actually pissed at us.
We get to the airport and luckily there are no delays so it's off to Waverly Hills.
...
Waverly Hills Sanatorium might be the most threatening location we've visited to date. I stare up at the huge building, backlit by the light of the moon which catches on the clouds and tints the sky a dark grey, almost green. It's haunting. If I believed in ghosts, I'd probably go looking for them here too.
"So we're approaching Waverly Hill," Ryan says,
"The look of this building is so imposing. I'm surprised you're conscious right now," Shane says, the building's huge shadow engulfs us as we get closer.
"I'm keeping it together for now," Ryan laughs nervously, "there's a good chance tonight is the night you see me die on camera." I laugh, and fall back a little to get a shot from behind the boys of them approaching the building. They keep bantering but I'm distracted by Devon and TJ who are whispering next to me. Because we don't have mics and the boys are ahead of us it shouldn't be picked up.
"Fuck this place," Devon whispers. She's a believer so I can see why she's nervous. "I can't believe you're sleeping here." She says to me. I laugh and hear TJ laugh as well.
"Sophie couldn't be any less phased by this place. She's basically a pro at this point," TJ speaks up, I shake my head,
"I dunno about that, I'm not gonna say this place isn't... creepy," I say,
"I think Ryan would actually die without you and Shane," TJ says, "Can you imagine Ryan and Devon spending the night here together?"
"Oh my god," i laugh at the idea of it, the two probably wouldn't make it through.
"Hey! I'm not as bad as Ryan!" Devon protests but TJ and I just laugh. We stop outside the door and Ryan and Shane prepare to go in when a metal bang interrupts them.
"What the fuck is that!" Ryan says, turning quickly.
"It's just a big metal thing. That's not a ghost that's metal," Shane says,
"Jesus Christ dude," Ryan sighs. Shane looks back at us and then at Ryan,
"I think we should let 'em know that we're entering, give them a quick uh..." He starts, looking at Waverly and then shouting, "Hey Ghouls! The boys are here!" The whole crew laughs and Ryan shakes his head. Another instant classic.
We set up in an empty hallway, and Ryan starts with the backstory. Once we finish it's time to really start exploring. We start climbing a staircase that looks straight out of a horror movie.
"Fuck me," Ryan says, "I feel awful right now."
"It looks like one of the conjuring films!" Shane says, climbing the stairs and looking around, " I got a little spoiler for ya... everything in the building is gonna look like this."
"Yeah I think so," Ryan laughs nervously. "We've really done it now, haven't we?" He says, looking at me and then looking over at Shane.
"Yeah, we've done it now," Shane laughs, and we climb the rest of the staircase. The next room is the room where they performed electroshock therapy on patients with Tuberculosis of the brain. I stand just in the doorway and get a sweep of the room, meanwhile the boys joke around as usual. They quiet down for a moment to see if they hear anything.
"Shockingly, I'm not really hearing anything..." Shane says after a minute, "This is the biggest upset. I did not see this coming," He jokes. Ryan laughs and shakes his head. We explore the building a little more and then decide to head outside towards the tunnel known as the "Body Chute".
We start through the long tunnel, it's cold and the cement walls just seem to make it even chillier. TJ and Devon are close by my side for the most part but once we reach the actual chute the two decide they'll wait at the top for Ryan, Shane and I rather than having all of us descend into the dark tunnel. There is a metal gate in front fo the chute which is partially open.
"oh my god..." Ryan says, "this is awful."
"Now this is the nightmare," Shane agrees, and he's definitely right. The three of us step past the gate, leaving Devon and TJ on their own. The body chute is just... it's just horrible. I stare down the long tunnel, which is so long that it looks like the darkness goes on forever.
"Oh no, no, no, no, no, no!" Ryan starts to panic a little. Shane laughs, I think he's laughing at how comically horrific this fucking tunnel is.
"Oh no! You have got to be fucking-" Ryan can't even finish his sentence, he looks back at me in genuine shock and I laugh. "Are you fucking kidding me dude?" He asks, looking back down the tunnel.
"This is like satan's cement butthole," Shane jokes as they walk down the tunnel, I hang back just a couple feet behind them so I can get a full shot of the two of them walking down the tunnel. When we get to the part of the tunnel that slopes downward I think we all have trouble coming to terms with just how awful it looks.
"Oh my god dude!" Ryan says, his flashlight barely penetrates the darkness below.
"Holy shit!" Shane laughs and I swear I hear a hint of nerves in it. Good to know he's not actually a total robot.
"Oh. my. god." Ryan repeats, "How far does this go? Are we going to hell?" He asks,
"Let's find out!" Shane says.
When we get to the bottom there is a plastic tarp blocking off the rest of the tunnel, which Ryan naturally pulls aside and peers behind. There is a rushing sound like wind howling through the tunnel and Ryan jumps away,
"Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!" He yells, his voice higher than I've ever heard it, Shane and I break into laughter.
"What is that? The wind?" Shane asks,
"I dunno," Ryan shrugs, fear still in his eyes.
"It just went whoooo," Shane mimics the sounds we heard and I laugh. Ryan doesn't seem to fully believe it was the wind though.
"What if I go up there, and you stay down here, and we turn our lights off, and see if we hear anything," Shane suggests. I almost laugh, thinking there is no way Ryan would ever agree to that.
"What if you go fuck yourself?" Ryan asks "How about that?" I laugh, and Shane shakes his head.
"It's happening, come on Sophie," Shane says and starts up the tunnel.
"Oh I fucking hate you guys," Ryan groans, I smile
"You'll be fine Ryan! It's just a body chute," I wink and follow Shane up the tunnel.
Once we get pretty far up Ryan calls out to us,
"How long am I staying down here?" He asks, Shane and I are crouched on the incline of the tunnel looking down at him.
"A minute!" Shane yells back,
"A minute?" Ryan doesn't sound excited, he complains a bit more, and then we count down to lights off. The tunnel fills with darkness and my night vision kicks in on the camera. Ryan groans,
"Oh no no no no... I hate this!" We hear his voice echo up to us.
"This is sort of beautiful!" Shane responds and I think that's it, that's the show. I don't think I could come up with two lines of dialogue that better describe Unsolved if I tried. We hear Ryan whispering below us but can't really make out what he's saying,
"Shut up!" Shane calls out. He turns to me and shakes his head. Ryan goes quiet and so do Shane and I. We sit in silence for a couple of seconds and then all of a sudden a weird screeching noise echos through the tunnel. I feel my heart jump for the first time in any of these investigations. Shane looks at me confused, and dare I say, a little worried.
"Did you hear that?" He yells to Ryan and then looks back at me with a look asking the same thing, I nod.
"Is it a minute yet! Please tell me it's been a minute!" Ryan responds. Shane puts his finger to his lips, telling me not to respond. I smile and shake my head. "Hello?" Ryan calls out, Shane and I are trying so hard not to laugh. Finally, Shane speaks up,
"Ok! It's been a minute!" He calls out and I see Ryan's flashlight flicker back on at the bottom of the tunnel. The screeching sounds bounce off the cement walls again, Shane looks at me and I shrug, assuming it's an animal but still not feeling great about it.
"What the fuck was that noise!" He yells out to Ryan, Ryan's response is muffled by the distance between us. The distant screeching sound fills the tunnel again and Shane turns around quickly and I realize there is actual fear in his eyes, which is when my heart basically drops. I swing my camera towards where the sound is coming from, and then hear Shane actually start to get scared,
"Uh nope! nope!" He says, his voice sounds panicked. "Guys!?" He yells out, and the panic overcomes me as well,
"Guys!" I yell, standing up.
"Okay!" Shane sounds terrified and he grabs my arm and we start running out of the tunnel, the camera in my hands shaking as we bolt. I start laughing out of anxiety and Shane does the same, we hear Ryan sprinting out of the tunnel behind us and yelling "Get me the fuck out of here!"
**(If you guys haven't seen this scene^^ it's in the Unsolved Almost 70th Retrospective at minute 8:37 and it's actually my favorite moment of all time, I'm still pissed they didn't put it in the actual episode)
When we get back to the top we all stop to catch our breaths. Shane's hands are on his knees and he's bent over laughing, Ryan is shaking his hands out and trying to regain some semblance of sanity. I lean on Shane's back and put my head into my elbow as I laugh and try to catch my breath.
"Holy shit!" Shane says,
"Dude when you guys fucking bolted I swear to god my heart fell out through my ass" Ryan laughs. Shane stands up and shakes his head,
"Sorry, this guy had a full-on panic attack and practically dragged me out of that tunnel!" I laugh, rubbing my arm where Shane had grabbed me, it wasn't super red but he had definitely pulled me out of there with quite a bit of force.
"Sorry," he laughs, "but really I was just saving your life!" He jokes,
"Yeah meanwhile you left me at the bottom of that hell hole!" Ryan laughs. The adrenaline is still coursing through me and I feel my heart beating out of my chest.
"I can't believe you two actually got scared!" Ryan starts laughing, Shane shakes his head,
"It was all Sophie," He jokes around and I shove him,
"Sure it was," I laugh. We go to meet Devon and TJ outside the tunnel and explain what went down. They are almost as shocked as Ryan that Shane and I actually freaked out. Though we both strongly protest the phrase freaked out, "It was more like a reasonable reaction to a perceive threat," Shane explains.
When we get back into Waverly we head to the morgue on the first floor, and then the third-floor elevator where a homeless man was reported to have fallen down the elevator shaft years ago. Finally we go into a hallway where a little boy named Timmy supposedly likes to play with a blue rubber ball.
"Alright Timmy!" Ryan says, "My name is Ryan, this is my pal Shane,"
"Hi Tim!" Shane says,
"I hear you like balls!" Ryan looks down at the rubber ball we brought and then immediately realizes what he's said, "No whoa! Wait Wait!" He looks to me and Shane and laughs.
"Can we do a retake on that one," Shane jokes, looking at me and then back at Ryan, "That had to be intentional."
"No i swear to god, I swear to god I'm not doing this on purpose!" Ryan can't stop laughing,
"I mean this is a bit right," Shane looks at the camera.
"No it's not a fucking bit I'm sorry!" He laughs, Shane shakes his head but I can tell he's holding back laughter as well.
"alright, I'm gonna bounce my ball. See, it's a bouncy ball. You like that? I like it. Wanna play?" Ryan asks, "Oh fuck," He laughs, "You wanna play?"
"You sound threatening," Shane laughs, "'You wanna play? Let's fucking play!" He puts on an angry voice and Ryan and I laugh. Ryan tosses the ball down the hallway and we hear it bouncing distantly. We wait to see if it comes back but the hall is silent.
"I think it bounced a few extra times though," Shane says, "Did you hear that?"
"Do you think it bounced- I thought it bounced a couple extra times but I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me," He says,
"No it sounded like it stopped and then bounced a little more," I say, I heard it too. "I dunno if that means ghost but-" I shrug, Shane nods his head in agreement,
"Lets walk down there and find that ball," Ryan says solemly and Shane and I look at each confused and break out laughing,
"That's the most serious I've ever seen you!" Shane says, "'Let walk down there and find the ball," He says, mimicking Ryan's tone. We head down the hallway and start searching for the ball, shining our flashlights through the dark rooms.
"Oh, there it is." Shane says. The ball has stopped right beneath graffiti that spells out Ryan's name.
"No way." Ryan sounds genuinely dumbfounded, "Oh no! Oh, no, no, no, no!" He panics.
"Ryan the ball bounced-" Shane can't even finish his sentence through his laughter,
"Noooo, the ball stopped here. How the fuck is that possible?" Ryan groans,
"The ball stopped right here," Shane laughs, meanwhile Ryan is entering full crisis mode.
"They know! Ryan they know," Shane jokes,
"Shut up dude, you know this is fuckin' weird. Shut up," Ryan looks at me and points at the ball, "Tell me this isn't fucking weird!" I just laugh and shrug. After several more minutes of Ryan having a mental breakdown over a bouncy ball we decide to roll the ball again and this time it ends up stopped in the middle of the hallway.
"It's like directly in the middle of the floor." Ryan says,
"So, you think because it's in the middle now, it was moved before?" Shane asks skeptically.
"Yeah, that's exactly what I think."
" I don't know," Shane shrugs,
"You don't think it's odd it stopped in the middle, and then before it went into the room by my name?" Ryan persists,
"But it also stopped at the 'I love pot' graffiti, so maybe this ghost just loves to blaze it," I offer up. I know I'm not meant to be the one making the jokes in the show but sometimes an opportunity is too good to pass up, the boys burst out laughing and Devon and TJ do too, definitely worth it.
Finally, it's time to set up our sleeping bags on the top floor, first we walk with Devon and TJ back to the car to grab our sleeping bags while they leave to go back to the hotel.
"Good luck!" TJ says, hopping into the driver's seat.
"Don't die!" Devon says, and Ryan shakes his head. He's already severely anxious and Devon's comment doesn't help. We watch the headlight fade as they drive off and then we make the journey back to the 5th floor under the shadow of Waverly Hills Sanatorium.