Breaking and Entering is FUN!

Several months back I read this really cool/somewhat scary book "Creepers" by David Morrell about a journalist who infiltrates a group of urban explorers in order to write an expose on the phenomenon also called urban spelunking. They enter this old hotel and of course there's murder, mystery and hidden agendas. It's an incredibly awesome book.

If you don't know what urban exploration is, check out the Wikipedia article. It basically is a group of people who trespass in abandoned buildings/sewers/other "off limits" places in order to explore and see what's there. They usually take pictures, and they don't usually vandalize or steal anything. Seems like a dangerous, illegal kind of hobby to me, but hey, one man's law breaking is another man's jollies.

When reading "Creepers" I couldn't help but regret that I never took advantage of my chance to see the underground tunnels from Union Station to the Post Office across the street. When I worked at Union Station, my friend in Collections had keys to the deeper recesses of the basements and I should have taken him up on it.

Today I was reminded of the tunnels when I ran across
this blog post:.
Be sure to check out the photo gallery.
This place looks really cool!

How cool is that? An abandoned, underground, lost streetcar tunnel in Kansas City! I'm been familiar with that particular stretch of road because I helped one of my Wornall House friends on a family history project. Her family had an interest in the streetcars and we had done a little bit of research about that area of Kansas City. I can tell you, that is one STEEP hill! She's going to be excited to see this.

I admit I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of urban exploration. As someone who's worked at 3 different historical museums/sites, I've been really privileged to go "behind the scenes" of some pretty cool places. There is a definite thrill in being where you know you're not supposed to be, even if all of my visits were properly sanctioned.

There's not really any point to this post (like most of my posts), I just thought it was something cool and semi-historical to share with others....if you get inspired to "explore" some place, be sure to send me pictures of your adventures.