Lock-In | Laundromat

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Brandon Schexnayder (0:30)

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Brandon Schexnayder (1:22)

When the Internet began, bulletin board services or BBS became the first online communities of the so-called information superhighway. Using their phone lines, people logged in from all over America to talk about sports, games, movies, and on one BBS in particular, share their ghost stories. Over time, those communities all went dark, except for one lone server that continues to operate somewhere in an unknown part of Pennsylvania's Rust Belt. A relic of the 1990s veiled in mystery, it is a digital archive of humanity's strangest encounters with the unknown, as told by the people who experience them.

My name is Brandon Schexnayder, and you are listening to Fear Daily.

SPEAKER_5 (2:21)

Subject, lock-in, user, what 247 even. Posted, February 11th, 1998

Brandon Schexnayder (2:39)

I wasn't the kind of kid who usually went to church lock-ins. By sophomore year, I was already smoking marlboros behind the football bleachers and sneaking out to shows at the VFW hall. So the thought of spending a Friday night in the gym with the youth group, it felt like volunteering for boredom. But my buddy Jason talked me into it. Said it would be an easy place to hang out without parents around, maybe even sneak in some booze. Plus, he heard a rumor that Andrea Collins, a girl he had been obsessed with since 8th grade, she was going. So we went.

The church sat on the edge of town, a squat brick thing with a white steeple that looked like every other small town church in the Midwest. The walk-in was supposed to be wholesome fun, basketball in the gym, pizza, maybe a movie on VHS if people got tired. Parents dropped us off at 7, picked us up at 7 the next morning, and the rules were simple. Once you're in, you didn't go back out until morning. That was supposed to keep us safe, but it didn't.

Around 10 o'clock after we'd inhaled greasy Papa John's and endured the world's lamest devotional about resisting temptation, a group of us slipped down to the gym basement. Jason had a pint of Southern comfort hidden in his backpack, and we figured we could drink without getting caught. It was me, Jason, Andrea, and this girl Becky, who was Andrea's friend, but not really ours. The basement was half storage, half Sunday school classrooms, concrete floors, dropped ceiling tiles, stained brown from leaks, shelves stacked with hymnals and craft supplies. We flicked on the buzzing fluorescent lights and found a classroom with a round table and a stack of folding chairs. Jason pulled out the bottle and passed it around like contraband treasure. It burned going down, but it was something to do.

At first, it was all dumb jokes and nervous laughter. Jason tried way too hard to impress Andrea, but after a few swigs each, Becky got the idea to play Truth or Dare. Normally, I would have rolled my eyes, but I was tipsy enough to go along. The game started innocent. Andrea dared Jason to chug straight from the bottle. Jason dared Becky to sing one of those syrupy love ballads that was always on the radio. But then Becky dared me to go into the dark hallway and turn off the lights for five minutes. No way, I said. Scared, she grinned. I wasn't scared of the dark, but the basement had this weird hum to it, like a place that didn't want to be disturbed. Still, I wasn't about to chicken out in front of Andrea. Fine, I said and flipped the switch. The room went black, the others laughed, and I stood in the hall, trying to keep cool. I counted seconds in my head, but before I reached a minute, I heard something down the corridor, not footsteps exactly, more like a shuffle, like fabric dragging across the floor.