T O W E R O F
T E R R O R |
Greater is our terror of the unknown --Titus Livius |
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Tower Of Terror, Madison, Idaho |
explored by:
Shady
& Liz,
March 2002
(photos by Shady)
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While visiting
my bestest girly-pal Liz in Idaho, we naturally set aside a day for exploring
"lost" stuff... and boy, oh boy, did we get lost. We started out in
search of a ghost town of dubious existence, with only a scrap of info and a slight idea
of it's whereabouts. We had gotten pretty lost and had pulled over near an old abandoned mill to poke around inside. It was so chilly our breath was
coming out in vapor-puffs; the sky was smoky-gray and bleak while a crunchy blanket of icy
snow covered everything in sight. We were wandering around the rear rooms of the mill when
Liz caught sight of something intriguing in the distance, through an open doorway- a
strange, sky-high, ramshackle tower loomed off in a desolate field out back. It
immediately drew the both of us with it's mysterioso-vibes like moths to that proverbial
light... |
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We couldn't head over there fast
enough, hurrying over the slippery ice and snow along the lonely railroad tracks toward
the weird tower. As we got closer... we saw the words for the first time... "TOWER
OF TERROR"... scrawled in blood-red across the side of the spooky skyscraping
structure. |
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We realized that we had discovered
what must have been used as a haunted house attraction at some point in time. The insanely
tall, narrow building- the "Tower of Terror" itself- was covered in a skin of
cracked and peeling corrugated sheet metal; we couldn't see all the way inside but it
appeared to have at least 6 stories or more. |
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An enclosed courtyard sat flush alongside the
Tower itself, surrounded by a high stone wall. We peeked through a few cracks and openings
to see what looked like some kind of mock-cemetery inside the courtyard, with thick metal
pipes running criss-crossed overhead- perhaps for use in some of the special effects. As
Liz and I circled the site looking for a way to get inside, we found many heavily-barred
doors, ladders that led up to nowhere, and a smaller shed that looked as if it may have
been a ticket booth or maintenance shed. |
We also found an abandoned car
sitting just to the side of the Tower; it was buried up to the hood in snow. Since there
hadn't been any snow in the past few days, we deduced that the car must have been sitting
there for awhile. Kind of spooky to find a car- clean and apparently in decent shape- just
sitting there, buried in snow, alongside a deserted haunted house out in the middle of
pretty-much-nowhere. We both gave a little semi-nervous glance back toward where we had
left our own car, then at each other, before moving on. After trying out some other
possible entrance points without luck, we finally found a sort of gap between the
sheet-metal walls where we could just squeeze through. We found ourselves wedged into a
tiny sliver of space between a structural wall of the Tower and a false wall of sheet
metal which formed a very narrow, dim, and hazardous corridor- the canvas "roof"
just above our heads was sagging and tearing- heavily weighed down with giant
mounds of snow, it was in serious danger of collapsing and burying us both under tons of
freezing snow, sharp sheets of torn metal, and jagged chunks of splintered wood and broken
stone. And then there were the icicles... |
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Hanging precariously from the
canvas "roof", they were thicker and longer than my arm and tapered down
to many deadly-sharp spear-points. We had to kind of duck under them as we moved along,
and I kept half-expecting to be impaled when one of them came loose as I crept under it!
And then there was the one that looked like a giant,
skeletal hand... quite a trip. At the end of the corridor we found one spot
where there was an opening into the Tower itself, but the only way in was to slide down an
unsturdy plastic slide into pitch-blackness. The slide was cracked at the place where it
fastenend to the ledge, and we knew there was no other openings to get in or out of the
place once inside- if that slide came down as we went in, we would be stuck down there. As
tempted as we were, we bypassed trying to venture inside because of the unsafe conditions,
our remote location and freezing weather, and the fact that nobody even knew where we
were... better safe than sorry. We did catch glimpses of a skeleton on a mattress
down there- hopefully it was a a prop and not the owner of the car outside. |
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Foiled by the unstable slide, we
pushed on and found a way into the walled-in courtyard. A hanging specter greeted us as we
entered the "cemetery" within the enclosure. Mock grave markers poked up
crookedly through the snow banks; looking back up at the looming Tower from inside the
creepy courtyard was quite a view. We also noticed that there were a few rather odd doors on the second and third-floor
levels that opened onto thin air and a sheer, nasty drop into the graveyard below. |
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After poking around in the
courtyard a little longer, we decided to take one more look around the outer perimeters of
the Tower site. We found many No Trespassing signs and barred doors, but no other
possible entrances or other clues. We had been out in the freezing temperatures for a
pretty long time at this point and we couldn't feel our extremities any longer, so we
reluctantly decided to head back to the car, leaving the towering empty spookhouse to cast
it's immense shadow far across the ghostly-white snowfield.
This was a great find, one of my all-time favorites.... partly
because it was just a really cool site in itself, but also because of the way we found it
totally and completely by accident- a very happy accident- cause after all,
that's the whole essence of getting lost! *grin*
Do you have any background information or stories to tell about this spooky
site?
Want
to purchase one of these, or any of my other photos...?
O W N A P I E C
E O F L O S T H I S T O R Y:
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