In the middle of October, 2006, the Grade Seven students at Brewer Middle School took a field trip to a building that they had seen from a distance for most of their lives, but had never visited up close. The tour guides were various city officials and the future developers of the old paper mill. It was raining quite hard and the students were poorly equipped with flashlight, which added to the overall effect of the visit. What follows are the essays, as written, by roughly half of the students. The essays are presented as written by the students, hoping to preserve their turns of phrase, their usages and their idiosyncrasies as writers.

Abby Fizell
The Eastern Fine Mill was like an abandoned graveyard, dead, dark and alone. The cold chill stopped me as I inched toward the door. It was cold and quiet, except for the water dripping from the roof leaking in from the holes. There was a thick layer of dust all over the floor and on the objects that were left over, like a tomb with all the people's belongings. There were leftover parts/pieces of machinery as were, a gas mask, shoes and clothing. There were also signs, trash, wood, paper, mold, and something else that frightened me. It was a wool purse that had something in it. I almost went over and opened it to see what was in it.  Then I saw a dead pigeon resembling a dead person in a tomb.  Peeling paint like a humans dry, peeling skin.

The Mill actually resembled a work place, because of the time card thing still visible on a wall. A red steal door was scratched on by the workers, names and dates like a tomb stone. I smelled the vile smell, like a rotting body. In one part of the building they brought us to there was a horrible stench of the gasoline from the machines that were left in there. When the hostess people were talking there was a strange sounding echo throughout the Mill. The Mill had enormous holes where the paper machines were used. I wonder if anyone... died from the machines. Or of anyone fell in on of those holes. (which would probably mean that the person died, or that person would have broken almost all of their bones? Right?)

Ceilings and floors were falling apart and rotting as well so therefore we weren't able to go to some rooms. Stairways that lead to who knows where around the Mill. When we were going back up the stairs from coming up from the red steal door something solid fell on my head, and I had no idea what it was or if anyone dropped it on my head. A stairwell that we went on was creaky and wooden, so I thought that if was going to collapse. The whole time I was there I couldn't stop thinking that the Eastern Fine Mill was going to extravagant any minute. I was trying to scare people that the Mill would collapse too.

I wonder what the Mill is going to become? I think that they are making a museum out of some of it. The thing I want the Mill to be is a Hotel because there are stories that say that it's haunted and some people will go there just because it's haunted. Or at least I would.

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