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.

MacKenzie Smith
The Eastern Fine Paper Mill opened in 1889 in Brewer, Maine. It closed down in January 2004. The Brewer Middle School 7th grade went down to this haunted, hollow, tomb on Thursday, October 12, 2006. We got there and everyone was eager to get in and get jumped by the ripped-up metal tickling their spines, and the pipes trying to trip unsuspecting 12-year-olds.

The first step I took was the most spine-tingling emotion I have ever felt in my life. It was pitch black. Luckily, I brought my flashlight. As Karma comes around, my friend tackled me and took it. When I looked over to my left I saw a rail with clothes that were purple, blue, green, yellow and any other color you can think of all over it, probably from the 1980s. We walked down a little further and there was a flash of light and I stepped into a beautiful, yet hair-raising-on-your-neck-place. It was pouring rain when we got there so this open place was flooded with 1/4 of an inch of red colored water. There were holes on either side of the walkway so water trickled down the edges of where we could fall to our deaths. I don't know about that place still, but when I think about it, I still can imagine when I saw the dead pigeon with one wing spread-out like it fell during flight.

As the tour went on I smelled something that I will never forget. The odor was foul. It smelled like wet, old lady socks. Bleh! It wasn't very encouraging to take the next step into a room. I did anyway, because I take chances that only crazy people would think of.

I hear this creak and as I spun around to see the cause of the noise, I saw one of the tour people going up narrow, grimy, creaky stairs. I sighed because I really didn't want one of those stairs to break with the force of me or any of my other friends on it. One at a time we went up those blackened stairs to two rooms. The first one we entered had a chemical smell. I looked over to my left and I saw a half-full bottle of coca-cola. I looked farther down and I saw a foggy, empty area that we didn't go in.

We walked with our tour guides and our teachers to this place that gave me chills. It was empty and cold. I don't know what it was, but there was something that tickled my back up to my neck. At first I thought it was a spider, or one of my friends. I felt my back and turned around, no one was there. It is just one of the mysteries that really can't be solved. Sometimes you can't see a "ghost", you just have a feeling. Very uncomfortable. I had one of these feelings and I started to feel dizzy, like when you don't have enough oxygen in your lungs to keep you up. I tipped back and forth. I almost fell backwards from this noxious feeling. Because I have so many friends, one of them caught me and helped me up. I didn't want to tell any of the teachers because I wanted to continue the tour. I was peachy when I got out of that horrid room.

This building has had so many people pass through it that they leave memories here that you can just feel. Like the names of workers carved into the rusty, red door.

When we walked out of the mill I sighed with relief that we were out of there. After we got on the bus and the 350,000 area building was out of sight, I have some questions. How many people died here? Why did it closed down? Why did all the machines look like they were ripped out quick? All of these questions were never answered, but I have a feeling I will soon find out..

Last updated: