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.

Missy Thompson
It was a dark, gloomy, rainy day as all of us trampled off the buses as we entered the area of the old shut down mill. I hear wows, oohs and ahhs as we all see how spooky the mill looks from the outside. I can only imagine what it is like from the inside. When we enter the mill I hear shrieks as people turn into the dark hallways. The hallways remind me of walking in the woods in the middle of the night; you don't know what you'll find when you turn. A lot of things are going through my mind things like, will I see any rats if so what will I do? Questions like what will I see? As I look around I see signs and banners that say danger and caution that got me a little nervous. As we walk along I see the strangest things I see things like piles of clothes, bottles of coke not fully drunken and I wonder why didn't they finish and did something happen?

It is very dark and dusty as we get further into the mill. There are holes every where as we see where the machines used to be. I hear Abbie Yoder say "Missy, if I get scared I'm jumping into your arms so be ready!" I laugh at the thought. We start walking up a staircase the rail is dusty and grimy so I don't dare touch it. Pigeons fly around us and people start screaming bat, bat it's a bat! As we reach what I think is the top we see tables that used to hold machines and to this day still memories that hopefully will never be forgotten.

We head back down stairs and I hear the sound of water poring through the holes. The holes make me think of places that people had to escape from. The atmosphere makes me feel like there had just been a war and they had to escape before they all died. We pass a door with all the workers names carved into the wall. Well there not all workers seeing how E.T. signed the wall!

We start to head toward another part of the mill. As we walk down the creepy, dark, wet corridors we see stranger, gross things. We see dead pigeons, rusty water and a bunch of other things. I think about all the memories people may have as I step in puddles; I see a plaque on the wall it says "Safety Award". I wonder if the place looked or felt safer when it was in use because it seems unsafe right now. I'm thinking about if any people died while working here. Mr.Burby said he thinks two people died while working here.

I will never forget the time I spent at the old shut down mill.

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