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.

Yuhi Sasaki
When I first saw the mill, I thought this was a giant grave yard.  As I got closer and closer to the mill, my heart started to beat faster and harder.  When I got in the mill, it started to get chilly. The mill seemed like an old dark prison, trapped with all kinds of dead living creatures.  

It was getting darker and darker every time I take a step.  As I turned on my flashlight, I saw a drip of blood.  When I turned my head toward the blood, I saw ... a dead bird.  Farther and farther I went; I saw something on the wall. It said Marlee and Fred with a heart around their names, and I said to my head," Did these people die in this building? Were they going out?"  More I thought of that creepier it got.

Next, I went to the second floor.  As I was walking on the steps, I can hear a loud screechy noise. I had this feeling that the stairs were going to claps on me.  After I got off the stairs, I saw a lot of wires on the ground.  I knew these wires were safe, but I was still freaked out by it.  Past the wires, I smelled rust. I looked up to the ceiling and all I can see was an old wooden ceiling that seemed to fall on me.

When I came back down, I smelled trash.  In about ten minutes, I saw a whole lot of old trash. I also saw water, gushing out of the ceiling splashing on the ground, and as I got closer to the water, it splashed on me.  

As I went down to the basement, I saw an elevator.  This elevator wasn't the normal, hotel elevator. This one had a wooden gate in the front and you can see the people who are the elevator if some people were on it. There was also writing on it. It looked like name of the people who worked there. As soon as I saw that, it creeped me out even more. In my head, I was saying," I want to get out of here!"

Fifteen minutes later. I got out of the building. I felt calm and safe.  At the end, I was thinking, how many people died here? Is there a ghost? Or who wrote on the wall? Thinking of that, I thought, this place is just a plain old mysterious building.

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