Zombie Manor (Cheshire)
This was possibly the maddest, completely unexpected and insane explore we've been on to date. 'Zombie Manor' was not a name we had associated with this place before we went. This was just a large old place we'd seen, knew not much about, and decided to visit after a fail that morning at a large building which would become one of our eventual favourites. Both are out of Yorkshire by the way as we do leave the county now and again for a bit of foreign decay.
Rocking up, there were a few people about and something going on in the grounds. Most times you have to think on your feet and try to act as naturally as possible as hesitation usually looks conspicuous and suspicious. So we walked with the other randoms who were making their way round the back of the manor into the grounds but ducked off through the bushes when we saw the side entrance to the building. Quick check of the door and we were in. A bit of a shifty about and we were quick to establish it was a strange place with evidence to suggest some cheesy 80's millionaire had owned it. The other half of AY wasn't impressed, and after a long disappointment of a morning already, went off to the car for a nap. That left 2 of us.
After seeing enough of what we thought was the entire house, we saw a fire door on the way back down from the very treacherous upstairs and it looked oddly out of place. Walking through it we were met with a concrete stairwell, much like you'd find in a multi-storey carpark and not what you'd expect to find in a grand manor. Walking to the bottom we found nothing aside from some big boards sealing the bottom up. I'd shrugged and was making my way back upstairs when Mr Bond (an explorer we regularly met up with and a diamond geezer) pushed on one of the boards and it gave way. "C'mon man there's something else through here!"
Well, in all my wildest nightmares I could not have imagined this..... A long dark corridor gave way to various rooms, all with some kind of chilling message daubed on the walls or blood spatters sprayed about. Chains hung up and wheelchairs left abandoned meant this explore had turned from bore to Krueger-esque very quickly and without time to adjust the senses to what the **** was actually going on!
After creeping about we established that no one was about and the threat of being jumped by a member of the undead dissipated. It seems it was the domain of the role-playing/airsoft community and I had to take my hat off to the ingenuity of the set-up.
We actually managed to find our way out of the maze and into a cool little outdoor pool, which then took us to another outbuilding. Completely different again! Like a yuppie's unfinished pad, this block was part fitted with 'lavish' furnishings compared to what we'd seen and it seemed it had been not far off completion at some point in the past, but then abandoned for good. We'd just about got our head round this when an almighty "BOOOOOOM" went off outside and there was some kind of melee going on. As we neared a patio door with a 12 foot drop that looked out onto who-knows-where in the vast grounds, a shotgun went off. Loud enough to make us both jump out of our skin! There was a very intense 'game' going on outside of the building with a lot of very loud weapons and angry voices. Convincing enough that it had us holed up in this quarter for over an hour, extremely reluctant to go out and lose an eye or two or to be accosted by an angry mob for ruining the game. The adrenaline it took to get out the door, through the trees and brambles, over the barbed-wire and through the cornfields back to the car would have lingered for days. Lazy boy napping in the car hadn't a clue what he'd missed. Fantastic day out!
