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Why is this a big deal? Any large campus, whether it is a college or university, or a corporate facility, is going to have utilities, steam pipes, chilled water pipes, etc running in tunnels under their buildings.
-------------------- Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket? Posts: 782 | From: Arlington, TX | Registered: Jul 2005
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Ohio University in Athens has utility tunnels. A murder was committed in one of them while I was attending in the early 1980's. The body was left in the tunnel and discovered after the smell spread throughout the surrounding portion of campus.
-------------------- How homophobic do you have to be to have penguin gaydar? - Lewis Black Posts: 8322 | From: Columbus, OH | Registered: Aug 2005
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There are tunnels under the University of Detroit that, legend has, were used by students and staff during the 1967 riot to move around campus.
Having been in those tunnels, I must say that it is not a place to play: A punctured steam line can scald and, with the pressure ususally in a pipe, pierce flesh. It could potentially amputate a body part. Not to mention that the tempurature in those tunnels exceeds 110 degrees F.
-------------------- "Chuck E. Cheese called. They want their band back."
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UToledo has those in some buildings as well, and between some buildings (UHall, Stranahan and Gillham, for example). Nothing unusual.
-------------------- "To be or not to be! That is the question! Now, will you answer, dare, double dare, or take the Physical Challenge?" --Mark Summers as Hamlet Countdown: 177 days and counting... or less. My blog. 14 keyboards owed. Posts: 5584 | From: Ohio | Registered: Dec 2003
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I've been down in the tunnels under the University of California at Irvine: very clean, neat, tidy, dry, and kinda boring.
But I have also been in the tunnels under CalTech, and those are something else! Deep, ugly, filthy, slimy, wet, dark, and scary. These even go deeper, having what we D&D players would recognize with a shiver as a Second Level. As well, there is a narrow space that leads between two series of tunnels, the dreaded "North-South Crawl." I have not done the crawl, but I have seen the entrance. (Frankly, I do not think I would fit!) I know two people who have done the crawl, and they say it was nightmarish.
Silas
Posts: 16801 | From: San Diego, CA | Registered: Sep 2000
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The University of Queensland has tunnels under it. I don't think most of them are used anymore. It was used as Allied Land Headquarters for the South Pacific theatre during WWII and the tunnels were part of that complex. I haven't been in them, but I've looked through several entrances. A lot is bricked up now.
-------------------- Check out my handmade pens Check back often because the page changes often Posts: 831 | From: Brisbane, Australia | Registered: Jun 2005
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Ah, this brings back fond memories of UW Madison. There are said to be tunnels under that campus as well. I remember when I worked at the Memorial Union there was a guy called Tunnel Bob. He was a little bit crazy, and I was told he had spent a little too much time in the tunnels below.
I had looked for the tunnels myself in the Memorial Union basement (which is kind of a creepy place anyway) and only succeeded in locking myself in the freezer for a short period of time.
There was an urban legend my brother had told me nearly 20 years ago: Some people wanted to "act out" their D&D games in the tunnels under Madison and somehow one of them ended up dead. Of course Dungeons and Dragons was responsible for bringing Satan into the 80's, or so says my aunt.
Posts: 439 | From: Redondo Beach, CA | Registered: Sep 2005
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-------------------- How homophobic do you have to be to have penguin gaydar? - Lewis Black Posts: 8322 | From: Columbus, OH | Registered: Aug 2005
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U of Guelph has tunnels underneath it as well. Again this shouldn't be surprising. What is interesting to is that there is (purportedly) access to them via my residence building. My building however was constructed in 1914 and was originally a servant's residence, as is my understanding. So I wonder if our tunnels predate the school itself. However, as far as I understand the school's history, the Ontario Agricultural College had existed here since 1874, founding the larger university community 90 years later. So I suppose the original tunnel system predates the university itself, but I'm pretty sure that there's a tunnel system currently in use. If I wasn't so fond of my rez, my school and my lack of criminal record, I would perhaps consider investigating the entrance to the old tunnels. I mean, it's hard to find private space in residence
-------------------- "I think I just had an evilgasm."-Xykon, OOTS
"Sacrificing minions: Is there any problem it can't solve?" -Xykon, OOTS
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McMaster University not only has tunnels under some of the buildings, but they are open to students. We all used them to get to classes without going outside, esp. in winter. The pipes etc are concealed in the walls. If you go into the lesser used areas you can hear them. Unfortunately that was only for some of the buildings, sigh. They connected to at least one former bomb shelter, which was called "the Tank" and used as a bookstore.
-------------------- Good morning Starshine! The Earth says hello. Posts: 119 | From: Ontario, Canada | Registered: Jun 2005
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I went for a job at Oxford University and was taken on a tour of various departments, including the Bodleian Library, which has a vast system of tunnels and all sorts running for miles beneath the city - truly fascinating.
The town over the river from me is also riddled with priest tunnels and Royalist hidey-holes and the like.
In Penzance at New Year I saw the remnants of subterranean tunnel systems used by pirates and smugglers hundreds of years ago - I think it's fair to say that a lot of the UK is shot through with tunnels
-------------------- This is where I come up with something right? Something really clever... Posts: 6552 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2002
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North Carolina State has tunnels, too. I've heard that hobos would sleep down there in the 1930s. There is a railroad track that runs right through the middle of campus, so it seems logical. Of course I wouldn't be too surprised if homeless people slept down there nowadays, either.
-------------------- "Unseasonable is an odd word to begin with. It sounds like it's describing something that it's impossible to sprinkle pepper on." -- Nonny Posts: 5483 | From: Just south of Folsom Prison, CA | Registered: Jul 2002
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The network of tunnels under the large Victorian built psychiatric hospital I used to work in were really creepy...and crawling with cockroaches too.
If a patient went missing a member of staff from each ward had to run to the nursing office and pick up a slip naming the part of the buildng you were allocated to search. Believe me those tunnels made the basement of Kingdom Hospital look like a fairy grotto.
All the way to collect my slip I'd be saying please please please don't let me get the dungeons and of course sometimes I did because some of the more sadistically inclined nursing officers seemed to get considerable gratification from sending frightened young students to search down there. Sods.
Posts: 589 | From: Oxfordshire, UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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I was looking for an image of the hospital I mentioned in my previous post and found this site http://www.sub-urban.com/index.htm. The site doesn't feature the old place I worked in but several of the old hospitals are very similar.
It would seem that some people break into derelict buildings as a passtime. Not my idea of fun but I guess it takes all sorts.
Posts: 589 | From: Oxfordshire, UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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There are tunnls all over the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus; many are quite open and official and are recognized passageways between buildings. If you've ever been through a winter in Minneapolis, you know why. There are also tunnls that were built originally for maintainance and/or utilities that people aren't SUPPOSED to use to get from one part of campus to another, but it is sort of an open secret that they are there, and the administration (at least during the winter months) doesn't do much about stopping.
My late Mother taught at the U of M, and I got one of my degrees there; both of us knew how to get to the parts of campus where we usually went by going mostly underground.
When she took the bus, Mother only had to cross the street, go into a building, and take the elevator to the subbasement; from there, she could take tunnls almost to the building where her office and classroom were--she only had to go up to the ground floor, exit the building, and cross a courtyard. On days she drove, she could get from the parking garage to her office/classroom building without poking her nose outside once.
It was a little harder for me, as my classes were in several different buildings, but I could pretty much get around underground during the winter months; sometimes I had to take a circutuous (sp.?) route, and a sometimes I had to take the 'unofficial' passages, at least one of which was pretty scary.
-------------------- "The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart."--Iris Murdoch Posts: 3307 | From: Charleston, WV | Registered: Oct 2002
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