Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

A long time ago, in a city somewhat far from where I live today, sits a rather unassuming building. There are a couple of other buildings around it that look similar in every way, but this one particular building, sitting in the middle of all of them, held a secret.

The city, who originally owned and used the building, had outgrown it and moved everyone inside to bigger, newer offices in another part of its municipal territory. It sat empty for a while, until a group of teenagers from the local high school reached out to get permission to borrow some of its space. This group of teenagers included my sister, and their need for the space was storage of costumes and set pieces for their independent summer theater program. So, with the city’s blessing, they borrowed space on one of the upper floors.

I was still a kid, maybe 13 years old at this point, and had just started to be on the fringe of this theater group by following my sister around and learning a few things about production. Our Mom passed away about a year before, and so most of the time we had also brought my younger brother along to this building.

Being kids, it wasn’t particularly fun or interesting (at the time) for my brother and I to be around this group of teenagers who we didn’t know and basically had nothing in common with. This eventually got better the more time we spent around them, or at least for it did, as I can’t speak for my brother on this one.

We were only using a couple rooms on the top floor just off the western stairwell, and we visited this old office building a couple of times throughout the summer, each time feeling a little different than before. It started off being eerily quiet. It felt weird to be in there, in rooms that used to be full of the hustle and bustle of people working. The vibe of the building, empty except for a couple of teenagers, and two kids, working on theater costumes and props really felt bizarre. It didn’t dawn on me until the second visit that part of what made things feel so still in there was the lack of air conditioning. The city wasn’t actively using it, so of course they weren’t going to be running the A/C. I’m sure my sister and her friends were just glad they had electricity for the lights. The stifling summer heat contributed to the awkward stillness inside, making me feel more out of place than I already had been. Looking back on it now, it almost felt like visiting some abandoned building that people claimed was haunted.

But it wasn’t just all of this, the strangers and the empty building, that made me feel out of place. The vast majority of people in the city had no idea what was going on in this building, but I’m sure most of them (at least the adults, anyway) knew the history of it, and what else was in there.

On one of the last trips I made with my sister to the building, I had asked if I could go explore since I knew I wasn’t going to get another chance. She said no, because she didn’t want us messing with anything that might get the city mad at them, but her friend made a comment that caught me by surprise.

“We also don’t want you wandering into one of the jail cells and accidentally locking yourself in, because we don’t have the keys for those.”

Several trips to this building, and this was the first time I had heard any mention of jail cells in the building. It was then that I learned this wasn’t just some random municipal office building, and to prove it they took my brother and I down to the lower levels. It was warmer and stuffier down there, and they didn’t turn on the lights on the floor, only letting us see in a little ways with the sunlight that came in through the stairwell. They opened the door to let us peek inside, and when we looked down the hallway we could see the bars along one side.

I’m glad we didn’t go back after that, not because the existence of the jail cells made it seem haunted and foreboding, but because the whole building contributed to making me feel like I didn’t belong there. Thinking back on this now, that feeling was also rather thrilling.