Welwyn Pictures - The Possible Gateways


The mansion to the left, boiler house to the right


The Boiler House - intermittently closed, sometimes opned up.


The portal - too choked with wreckage to navigate at the time...



The greenhouse building. Everyone knows this place.


The greenhouse garage entrance.


The creepy garage. Drip drip drip...


Another portal into darkness. The floors are covered in layers of debris.

I love exploring in places that I am not supposed to be; both figuratively and literally. While many of you will immediately read into this as a sinister intonation of base instinct, in this case I will be speaking literally.
I had spent most of my adolescent and pre-adult years indulging a dangerous hobby of urban (and in most cases suburban) exploration - read: trespassing in (usually condemned) spaces closed off to the public, for reasons of structural instability, chemical or radioactive danger or unexplained circumstances. Another term for this is a Spelunker:

n. One who explores caves chiefly as a hobby; a caver.

I was an infamous break-and-enter conquistador. I used bolt cutters to break locks, kicked in gigantic multi-hinged security doors, destroyed windows with large cylindrical objects and have even used shotguns to render what was once sealed revealed. I was certainly not a conventional vandal, and took umbrage with any discoveries of graffiti or signs of destruction. My usual reasons for these explorations was just to see what was in there. Later on I had started taking photographs.
With the hour or two of free time that I try to allot myself every few late nights, I try to harness the power of Google and other search methods to research (what seems to be) arcane subject matter. One disturbing find - People that share my interest are legion.
Ok, so I am not a criminal nut. Take one look at the site Infiltration.org and you will see that this is a very serious pastime for those who are a bit more than thrill-seekers. Inquisitive minds demand answers, and if we have to force entry to get them, we will.
The city of Glen Cove that I grew up in is very old, very historic and very weird, in a fascinatingly good way. There are ruins of Gargantuan mansions and estate gardens all over the town, towers, terraces, foundations, hillside bunkers, bomb shelters, tunnels and whole, intact structures still standing (containing within them bomb shelters, tunnels, secret rooms, hidden staircases, etc). Most are the remnants of the age of the Robber Barons - The Morgans, Pratts, Vanderbilts, Whitneys, et al.
My current fascination remains on the old Pratt estate. I referenced it in a past entry here exercising creative license in my impressions of the place. The grounds of Welwyn are incredible. It is approximately 200 acres of semi-abandoned woodland, containing ponds, creeks, a salt marsh, beachfront and multiple buildings, including a large Georgian-style mansion, maintenance buildings, garages, greenhouses and other assorted structures, all dispersed throughout the property, and all, except the mansion itself, derelict. The greenhouse is basically the concrete skeleton of its former glory, having endured glass-breaking vandal through the decades and multiple fires. It is here that a lot of people begin their enchantment with the place as it is such a stark contrasting of natural beauty and growth and despairing entropy. I liken the place to a coral reef where an old sunken ship lies rusting and crumbling away while the sea life takes a hold of it and uses it for its purposes of survival and growth. It is an incredible site, giving off an aura of quiet dignity and eerie sadness.

I will cut to the chase here - in my protracted Google sessions, I have come across sites extolling the beauty of Welwyn, beautiful photo galleries of the aforementioned greenhouses, the speculation of its possible expansion underground, namely, a vast tunnel system that honeycombs throughout a vast network of subterranean passageways.

An arcane Usenet posting has started a miniature storm of X-Files-like conspiracy and unconfirmed mutterings by unverified sources. In other words, it is all hearsay, but interesting stuff nonetheless:

Newsgroups: alt.college.tunnels
Path: news.cs.indiana.edu!usenet.ucs.indiana.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!portal!cpc
From: cpc@shell.portal.com (Chris Cebelenski)
Subject: Glen Cove Tunnels
Message-ID:
Sender: news@unix.portal.com
Nntp-Posting-Host: jobe.shell.portal.com
Organization: Portal Communications Company
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 01:00:52 GMT
Lines: 32

Okay, it's not exactly a college, but the tunnels there do connect to
just about everything, including the Middle School. I grew up in Glen
Cove, NY, and spent quite a bit of time exploring the tunnels:

1. Middle School/Daisy School Tunnels - From the Wunsch (sp?) arts center
dressing rooms (normally locked) you can enter the school twisties. From there
you can get into the main city tunnels
2. Underground river - From the highway there is an underground river entrance,
and lots of rats too. I've been quite a few miles into this and have never
found an exit.
3. From a (mostly) covered hatch in the Wellwyn (sp?) preserve you can enter
the oldest of the tunnels, which consist of a long lost goverment research
center and LOTS of neat abondoned rooms. We've dubbed this "The Lost City",
and it is REALLY extensive. From things I've found there I'd probably date
it to the 1950's. All sorts of abondoned labs, sealed rooms, deep shafts,
etc.
4. And finially-- Some strange underground railway. The gauge is too
small to be a train, but it's similar. It's in very bad repair. I followed
one branch quite far and eventually found myself in some building that I
didn't have the guts to explore. From the compass and distance (pedometer)
I'd say we had left the city limits.

Anyone else explore these?

C.

--
=============================================================
Chris Cebelenski cpc@shell.portal.com
Science Fiction SIG Moderator cpc@cup.portal.com
Portal Communications

Though I can't confirm it at the time of this writing, I believe I know who the writer is. I have tracked down someone with the same name, around the right age who was originally from Glen Cove in Massachusetts. I would like to contact him and find out if he was fabricating this seemingly too-good-to-be-true account, and if not, to tell me where the damn hatch is! The main reason that I do not dismiss this posting as a bunch of useless garbage is that he accurately describes the tunnel system beneath the Wunsch Arts Center in the Glen Cove Middle School. I have been down there hundreds of times in my years there and the description is spot-on. Not everyone knows about this place and it is enough for me to verify that he is truthful in part 1 of the posting. Part 2 is possible but unverified and part 3, until proven is speculative fiction.
This is beginning to look like an episode of Lost. I have reason to believe there is something definitely possible about large underground spaces based on the fact that I know exactly where one is in the middle of the woods at Welwyn. I also believe that this area is largely unknown to the public, and that it has not been visited in some time. I was last there about 4 or 5 years ago and left a few markers there to see if any human activity would follow me. I plan on going back to this place this coming weekend and will take many photographs to prove that this is not all kooky conspiracy theory.

All of my friends are invited to chime in, espesially those who are Illuminated on this topic.

Old Westbury Gardens, Old Westbury, New York
Sunday September 18, 2005

A magnificent place indeed.

DMT, N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, is a crystalline extract present in thousand of species of plants, mainly from South America. It's usual mode of ingestion is smoking, but can be snorted or taken orally (with the aid of an MAOI - no thanks). It's effects usually come on in seconds, and the trip, which usually lasts only 10 minutes or so, renders the user completely immobile, aside from repetitive movements and mumbling. The odd thing about the reported experiences is that the inward state of the "Voyager" is quite lucid, though not in the familiar sense of the term. DMT users generally remember all details of their trips, unlike LSD or Psilocybin. Also, unlike the two aforementioned psychedelics, DMT completely removes you from this sphere of existence and does not leave your consciousness mingling with the outside world, other than sound. The most common descriptions of the DMT experience are geometric patterns repeating, multiplying and changing form at the onset, coupled with auditory "whooshing" and humming vibration, followed by explosions of indescribable colors, light flashed and "stained glass" or "mosaic" patterns pulsating, undulating and eventually reforming into the true vision of the universe, existence, matter, antimatter, God, discarnate entities, angels, demons and insectoid beings that usually seized the voyager and enter them through a sort of osmosis. Visions of endless arched corridors, some glorious, others sinister, shadowy figures operating indeterminate machines, archetypes of elves, faeries, gnomes and other folkloric beings prevail, as well as kaleidoscopic mandalas and two-dimensional cartoon-like visions of their actual physical surroundings. Insights are sometimes given, and usually come back to this world with the user, who is fully recovered within an hours' time. Sounds a lot like acid? I think not. LSD contains many elements of the DMT experience but is generally a less lucid experience and also can last up to 12 hours or more.

I am finding it difficult to relay a literal experience of "lifting the veil" in so many words. The tricky thing about a true DMT trip are the unspoken insights (there is that word again) - One shared satori distilled from the voyage is that there seems to be a Divine Entity behind all this material business. There are minions of entities (seeming neither benevolent nor malevolent) constantly at work behind the spaces we do not see, operating odd machinery to generate the dream that is life.

So many like archetypes are purported to exist in the world between the spaces we dwell in. Cultures isolated from one another have common myths and legends of elemental spirit intelligences. I have experiences glimpses myself (without the aid of hallucinogens) of the agencies that seem to be generating my paradigm - A recurring dream of the small Jawa-like beings always busy at work on some sort of large metal machine. It feels like a waking dream, one that I am temporarily paralyzed within, for a fleeting moment before there is nothing there except for the moonlight streaming through the window near my bed. The classic schlock-horror film Phantasm used these creatures quite liberally throughout the story, frightening me out of my wits the first time I saw it because it seem to be a communication to me that my dreams held an ounce of something that may be the truth...
I have no real definition of truth anymore other than that which lies proven within the finite confines of science.

For some weirder reading, check out Erowids's Experience Vaults

The Museum of Bad Album Covers
Now here is a web site I can spend hours on.

I have nothing else to say today.

In the words of Neil from the superb and highly-underrated British comedy show The Young Ones, "it's getting really heavy and uncool in here!"

Time for another (purely subjective and vastly self-indulgent) List of my favorite things! Yes! The derivative format that is so overused by all magazines all the time and tepid cable TV networks such as E and VH1!

My 5 Favorite Songs On My iPod Today (subject to change and evolve tomorrow)

1. Echo And The Bunnymen - Killing Moon
Quasi-Cure Brits singing odes to the dimness, rain and murk. Straight from the trenchcoat and male eyeliner heart of the 80's, Echo were always one of those bands I sincerely wanted to like more than I really did, and still do. I find most of their music just a tad boring, either too pop (Lips Like Sugar) or too gloomy and plodding (the Album Heaven Up Here). I first discovered their fleeting majesty upon hearing their cover of The Doors' People are Strange from the Lost Boys soundtrack and was impressed. They have all the right elements - The baritone vocals of Ian McCulloch, the above-par musicianship of the other Bunnymen, cool guitar sound, air of mystery and great hair (for that time). Killing Moon (off the album Ocean Rain) was just one of those songs I always knew but didn't think much of at the time it was currently popular. Rediscovering it a few years ago I dig it in a big way. Somewhat like a modern version of the Doors, odd chiming guitars and underlying darkness, without the trappings of anything vaguely resembling heavy metal or the like. It's very hard to describe to someone that has not heard it. It is not fruity like most of the 80's new wave crap that is currently in vogue - I was too busy trying to be a parking lot-dwelling dirtbag, listening to Iron Maiden and W.A.S.P. until I heard Black flag....
That can be a whole other blog entry.

2. Deftones - Ihabia
The Deftones are commonly (and quite mistakenly) lumped in with the already-dated Nü-Metal mooks (such as Korn, Limp Bizkit and Godsmack) by virtue of the era that they became somewhat popular in. Anyone who really likes this band knows that they are a universe away from that whole horrid sound that saturated our mediocre airwaves back 3-4 years ago. This track is a searing dynamic jetstream of molten guitar voltage, angelic vocal harmonies and cathartic screaming madness, based on nothing familiar and leaving me saying "Oh Snap" every time I hear it. An interesting note is that Jimmy 3K actually gave me the CD that this is on, Around The Fur, which is an epic soundscape in its entirety after I raved about them after seeing a video of theirs late one night whilst extremely baked. Though they use a lot of the Drop D tuning that other aforementioned bands would overuse to the point of a migraine, Deftones did it first and used it interestingly and countering every shriek, squeal and shred with a contrasting and complimentary harmony, creating an unholy noise that resonates timelessly.

3. Sleep - The Druid
I wrote a review of their album Dopesmoker a while back - they still blow my mind. They have since broken up and key members formed High On Fire - another blistering chunk of insanity.
The true heirs to the bludgeoning mayhem of Black Sabbath, carrying on the spectral creepiness and impending doom that is often attempted but rarely achieved in the Stoner Rock genre...
This track must be heard to be believed, sounding as if it were recorded under a starless black sky at the base of megalith-encrusted mountain, surrounded by skulls on sharp pikes and luminous red pupil-less eyes peering out from the dark thickets. Eldritch is the only word to describe this, echoey and shouty, thick, mutilating monster riffs, followed by a devilish bluesy lead outro. When I listen to this I want to wear a suit of granite armor and smite my enemies with sledgehammer with a mallet head the size of a watermelon. I want to drink goat's blood from a skull and carve glowing runes into the walls of a witch's tomb. When it is over I then resume my life's destiny as a suburban dad, stopping at the ATM and picking up a half gallon of milk before going home.

4. Horace Andy - Collie Weed
Horace Andy is a reggae singer, popular in the U.K. in the 70's and has been the sometime hired vocalist for Massive Attack - the atmospheric, hard to categorize musical collective from Bristol, England. Admittedly, my experience with Reggae does not extend too far beyond Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff and Peter Tosh, all "Roots" reggae artists from the classic age of the genre, but this sounds like it is right from that point in time judging by overall sound of the delightful sunny music. If you have ever heard Massive Attack (often referred to as originators of the Trip-Hop sound), especially the tracks with Horace on vocals, it is difficult to reconcile his sun-drenched past sound with the sinister, brooding, dusted with PCP sound of Massive. Yes, they all smoke tons of pot and cannabis-induced music runs the gamut from the Grateful Dead to Cypress Hill to Willie Nelson, but such a quantum shift in overall atmosphere is jarring and disorienting. Listen to Horace Andy sing and it will conjure up visions of the Caribbean that white folk idealize it to be, lazy afternoons on the beach, drinking dark rum and eating jerk chicken. The voice of an angel who has frolicked amongst the devils.

5. Low - On The Edge Of
These cats are an odd bunch, and that is meant in the most complimentary way.
Low's moniker aptly describes most of their early catalog, in addition to being slow as well. Quiet, to the point of sleepiness, slow-paced without becoming sluggish, and impossibly melodic under the circumstances. The band is a trio, led by a husband/wife two-part harmony, with a bottom end that rattles your solar plexus in an inexplicable manner. If I sound puzzled by them it is because I am, and to add to the deepening mystery of the band, they are devout Mormons! Besides the Osmonds, how many Mormons truly rock? I am not sure "rock" is the correct word, but it sounded good a few seconds ago... This track is from their latest record The Great Destroyer and I am in love with the whole sound. Shimmering guitars alternating between gloomy and bright (I seem to like this sort of thing if you haven't already noticed) and the vocals - Beyond a Simon & Garfunkel harmony thing - her voice is absolutely ethereal and his contrastingly earthbound... A sad sounding song with cryptic lyrics. I can't figure them out, can you?

Soft from your lips to the rise of your stomach
Your lungs filled with fingers keep jamming words down my throat
Nothing to steal we've got nothing to love
Nothing to spill because oh we're so innocent oh

Oh on the edge of
Oh on the edge of

I could have built you a house on the ocean
The ocean repeating and receding into the sun

So cut to you dead and now cut to the laughing
Cut through our bodies and lastly into our oh

Oh on the edge of
Oh
Oh on the edge of

I'm not sure if it is deep, but it feels that way.

What everyone fails to understand about the Bush Administration response to Katrina is the underlying reasoning. My wife (who is an Evangelical Christian) explained to me that this is the beginning of the 'End Times'. Katrina is just one of the portents. Bush et al are just marking time until Rapture. God smote the modern Sodom as a sign of his might (on this Dr. Dobson and Bin Laden agree). This event in just another sign of the Second Coming. By controlling the press, freedom of movement, etc. Bush is help people to get ready for the Rapture. None of the problems are the fault of Bush, they are controlled by God. So do not blame Bush, it is not his fault, God made him do it.

This post reeks of some very derivative and formulaic sounding pooh , and one thing that smells worse than me bathing in week old taco filling it's as phony as phony gets and was mad-lib fill out by a very unimaginative (mad) liberal:

(GWBush+Christian Right+(Dr.D/OBL)=Will/Wrath O' God.

It's actually beginning to frighten me how liberals assert they are the superior group because they can't present any argument that does not present anything but the above equation, and I say frighten as this was what you are taught in grade school; the definition of insanity is trying to do the same thing over and over the same way and expecting different results (Sounds suspiciously like science, which does constantly differs on results based on the same experiments oddly enough depending on who is financing them)

Yea, ok, the definition of insanity denotes a lack of reason but this would also apply.

Here's what I know so far

Belief that there is any time of divine architecture to the universe means you are more of a freak than Nijinsky on a quart of liquid acid.

You're not really a racist if you know full well minorities will never make anything of themselves without your provisions.

No wars ever existed before Chimp stole the election; if they did they were justifiable.

It's interesting to think my northern ancestors fought for the reunification of the United States at a cost well over half a million American lives in a war that lasted a little under 5 years was understandable since it did make it illegal to own another human being, however ridding the world of a "democratically" elected president (who won 100% of the vote, how popular is that!?) who ordered the murder of 180,000 men women and children (or 280,000 from Amnesty's and the International Red Cross count) and dumping their bodies into the dirt to hide them gave provocation to the evil United States to commit the biggest atrocity the world since it caused over half the deaths of Americans on September 11, 2001 in just under three years!

Let's see:

Vietnam lasted through two democratic and one republican terms of office, ending during the Nixon administration, it cause over 57,000 American casualties. Somehow the "Tricky Dick" tag will always be associated with this war, even though Kennedy declared it and Johnson escalated it and despite all the half assed Oliver Stone you may be getting your history from John F. was not about to high tail it from a bunch of raw fish head eating commies after basically telling the mighty USSR if they wanted a BBQ he would bring the mother fucking lighter fluid.

Ok, I'm signing off before I turn into John Belushi's "Bad Luck of the Irish" commentary, but this half fucked nonsense is not going to work. We used to agree to disagree, now we are too fucking stupid to know how to do that any longer, or too fat, too lazy and too stupid; most of all too bored, too boring and predictable.

Feh.

I've been silent for a while with good reason.
Look what is going on around us.

I started to write something many times this week and couldn't seem to articulate my thoughts properly, then i came across this New York Times Article.

Since we all know that posting a link is quite unreliable, here is the article.

September 4, 2005
The Bursting Point
By DAVID BROOKS

As Ross Douthat observed on his blog, The American Scene, Katrina was the anti-9/11.

On Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani took control. The government response was quick and decisive. The rich and poor suffered alike. Americans had been hit, but felt united and strong. Public confidence in institutions surged.

Last week in New Orleans, by contrast, nobody took control. Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective. The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned. Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans squabbled while the nation was ashamed.

The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting.

And the key fact to understanding why this is such a huge cultural moment is this: Last week's national humiliation comes at the end of a string of confidence-shaking institutional failures that have cumulatively changed the nation's psyche.

Over the past few years, we have seen intelligence failures in the inability to prevent Sept. 11 and find W.M.D.'s in Iraq. We have seen incompetent postwar planning. We have seen the collapse of Enron and corruption scandals on Wall Street. We have seen scandals at our leading magazines and newspapers, steroids in baseball, the horror of Abu Ghraib.

Public confidence has been shaken too by the steady rain of suicide bombings, the grisly horror of Beslan and the world's inability to do anything about rising oil prices.

Each institutional failure and sign of helplessness is another blow to national morale. The sour mood builds on itself, the outraged and defensive reaction to one event serving as the emotional groundwork for the next.

The scrapbook of history accords but a few pages to each decade, and it is already clear that the pages devoted to this one will be grisly. There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them.

It's already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade. Americans have had to acknowledge dark realities that it is not in our nature to readily acknowledge: the thin veneer of civilization, the elemental violence in human nature, the lurking ferocity of the environment, the limitations on what we can plan and know, the cumbersome reactions of bureaucracies, the uncertain progress good makes over evil.

As a result, it is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970's, another decade in which people lost faith in their institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the future.

"Rats on the West Side, bedbugs uptown/What a mess! This town's in tatters/I've been shattered," Mick Jagger sang in 1978.

Midge Decter woke up the morning after the night of looting during the New York blackout of 1977 feeling as if she had "been given a sudden glimpse into the foundations of one's house and seen, with horror, that it was utterly infested and rotting away."

Americans in 2005 are not quite in that bad a shape, since the fundamental realities of everyday life are good. The economy and the moral culture are strong. But there is a loss of confidence in institutions. In case after case there has been a failure of administration, of sheer competence. Hence, polls show a widespread feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.

Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970's. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law and order. (Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely G.O.P. nominee a few months ago, could now win in a walk.) Maybe there will be call for McCainist patriotism and nonpartisan independence. All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change.

We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.

E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com

Aside from tha asinine reference to Steroids in Baseball (who really cares? It's a game!) The mick Jagger lyrical reference felt profound. I found that this piece spoke of everything I am feeling right now.

What the world needs now are a lot of really good fart jokes.