My brothers and I have made a practice of being mischievous whenever we get the opportunity. It started the way things always do for teenage boys – toilet-papering a classmate’s house, pranking friends from our youth group, sneaking onto our neighbor’s garage roof to dive into our little, backyard pool. My mom always said that she was waiting for my dad to grow up. As long as we weren’t committing a felony or putting someone in grave danger, Dad never did much to stop us. In fact, he often joined us in diving off that garage roof. Mom couldn’t have been surprised when we added “urban exploration” to our miscreant activities on Thanksgiving of 2006.
My younger brother, Jimmy, was coming home for the holiday from his first semester at U.T. Austin. Mom wanted to be sure that she would spend some quality time with her sons. She managed to convince the owner of some small restaurant to reserve a table for our family on the patio overlooking El Paso’s Thanksgiving parade for breakfast. I’m sure she envisioned a new Thanksgiving tradition.
Of course, parking was a nightmare that morning and my older brother Robert and I ended up having to park half a mile away from the restaurant. Walking down the street to join our family, Robert and I spotted the abandoned mansion that used to belong to a politician named Albert Fall. It was easy to spot a few ways into the monstrous house and Robert, the photographer, and I, the miscreant and breaking-and-entering extraordinaire, started talking about slipping into the house after the parade to explore and take a few pictures. We continued the discussion over breakfast and by the time we cleaned our plates, it was settled. The Feuille boys would be up to no good – Robert, Jimmy, Dad, and myself. Thus, a favorite mischievous pastime was born.
As we found more opportunities for urban exploration, we developed a system. Robert and Jimmy are both terrific photographers. I happen to be a decent scout and a terrific pack-mule for camera equipment. Robert and Jim posted some of their shots online and Robert ended up finding e-friends who happened to also enjoy urbex photo projects. However, there is no urbex e-friend who quite compares with Noel Kerns. The man is humble, honest, intelligent, and witty. He does amazing things with a camera, strobes, flashlights, and a few gels. But I’m relatively certain that he’s also slightly insane. He’s nearly obsessive about scouting and documenting urbex locations. Noel will walk into places at night that most mortals wouldn’t dare enter during the day, and he does it alone.
When Robert and I were driving from Austin, Texas to Indiana at the beginning of August, we decided to stop in Dallas and meet up with Noel for a night of mischief-making. Noel took us to a small town about an hour outside of Dallas called Mineral Springs. We drove by two points of interest before grabbing a bit to eat – an abandoned, 30-plus-story hotel and an abandoned military hospital turned junkyard.
As the sun was setting, we headed to the hotel. Noel, whom I had just met, quickly put me to work scouting the building for any possible entries. Honestly, that place creeped me out, but I traipsed around with all the courage I could muster. I’d hate for Noel to think me a coward. We ended up searching the entire perimeter of the building. I even climbed a wall and nearly dropped more than ten feet through a collapsed roof. Yet, we could not find a way in.
So, we headed over to the hospital. It may be impossible to describe how eerie the whole scene was. The sun had set. There were plenty of clouds in the sky. The stars weren’t exactly. And the moon gave enough light to make navigating the fences and high grass possible. There were maybe three working street lights shedding light at random spots around the huge complex. Everything was dreadfully silent, save for the crickets and the pounding of our feet on the lawn. Noel had been there before, but that didn’t make me feel any more safe.
We explored the hospital for a few hours. The first floor was filled with cobwebs and moths, which made it difficult to use the headlamp I was wearing. Every time I turned it on, I was immediately smacked in the face by a few months. The dead cats scattered around the hospital didn’t add much to the charm either. Still, we pressed in.
The first floor had most recently been the site of some sort of flea market. Every room and hallway was filled with bizarrely outdated garbage – Halloween costumes, ancient desktop computers, boxes of stage lights, and typewriters that secretaries would have killed for in the 70s. The second and third floors were nearly identical, with pitch black operating rooms, copious graffiti, supply cabinets, and patient’s quarters. We stopped to take a few pictures of a feline carcass and an odd set of filing cabinets. All the while, I stood around holding strobes and waiting for some hobo to creep up behind me in the darkness and drag me to my doom.
We made our way to the fifth floor, which had furnaces, air-conditioners, and oxygen pumps, and the roof, complete with a view of the whole complex and rain-damaged spots you’d likely drop through if you put any weight on them. Noel took us down to the basement, where we got to quickly glance around the morgue and a room that have been a chemist’s lab. We finally exited the building into a communal graveyard for junked cars, boats, trailers, and furniture. Noel began to set up for a shot of an old T-bird when I looked over to my right and saw a police car. Apparently, the police spotted Noel’s SUV and wanted to take a closer look. We packed up the equipment and prepared for a little excitement. We jumped for cover as the spotlights turned from the car to the junkyard. I hid behind a bed frame and a small tree as the police car drove slowly down the street behind us.
Knowing they were circling the block, Noel, Robert, and I stood up and started moving towards the car. The cops had driven faster than we expected and we dove for cover among some bushes again. I was closest to the car, watching in horror as the spotlight scanned the long, empty lawn on the other side of the bush. The light came inches away from my feet and never in my life did I so wish I owned some camouflage clothing. I felt like we were hiding for ages, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two. The car suddenly made a U-turn and sped away. We jumped up and ran full-tilt across the empty lawn, hopped a fence, tossed the gear into the car, and hit the road.
In retrospect, we should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. A few blocks later, we were followed by not one, but two police cars, both flashing their lights overhead. The officer swaggered up to Noel’s window and less-than-politely inquired about our most recent activities. We told the truth – we were taking pictures and taking a look around. He demanded to see our I.D.’s and proof that we were actually taking pictures. Noel obliged by opening the back of his SUV and showed him the cameras.
Moment’s later, the officer returned, semi-satisfied with our explanation and otherwise clean criminal records. He gave us an utterly absurd yarn about the fact that the hospital is actually private property and how the owner now resides in a renovated portion of the hospital with a large dog and a shotgun, ready to defend his property against trespassers. He also informed us of the hotel and recommended that we poke around there. We chose not to tell him that we’d already been there.
Noel drove back to the highway and pulled over a pair of vintage gas pumps for Robert to take a few shots and to check the equipment. Afterwards, we decided to head back to Dallas. Once we parted from Noel, Robert and I drove down the interstate to find a cheap motel for the night and Robert recounted his first night-shoot with Noel, which may forever be the most disturbing story I have ever heard.
