What Could Be Creepier Than That?

From Ann Bowman Fick-Kazala

I lived at Chelsea Naval Hospital in MA for a year or so in the mid-60s. The base was great for kids, with lots of grassy hills, and a waterfront where you could drop rocks on huge jellyfish. A kid’s dream! The gang of kids my age (8-10) were pretty active, and there was not one corner of the base unvisited. Above my house on the hill was a huge indoor swimming pool, and as we discovered, the entrance to a series of cement tunnels connecting the entire base. Boy did we explore those tunnels (even though we were told to stay out of them by our parents). The morgue was down there! What could be creepier than that?!

We used to play war, and gangs of us, winter or summer would square off and battle each other. We had toy guns, which we had to hide on the base because my dad was very much against pointing guns at anybody. The few times he found us playing war, he would confiscate the guns and break them. All the kids stayed far away from him. Well, one day my roving battle crew decided to roam the underground tunnels, with our guns of course. We rounded a corner and a group of MPs had guns out screaming for us to GET DOWN. My friend peed in his pants, and we all burst out crying. The MPs were pissed, and rounded us up and threw us into some cells (I swear we’d never seen those before!).

One by one parents came to fetch us. Most got a paddling, and we all were grounded for a couple of weeks. It was torture. Soon after we were back in that tunnel. That’s the thing about a military kid, pushing the envelope…always.