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Halloween cache near Dorothea Dix Hospital and Centennial Parkway.
We wanted to give you a nice little scare this Halloween, so we’ve discovered a local “haunt” that’s not for babies!
Located in a spot you won’t believe is a tale both sad and eerie. This area is loaded with all sorts of history and the legend of “Crybaby Lane” is only one. See how a local writer Craig Payst describes it:
I love good ghost story. Crybaby Lane is a good ghost story.
Crybaby Lane is a creepy little stretch of grass with a sad, scary story tied to it. The story begins in the middle of the last century, when what's now called Crybaby Lane was the site of a Roman Catholic orphanage. The orphanage was the home to a few dozen young boys and girls, who were raised by the priests, as had been happening there since the orphanage had been founded half a century earlier. We can assume these ophans lived as orphans did in those days, going to school to learn a useful trade, and once a week during the summers being taken down to swim in the pool at nearby Pullen Park. Since this was a Catholic home, some of the older boys would be studying for the priesthood. For those children without parents there weren't many options back then. It may not have been a completely happy life, but it was more than it could have been.
This all came to a tragic end one night in 1958 when a fire broke out in the orphanage dormitory. The fire spread quickly through the building, by the time the sleeping children were aware of the smoke and the heat filling the hallways of their only home it was too late. By the time the fire department arrived, the building had been gutted, reduced to burnt beams and flame broken bricks. Many of the children burned to death in the flames.
It's horrible enough when a child dies, but when that child is an orphan the death seems somehow worse. Children with families that love them have someone to mourn for their lost souls, but there's no one to cry for an orphan. It may be that those tears of mourning help those souls move on into the next life, for it seems that the children who died in the orphanage fire had trouble finding their way there.
Months after the fire, when after what remained of the burned orphanage had been torn down and hauled away, the city began receiving complaints from the neighbors that the smell of smoke was still strong in the air, as if the fire was still burning. The smell was so strong that some people would choke when they walked into the field, like their own lungs were filling up with smoke, even though the new grass had already covered up where the building once stood.
But the smell of smoke was only part of it - there were also the voices.
The voices came in on the air, quietly at first, then growing louder. They were the voices of children, crying, wailing in fear, sadness, and pain. The screams of the orphaned children who had died in the fire could still be heard.
Now, some of the neighbors thought it was just their minds playing tricks on then. They had been there the night of the fire and seen and heard these horrible things, and they thought that they just couldn't get the awful memories out of their heads. But time passed, and the people who had been there that night all died or moved away, but still the acrid smell of smoke lingered, and the cries of the children could still be heard.
Now if you go to find this place yourself, you'll see that most of the houses around the field where the orphanage once stood have been abandoned. The place where the orphanage was is now an empty field. If you hunt through the grass you'll be able to find the cornerstone, all that's left of the old orphanage.
And after you've stood in the field for a few minutes, you'll start to notice that the place has a strange, distinct smell - it's the odor of smoke and burning wood.
And if you stay a few minutes more, you'll begin to hear something strange in the air - awful, unearthly sounds - the cries of children in fear and in pain, but still never able to leave the only place on earth that they ever knew as a home.
And not many people will stay much longer than that in the empty field that's come to be called Crybaby Lane.
Just a story you say. Well let me tell you first hand that I have been there, and I have smelled the smoke. There is more to the story, but to find that out you must find our cache. It’s a standard ammo can full of the normal stuff, plus a few relics from the orphanage. Please don’t take anything, except the directions to find the rest of the story. And if you would like to drop off an old toy for the children, I guess that would be OK. Happy hunting, or should I say haunting…
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Va n ubyr pybfr gb pbearefgbar.