March 3, 2020, 5:18 pm

When the explorers walked up to Harrington House, their jaws dropped. The building looked like it had been bombed. There appeared to be an entire missing floor at the top, and bricks, glass, and stonework had fallen off the building. An entire section of wall on the third floor was missing, revealing the interior of a room with a massive hole in the roof. Based on the condition of the building compared to the others on campus, they estimated it had been abandoned for at least 50 years.

Joe and Dave navigated the fallen bricks and walked through the front door, which had been smashed open. What they found was cheap plywood and wood beam construction, stuff that barely met building codes. Not only was this stuff cheap, it meant the house was much newer than originally thought; probably 1970s or 1980s construction. Only a couple of pieces of wood paneling weakly stuck to the walls. There was a huge hole in the ceiling, exposing the second and third floors above, and the wood floor were rotten and had grasses growing through them. Pieces of destroyed, rusted steel were strewn about the floor; in the mess, Dave found a statue's head next to a flower that had grown to over a foot tall.

The next room was a formerly grand room. This time there was a hole in the roof that spanned about half the size of the room and was open to the sky. A full-grown tree, taller than both Joe and Dave, had taken root against a wall. A large section of the wall, about 15 feet wide, had collapsed onto a pair of old couches and a bookcase. A large, golden deer's head and two planters had collapsed to the ground near the fireplace at the back of the room, and the back wall itself was buckling. Inside the ruined bookcase was a Paris restaurants' guide, dated 1987. There were even more destroyed steel statues.

"1987? You're telling me this place was occupied in freaking 1987?" Joe wondered aloud. It wasn't as much of a surprise for the trashed dorm, but this was an upper crust building that presumably would have been well-maintained.

Somehow, the stairs had survived, and Joe and Dave went up them. The entire railing was gone, and the floor had fallen out at the top. Joe decided he would go no further.

"I'm staying down here; this building is a death trap." said Joe.

"I'm taking a look at the rest of it." replied Dave.

"Your funeral." said Joe.

Dave carefully tip-toed across a remaining wood beam into the L-shaped room to the right, dodging two large holes in the floor in the spur of the "L" as he walked parallel to the right wall on a one-foot wide section of flooring that barely stood. A painting had fallen into the floor underneath. The bottom half of the spine of the "L" had one of the largest sections of intact ceiling and flooring in the whole house; only about 10-15 feet on each side. The flooring was still buckled and warped, and the wood paneling was still 90% missing, but a beat-up green sofa still sat in front of a moderately old Fony big-screen TV.

More semi-modern technology was there. An early-model CD player, a 4 head VHS player, a Swegga Master Console, and even a Laserdisc player (!) sat in a cabinet under the TV. There were still some CDs, games, tapes, and laserdiscs left behind; popular '80s fare like Ladonna CDs, Robopolice on special edition laserdisc, Alex Boy on Swegga. All were still in near-mint condition, probably the only things that were in the whole building. The top half of the spine of the L had a couple feet of intact floor on the right side, but the rest was gone. About three feet behind the couch, the floor and left wall of the room was gone, leaving a gaping hole probably 8 feet wide by 25 feet long – about two thirds of the length of the room. Poker tables, statue parts, pieces of statues, paintings, plants, bricks, and drywall were all in a pile. Dave could see that the large pile was pushing on the back wall of the downstairs room and causing the buckling he'd seen earlier. This part of the building had been above a first-floor patio and supported by pillars around the patio. Once enough pillars gave way, everything above the patio just fell in one fell swoop. Based on the appearance of the pile and the plants poking out, this had been years ago.

Dave was being extra-diligent in getting video of this crumbling monument to wealthy '80s high school life, still bewildered as to how it fell apart so fast. Even though it was cheap construction, it was still construction that met building codes that was no older than a middle-aged person with many years left in their career.

On the third floor, there was another room with a kitchen in it. The dining table had fallen through another hole in the floor, and one chair tilted precariously toward it. The floor was sagging underneath the fridge, and the wall was missing – this had been the third-floor room they'd seen from outside. On the wall, a calendar said September 1989. A frowning face was drawn on the 19th.

Dave opened the door to what he hoped would be the last room. Half of the room was missing entirely, collapsed into the abyss into the patio. Much of the rest of the floor was littered by holes. A couple of smashed planters were in there, and little else. A dome above was entirely smashed.

With that, Dave carefully crawled back out of the building, glad to be done with that death trap. It was 5:57 pm, and the dusk's last light lit up the horizon. Joe was standing outside the building, and they went back to the library to set up their sleeping bags.

"How was it? Did you almost die?" asked Joe.

"Most interesting building on campus." said Dave.

November 4, 1989, 2:16 am

The Harrington House was opened on August 27, 1981 and closed on September 19, 1989, after Dr. Crabblesnitch, who was soon to retire, had announced that the preps had not paid the dues for the house and it was being taken from them. The house was set to be re-developed into a new building for the campus, and work was set to start on Monday, November 6.

For years, the people who lived in the house had thumbed their noses up at the greasers. Greasers wondered what was in the house, what went on in there, but they were strictly forbidden. There was talk that a father of one of the highest-ranking preps was going to buy out the house from the school and run it privately.

The greasers were angry, and took drastic action…