text: Hey Redditors. Iv'e decided to share my story. Iv'e always been fascinated by breaching security, exploring things or secrets that weren't available to other people. Both in computers and physical matters. This is my story so please enjoy it. I don't know if this really belongs on short stories, since it's not a fictional story, but I thought you guys might find it interesting. **TL;DR** Some friends and i discovered unknown secret tunnels under our high school. Over weeks we discovered and mapped out a big part of the tunnel system. I'm now 18 and only have memories and pictures to look back at. Last school year (2011/2012) I was an exchange student in USA, Wisconsin. (I'm from Denmark). Btw best year iv'e ever had, with lifelong friendships made. I returned home to Denmark 7 months ago, and started school. This happened exactly one year ago. It all started with a friend of mine (senior at the time) came to me and said he had something crazy to tell me. It was kind of a rush hour so i didn't have time to stop and listen. Later that day we met in lunch break and he told me that he had been in the schools maintenaince room and had seen a dark square (3x3 ft) in the wall down a staircase. He that it was some kind of underground tunnel system under the school. I thought he was stupid and didn't think much about it. Now in the school i attended for a year and the daily routine consisted of normal classes and a 9th hour/homeroom in the end of the day, where it was possible to study or do your homework. The class was from 3:00 to about 3:40. I forgot all about his little tunnel story and almost two weeks went by till we came by the subject again. I was sitting peacefully in 9th hour and doing my homework when i saw someone knocked on the door. I looked up and there was my friend, lets call him Christian. Christian had excitement in his eyes and he did a throw with his hand plus a nod with his head to signal, that I should come out. I asked the teacher if i could go to the bathroom quick. (At this school you could get in trouble if you walked in the hallway without a pass for the restroom or wherever you were going) He wrote me a pass and I walked silently but determined out. Christian basically bombed me with the information that he had been "in the tunnels". I thought he was being crazy again and laughed at him, but he kept explaining the whole thing precisely and trustworthy and I started believing him more and more. My eye slid down to his knees and palms and I was soon to discover a enormous amount of dust and dirt on them. The tip of his shoes had some on them as well as he had been crawling somewhere. A few days later I couldn't help my curiosity. I had to see if this was true. In 9th hour I got a pass to go to the restroom and knowing I had limited time i rushed down the long hallways with a friend to the mechanical maintenance room. I quickly entered, put on a flashlight on my phone and started searching the big dark room for unknown enterings or exits. Two minutes after my friend had to leave of fear from getting caught by one of the janitors that could walk in any second and get our butts in trouble. I took me 15 minutes, but finally, down a staircase, down a ladder, into what seemed like a small pool around 7 ft deep, in the corner was a little square entering. I could barely spot it with my phone light. I crawled down and had a quick peek inside. After this i was eager to crawl in and look, but i had already been gone for 20 minutes, and i knew that would only cover for a long toilet visit, and I went back to the classroom. At this point I was hooked. No matter what I did, or when I did it, for the next 24 hours, this was permanently on my mind. I was curious and excited to figure this thing out. The next day I couldn't wait for 9th hour. The day went by so slow and it seemed like forever till the class started. Thinking that the teacher wouldn't write me a pass if i asked to go to the restroom right after a 6 minutes break, I waited. at 3:20 i got my pass, rushed to the maintenance room, ran down the stairs, down the ladder in to the pool and went in the tunnel. I had asked Christian to meet me there at 3:20. He showed up and told me that he actually didn't go in that hole, but in another path about 6 ft long that went into the basement in the other side of the room. I checked it out and it wasn't even a path, more just like a whole into the basement. We went over to the path i discovered and peeked in. It was a 3x3 ft hole going in as far as we could see. I jumped in first and Christian after and we started crawling on hands and knees in the dark. We were soon to discover turns in the tunnel everywhere. Everytime we took a right or left turn there were turns both ways, and the path would always end up in to seperate ways. Shortly after, due to physical requirements, excitement and a crapload of dust and dirt in the air, it got really hard to breath in there, and we went out. Up in the normal school light we were sweaty, and covered with an orangy dust powder. We had to see more. But we needed to plan it out. We couldn't just go to the restroom every day and coming back looking like we attended World War II. Teachers would get suspicious, and the risk of getting caught was too high. Therefore we went back to class and made a shopping list of what we needed. Same day we took a trip to Walmart and got the necessary things. Flashlights, kneepads, gloves, painting masks for dust, camera, change of clothing, blueprints and pencils. I managed to steal a whole block of passes so we could fake signatures and write passes to study hall, library or other teachers classrooms to cover up our actions. Also we needed a different time to enter, and a different way to get out. We came up with bringing a mirror to look around the edges when we exited the room. In the school there was a red blueprint painting hanging in the wall. I took a snapshot of it and after 15 minutes with my enormously bad photoshop skills i made it black and white and printed some copies out. We were now ready to note every single little turn we explored under there. We also got two other friends involved, and we created a hidden closed Facebook group for us. Friday night there was a basketball game at the school. What a perfect opportunity. School was open and no one in the hallways. We packed bags from home. Once the game was on, we four friends snuck into the maintenance room, and into the tunnel. We equipped all of our gear and began our journey. We had a lead guy at front, a flashlight guy, a map writer and a camera guy at the end. We had also purchased 1000 ft of line that we tied somewhere in the maintenance room. and took with us in. It functioned as a kind of safety so we always could find our way out. After almost 2 hours in there. We went out. We had discovered endless turns and paths and about 700 ft of tunnel was mapped down. The following fridays we planned to go down there again. We knew the routine, once the game started we snuck in the tunnel and started our mapping. We took a whole new section of the school every time. We could hear and calculate due to the game when we were under the gym, the cafeteria, classrooms and and all the other rooms. I'm a big guy 6'4", and i had quite some trouble crawling around down there. One of the times i was freaking out because I was running (as good as possible down there) and I got breathless because of the dust. After that I never did anything physical exhausting while in the tunnels. We went down there about four times and the last time was the most interesting. It was only me and Christian, and we decided to explore the left side of the school. On our way down the tunnels we saw writing on the walls. It looked like someone made arrows down there. There was also a few cigarette butts and some cans of some kind. We continued and saw a yellow pipe running across the path. We spend about 5 minutes discussing what it was, but it seemed like the answer came to us. All of a sudden two girly voices got exceptionally clear. We looked at the blueprints and our position fit perfectly under the girls restroom. The voices were clear and we were sure we were just a few feet under the restroom. Even the footsteps were clear through the floor. We sat there for about 10 minutes enjoying our achievement, but then decided to keep going. (We weren't able to see anything) We continued into a big wide space. The feeling of standing up for the first time in three hours was amazing. It was exactly under the staircase. There was a metal plate in the wall, and we recognized it from the hallways. We had found another entering. Unfortunately it was locked. We also looked up in a hole with a bunch some pipes and wires and discovered a bag of funions shoved up in there. How the heck did these come up there? We took a few pictures and took the 25 minute journey crawling all the way out. We jumped through the little hole to the basement and exit through there. No one saw us. Monday morning we went above ground of where we were on the friday. We looked down the thermostat of a radiator and concluded that the bag of funions were down there, most likely shoved down from above. The basketball season ended a few days after there. Even though we talked a lot about going back, we didn't To this day i still regret not finished the mapping down there. Later on we explored some abandoned buildings and train wagons, but nothing gave me the same adrenalin kick as these tunnels. We talked about them to my friends father who knew a janitor on the school. He told us that these were quite common tunnels in every high school design. They were made to access all the heat, and water pipes running to all the classrooms. After some research we found people all over America that had discovered these tunnels too. I guess in the end they weren't that secret and exciting, but I got my rush from them. We told a few people about it and showed them the pictures, but it's kind of forgotten to this day. Only my memories and pictures keeps this alive. Here are the whole picture album. Unfortunately I didn't take enough photos, this is all I have. Iv'e decided to hide our identity since I haven't asked or have got their permission to post their faces. I am the guy with the blue gloves. I put a lot of work and a few hours into this post and I'm new on Reddit, so if you read the whole story please take your time to share your response, your thoughts or similar stories with me :-) Please excuse me for grammar mistakes etc. -Johspwns.