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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/IngenuityDapper9235 on 2025-01-30 21:44:49+00:00.

For readability I am going to break this up into parts:

For those of you who have never heard of Job Corps, it is a trade school run by the Department of Labor designed to help low income young adults prepare for the workforce. They have campuses all over the country. I was one of their students and this is my experience.

I thought Job Corps was my way out. A second chance. A chance to rebuild myself after years of feeling like a failure. When I was assigned to the Cascade Job Corps Center in Washington, I didn’t think much of it. It was just another government-run facility in the middle of nowhere. But when I stepped onto that campus, something immediately felt… off.

It wasn’t just the decrepit buildings, the eerie silence of the surrounding woods, or the fact that the place used to be an insane asylum. It was something in the air. A kind of heaviness, like the walls and trees were holding their breath, watching. Waiting.

The campus is a patchwork of old and new. You’ve got the dormitories, the cafeteria, and the classrooms that look like they were slapped together in the ’80s. But then there’s the other stuff, the older buildings. The hospital, a hulking shell of crumbling brick and shattered windows. The water mill, its wheel frozen in time. And the crematorium, with its towering smokestack that still reeks of ash on humid nights. This was sharp, chemical, and lingering. No one talked about it, but everyone noticed it. The staff would laugh it off, blaming the wind or nearby farms.

I didn’t know about any of this when I first arrived. All I knew was that it felt wrong.

The staff acted like everything was fine, but the other students had stories. Whispers passed from bunk to bunk after lights out.

When I arrived, I was assigned a room in the Challenger dorm. After filling out the required paperwork and getting my bags unpacked, I was ready to settle in for the night.

“They did lobotomies here,” my roommate, Tony, told me. “Back when it was the asylum. You know that hospital building by the woods? They’d experiment on the patients. Mess with their brains. People said you could hear them screaming, even through the tunnels.”

I blinked. “Tunnels?”

He smirked, as if he’d been waiting for me to ask. “Yeah, man. They’re under the whole campus. Connected everything-the asylum, the hospital, the crematorium. They used them to… move things.”

“What kind of things?” I asked, though I already regretted it.

Tony leaned closer as if about to whisper something to me, but before he could mutter a word the RA burst through the door asking for me. They needed me to write an inventory of everything I brought with me to the campus.

I thought Tony was just messing with me. He was that kind of guy. He loved to scare the new arrivals. But over the next few days, I started noticing things. The way certain buildings were always locked, no matter the time of day. The strange noises at night and the sound of faint footsteps echoing, even when no one was around.

Then there was the hospital. Everyone said it was off-limits, but no one ever explained why. The staff never mentioned it. The security guards ignored it. But at night, you could see lights flicker in the windows, even though the place had been abandoned for decades. I found it odd that a supposedly abandoned hospital would have lights on 24/7.

About a month into my stay at Job Corps the first big Drama happened. Everyone knows about the rumors that the campus is haunted. Well, a few student, James, his girlfriend Racheal, and Lex had decided to screw around with a ouji board. I don’t know the details but something bad happened. Something about bad energy or angry spirits. James came back terrified, so much so that he decided to leave Campus that night without telling anyone.

Students abandoning Job Corps isn’t unheard of. It’s a miserable place with controlling rules and constant strains on mental health. But this was weird. James seamed to enjoy his time here, and he didn’t seem particularly superstitious. Since he was a minor, security was obligated to call the police, but they had no luck finding him. We were all disappointed to hear of Jame’s disappearance, but we figured he had his reasons.

Life continued as normal. Students would come every week while others left. Some graduated, most dropped out of the program, either for bringing contraband on campus, starting fights, or breaking some other rule. Most we never heard from again.

Racheal was a quite girl. She only really talked with James because she didn’t have many friends, and rarely talked about herself. She started to get really down after James left. In fact, the asshole decided to ghost her entirely. Tony and I had a silent agreement to take her in. We’d eat together, play pool, and often watch movies in the theater.

Lex and his best friends Andre and Kelsey would also hang out with us, and before we knew it we had an entire friend group going.

Kelsey lived on third floor White Water. She was one of those people who seemed too smart to be stuck in a place like Job Corps. Straight-A student, honor dorm kid, the type who always got picked for student ambassador stuff. She had a habit of saying she didn’t believe in “supernatural nonsense,” but the way she carried herself told a different story.

Andre was quieter, but he had a sharpness to him that made you listen when he spoke. A true leader who could remain calm and composed during the most stressful situations. He’d been at Cascade longer than any of us and claimed to know every shortcut and hidden nook on campus.

And then there was Andre’s opposite, Lex. Lex was… unpredictable. They’d come to Job Corps after being kicked out of their house, and the combination of frustration and boredom made them reckless. The kind of person who would throw rocks at a hornet’s nest just to see what happened.

On one of those rare nights when the weather was calm, and the staff wasn’t breathing down our necks, Tony managed to snag a couple of chairs from the cafeteria, and Lex “borrowed” some marshmallows from the kitchen. We all gathered behind the recreational center near the edge of the woods, where the staff couldn’t see us.

The fire crackled softly, casting long shadows on our faces. For once, everyone seemed at ease. Andre leaned back against a tree, his legs stretched out like he didn’t have a care in the world. Kelsey sat cross-legged on a log, poking the fire with a stick. Lex was tossing rocks, seeing how close they could get to the flames without actually hitting them. Racheal sat quietly beside me, hugging her knees to her chest.

“This place sucks,” Lex said, breaking the silence. “But at least we’ve got free marshmallows, right?”

Tony laughed. “Yeah, because that’s the only perk. Forget the ancient, crumbling buildings and the haunting rumors. Marshmallows make it all worth it.”

“Speaking of haunting,” Kelsey said, raising an eyebrow, “you guys ever hear about the White Water ghost?”

Lex groaned. “Oh, here we go.”

“No, seriously,” she continued. “Back in the ’90s, a girl supposedly hung herself in one of the bathrooms. People say you can still hear her crying on the third floor late at night.”

Andre snorted. “Kelsey, you don’t even believe in ghosts.”

“I don’t,” she said, a little too quickly. “But you know… it’s a cool story.”

Tony leaned forward, his face illuminated by the firelight. “Okay, okay, but why’d she do it?”

Kelsey hesitated. “They say… she felt trapped. Like she didn’t belong here. She left a note, but no one ever found it. Just a rope and an empty bathroom.”

Racheal shivered beside me. “That’s awful.”

Lex rolled their eyes. “You guys are so dramatic. It’s just a story. Like Bigfoot or aliens.”

“I don’t know,” Andre said thoughtfully. “Sometimes, this place does feel… heavy. Like it’s carrying more than it should.”

The fire popped, and we all fell silent for a moment, the weight of his words settling over us. Even Lex didn’t have a comeback.

“So why are you here?” Tony asked suddenly, looking at Andre.

“What do you mean?” Andre replied.

“I mean, why’d you come to Job Corps?” Tony asked, his voice softer now. “None of us are here because life’s been easy.”

Andre stared into the fire. “My family. I needed to do something—anything—to help them. Job Corps felt like my last chance to turn things around.”

Kelsey nodded. “Same. College wasn’t an option, and I couldn’t stay home anymore. I had to get out.”

One by one, we went around the circle, sharing pieces of ourselves. Lex admitted they’d been kicked out of their house after a fight with their parents. Tony talked about growing up in a small town where no one believed in him. Racheal hesitated but eventually told us about how she was heavily abused at home. She decided to run away, and on her travels she met James. He convinced her to come here, how she didn’t know what to do now that he was gone. I got the sense that she didn’t have many people in her life looking out for her.

When it was my turn, I swallowed hard. “I… was homeless before this. I thought Job Corps was my way out. Maybe it still is.”

Racheal reached over and squeezed my arm. “It will be.”

For a while, we just sat there, letting the fire burn down to embers. Despite the creepy stories and the weight of our confessions, it felt… good. Like we weren’t alone in this mess of a place. Like maybe we had each other.

Up until now, Job Corps didn’t seem like such a bad pl...

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