Scp-2951:
10,000 Years
There are a lot of naturally scary places in our world, such as dark woods,
cemeteries, the circus, and for many people, mines.
Especially abandoned mines.
With risks of poisonous gases,
cave-ins, sudden drops, and tight confines,
people have plenty of reasons to be wary of old mines.
This is the SCP universe we're talking about though, so there's even more reason to be scared.
Which brings us to SCP-2951
In the real world, mines are abandoned for a variety of reasons.
But an SCP mine is abandoned for really only one reason:
things got really weird.
Scp-2951 is an abandoned limestone mine in Indiana, originally owned by the BG Hoadley mining group.
Until 1944, when an incident led to its closure.
the primary entrance of the mine collapsed during that incident, and is currently
Inaccessible, but a secondary shaft (located in a dilapidated storage building) remains accessible.
The interior of the mine is subject to irregular spatial and temporal anomalies,
as well as the presence of unknown entities believed to be connected to the 1944 incident.
the Foundation's information on the incident was taken from files collected from the personal office of J Howard Barnes,
an informant for the GOC and an administrator for the Curvier Corporation,
a company involved with various anomalous mining operations.
on August 23rd, 1944
seismic activity was detected below the 'lemon quarry'
Prompting a supervisor to send a team into the mine to assess the damage.
Three hours later, the team returned and reported that an important access tunnel had collapsed.
A larger team of workers was assembled to clear the debris out, but while working
additional seismic activity occurred, which is noted as being unusual for the area.
Another tunnel collapsed behind the workers, trapping the crew.
Over the next several hours, teams worked on both sides of the collapse to help rescue the trapped crew
And when the crew was freed, they reported that a new tunnel had been opened during the activity.
One not made by the miners.
This new tunnel had not been charted by the mining corporation, so a small team was sent in to explore it.
The tunnel was described as cut smooth, but not unnaturally so, and descends at a slight decline.
Supervisors believe that this tunnel was an original access tunnel cut by the mine's original owners, and was not properly recorded
A team of 23 men were sent into the tunnel, in the hopes that it would loop back around behind the original blockage,
Allowing them to assess the damage from the other side
Little else was noted after that team was sent in. Although, there was another round of seismic activity,
causing the primary entrance to collapse.
Teams above-ground worked over the next three days to clear the rubble at the entrance, while others tried to contact the missing team
using telephone cables run down the secondary entrance.
On the evening of the third day, just as the administrators of the mine were preparing to request assistance from other nearby mining groups,
an individual emerged from the secondary shaft.
The only note of this event is a telegraph that was sent to the offices of the mine administrators.
It reads:
Mine abandoned. Tunnels remained collapsed.
23 lost.
One of them came up the shaft.
We tossed it back down.
Wasn't right.
After that incident the mine was left to sit for 44 years, until 1998
on June 4th, 1998, low-level seismic activity was detected near a foundation site,
and a team of foundation geologists were sent to investigate.
They were unable to pinpoint the epicentre of the disturbance, and simply left several seismographs in nearby towns to detect aftershocks.
Two weeks later, a missing-persons report was filed with local police for a 'Tevin Napier,'
a 15 year old student who had disappeared after he and his friends had been trespassing in the abandoned lemon quarry.
Teams searched the quarry, eventually discovering the secondary access shaft underneath the maintenance building,
which was now unsealed.
A search and rescue team began a descent into the shaft, expecting to find the boy's body,
But had to postpone the search due to requiring longer equipment, as the shaft was simply too deep
The original recorded depth of the shaft was around 120 meters, but the rescue crew estimated the depth to be around
240 meters
Eventually after getting longer equipment the rescue crew descended to the bottom of the shaft, but failed to find the boy's body.
Well down there, however, they quickly reported feeling agitated... and a feeling of doubt about their perception of the mine
the five man crew occasionally reported there being seven or eight members of the team,
And one member said that they were here to look for gold.
43 minutes after entering, the team stopped responding to radio communications
and so the above ground team began to retract the tethers
however, they began retracting far more rope than had been sent down, and after retracting 400 meters of rope,
The winch was no longer able to take any more
This is of course the point where the foundation comes in,
Taking control the rescue operations, under the guise of a 'federal search and rescue team.'
They used a far more powerful winch system and were able to retrieve two of the five men, still attached to their tethers.
The first man became increasingly agitated and violent, still convinced
he was in the mine. While the second man was initially thought to be comatose,
After 20 minutes, the second man began speaking unintelligibly,
But others said that the voice he was speaking in
was not his own, but that of another rescue member's, still in the mine.
Of the three other ropes, two returned with clean cuts at the end, and the third was covered with human blood for 13 meters,
and appeared to have been cut with a jagged rock.
The Foundation administered amnestics to all civilians involved in the operation, and spread a cover story about what had occurred in the mine.
The mine was then classified as SCP-2951,
and an exploration was approved.
The exploration was carried out by MTF Trotter Five: Hells Heroes; a four-man team.
their goal was to further assess the nature of 2951,
and to locate the lost search-and-rescue members as well as the missing teenager.
They went in through the secondary shaft and were to only stay in the mine for 40 minutes
the team descends 120 meters down the shaft, reaching the bottom, despite the search-and-rescue team reporting the depth to be 240 meters.
They don't find much evidence of the rescue team here aside from footprints, which they begin to follow
T 5-2 is tasked with keeping track of time, reporting every 10 minutes that they're down there.
They find lines in the wall from where the tether ropes rubbed against the rock, but only two lines.
Some time later, T 5-2 reports that they've been down there for 10 minutes,
Which surprises T 5-1 who feels that they've been down there for longer.
as they make their way through the secondary access shaft, the close confines forced them into a single-file line.
And sometime later t 5-2 says that they've been down there for 17 minutes.
T 5-1 confirms that that number really isn't right. suggesting that a temporal anomaly is at work.
The team sees a light in the distance and hears something deep below them, possibly more seismic activity
But T 5-5 says that definitely isn't right.
The team hastens their pace toward the light to avoid a cave-in,
With T 5-4 suggesting that "perhaps the light belongs to the lamps of the lost rescue members."
T 5-6 asks what the time is, and T 5-2 says they're still at 17 minutes.
The team begins to bicker as a panic rises, and their problems grow as the tunnel seems to shrink around them and their lights go out.
T 5 - 5 mentions multiple times that something is deep below them
But t 5-1 calms the team down and ignites a lighter
They notice that the tunnel they're in is blocked and apparently has been for a while
T 5-2 notes that the time is at 13 minutes, which is certainly not correct.
But T 5-1 only says they've been down there "too long already"
Multiple members agree that they've been down there for too long as they continue down a smaller separate tunnel
after sometime they emerge into the main access shaft but T 5 - 4 acts
Suddenly surprised at T 5-3's existence
T 5-2 says that there were only four of them, and
Then T 5 - 6 says that there were only four of them
Multiple gunshots are then heard as T 5-5 repeats "too long in the fire" over and over
T 5-3 notes that they're wearing the team's uniforms and one is on fire before it violently combusts
Following the events of the log, the MTF was removed from the access shaft and given a thorough examination
T 5-1, 5-3 & 5-4 suffered minor lacerations and burns,
and T 5-2 received more serious injuries.
the remains of the unknown entities were also pulled out, each wearing the same uniform as the rest of the team, and
They were confirmed to have been mimicking the voices of the other team members.
Combining this with the low lighting, and tight quarters, led the team to fail to distinguish how many were with them during the exploration.
In a follow-up interview with t 5-3, a doctor asks him to confirm the anomalous passage of time
3 says that he's been in similar situations before and thinks that they might have been down there for 4 hours
The team's logging equipment was active for five and a half hours total but to the personnel above ground
They were only in the mind for 19 minutes
3 says that the experience was very...
Disorienting, like your mind starts to feel like soup, and you can't recall if something happened, even if it just did
When asked about the unknown entities, 3 remains confused on how they had managed to get a hold of copies of their uniforms and equipment
Even the name badges with the identification scorched off
3 says that they were mostly single file and it was very hard to tell what was happening down there,
Initially blaming the acoustics on why he heard someone's voice behind him, despite the person being in front of him.
3 asks about the teenager, who was still missing, and T 5-2, who still hasn't said anything about the ordeal.
The doctor asks if 3 wants an amnestic, but he refuses it, saying that if he's still dreaming about that thing,
Screaming at him with his own voice in a month... He'll take one.
Following these events, the Foundation began to try and track down information about the mine, specifically records from the BG Hoadley mining group.
this proved difficult, however
As the company had closed down 40 years prior, and the potentially anomalous nature of the Curvier
Corporation made accessing their records tricky.
The Foundation did, however, managed to make contact with a Mr. Gorman P Ellis; a retired investigator for BG Hoadley.
Ellis proved to be cooperative during the foundation interview and although he initially says he never worked at lemon quarry,
He goes on to say that he did spend some time there.
he had gone in with a team to clean up the mining operation after it was shut down,
and notes how strange it was that there had been earthquakes at all in the mine.
He also remarks on the strangeness of an out-of-state company like curvier coming in and buying a small
abandoned mine like lemon quarry
Ellis is the one that suggests the foundation get a hold of J Howard Barnes who they recover most of the information on the mine from.
The interview ends with Ellis mentioning that the cleanup job was peculiar because even though there were a dozen men with Ellis' team,
Another dozen or so from curvier, and five or six men from BG Hoadley,
He doesn't think that even one of the others spoke to them the entire time they were there
Speaking of J Howard Barnes, in addition to the records collected from his office the foundation also discovered a few pieces of relevant
personal correspondence
That had been sent to him
The first, from a man named Trent, tells Barnes that there had been an incident at the mine, trapping 20 or so men
He figures that Barnes should know so he can contact the company's lawyers
Another man writes Barnes and says that a bunch of men in suits showed up in the mine asking about the cave-in
he doesn't know if they're lawyers or not, but they asked strange questions about wanting to listen to the rocks.
An employee of curvier international wrote to Barnes informing him that their company has just purchased the mine and they are interested in any
Information he might have on it
The final piece of correspondence is unlabeled but the writer tells Barnes that he saw something
That was like a man crawl out of the hole at the mine
it smoked and burned and cried out in someone else's voice and
They say it was a thing pulled straight from the pit itself
They write that another man had said that the pillars that support the world will crack and crumble and the foundation will become loose
what lies below will become accessible and its might will fall upon the meek
The writer says that they saw this with their own eyes and know it is true
They can still hear the things words screaming like a wild dog
"ten thousand years in the fire"
The final addendum is a letter that Gorman Ellis wrote prior to his death in 2003 discussing the mine with an unknown recipient
Ellis writes that 23 poor boys got stuck behind that wall during the collapse in
1944 and they could hear them shouting for days while the rest of them did nothing
Ellis discusses what it's like to be in a mine during a blackout
When your eyes try to adjust to the dark around you but there's nothing to adjust to because there's no light
Then you start to hear things that aren't there. Voices, or animals, or any number of things.
Some will wander and get lost, some will fall into a shaft or crevice and then it gets real quiet.
He also mentions the tunnel that they had found before the collapse. The uncharted one that was cut smooth
Ellis says that it didn't look dug by tools and he doesn't know what's down there
He finishes by writing that he hasn't thought much about hell
but he thinks that they deserve it because whatever happens to those missing men was their fault for doing nothing
and the dark changes people.
So, long story short: it's not a portal to Hell in the conventional sense
Although what people go through that get trapped down there could be described as hell
The anomaly inside of the mine changes, warps the trapped individuals, leaving little behind of their former selves
in an attempt to become freed, the anomaly copies the clothing and voices of those that enter the mine
but so far, it hasn't been especially effective as the entities are now far from human
as I said, abandoned mines are creepy and risky places for a lot of reasons in real life,
But the SCP universe really ramps things up
Being trapped in a dark mineshaft could make a day feel like a week
But being trapped in an anomalous mineshaft could make a day feel like 10,000 years.