I grew up in Mira Mesa, and back in high school, I had a buddy who liked to take his truck off-roading in the hills east of Miramar. Back in those days, there were huge firebreaks bulldozed into those hills that served as our rocky freeways to adventure. There was absolutely nothing out there, just wild unspoiled chaparral covered terrain, which was a glimpse into the past when California was not developed.
One day we spied a lone large green building sitting on a low hill all by itself, way off in the distance out to the east. It looked so strange and out of place that we decided to go check it out. I stood in the back of the bed hanging on to the roll bar while we careened down those firebreaks at freeway speeds, drifting sideways during the curves. It took a while to get there and when we did, what we found shocked us.
It was a large two-story military-style building that looked a lot like a barracks, with windows on the top floor, but none down below. We stopped the truck and got out. It was completely quiet out there and the view from that hill was spectacular. We could see all the way to Point Loma and the Coronado Islands in the south, and all the way up to Mount Palomar to the north. There was a single door on the side of the building so we went in. It was a single hallway that went down the middle of the building with rooms on both sides of the hall. It was so dark that you could not see a thing inside those rooms. Nobody went in. We dared to go to the end of the hall and found a staircase that led to the second floor. Up there the place was completely torn apart on the inside. It was one large open room with trashed drawing tables and file cabinets that looked like they were thrown around by a giant. The venetian blinds were all trashed and broken bits of plastic, glass and metal littered the floor. It looked like something horrible happened suddenly and everybody got out of there quick and left everything behind. The large drawing tables still had pencils, drawings, and coffee cups left as they were and there were even uniform jackets scattered around. The destruction looked as if some powerful being rampaged the building in a fit of wrath.
The far wall of the room had a huge painting of a giant mushroom drawn with hot pink, yellow and green Day-Glo colors. There was a deranged troll sitting atop the mushroom with bulging eyes and a wizard hat. All sorts of phrases where painted but they made no sense, almost like psychotic lyrics to a song. In front of the painting was what looked like a pool of either rusty water or blood with a large amount of bullet shell casings in it. Also in the mix was torn pieces of children’s underwear, which sent chills up our spine. We named the place Death House and had a standing $100 dare for anyone to enter it at night. Nobody ever did.
