This is how I pay the bills, people.

By working in places that inspire horror film scripts.

I spent all day yesterday in Ironton, Ohio at a former generating plant of ours. This was a tiny little plant that made power just for the little trolley system in town. It hasn't made electricity in decades, and it is used now by our storerooms as a storage facility. We are selling the property, which is where I come in. I need to do a Phase I Environmental Assessment of the property to look for any environmental concerns.

FYI, the pictures do enlarge if you click on them.

This place has a basement, unfortunately. I'm greeted by this door at the bottom of the stairs which just screams, "It puts the lotion in the basket."


Off of the stairs is a creepy side room/crawl space area. Throughout the property I found mystery jars and buckets of chemicals. I have no idea what Lithoform is, but we've got to get rid of it!
In the basement we found a lovely old boiler.
I went to open the doors of the boiler to see what might have been shoved inside. My boss announces, "We better see if there's a body in there! Wouldn't that be cool?" After opening the doors, I thought I HAD found a body. It wasn't very funny.
Here's a shot of the boiler and some of the room. All the concrete you see laying around fell off of the ceiling. The floor above us isn't very structurally sound and pieces keep falling off. I just knew one of us was going to take a header.

We are so interested in the boiler because it is wrapped in asbestos that is not in good condition.
My boss wanted to get photographic proof that I do actually work, on occasion. Smarty pants. I'm collecting a PCB wipe sample off of the floor in case we have spilled mineral oil that contained PCBs sometime in the past.

Here are three old timey fire extinguishers. I thought they were neat.