Mission Trip
This is a re write of an old post from February, however it contains a lot of new information and pictures so don't complain.
I'm back, miss me? I started this last month and forgot to finish it. Gotta get somethin out before the end of 2023. Also for some reason my text defaults to red every time I make a new paragraph and its starting to piss me off.
Today's post brings us back two summers ago, actually more like 7 years ago, you know what scratch that let's go back 74 years, The second world war has just came to a wrap and humanity enters the nuclear age, a group of catholic missionaries is setting up a garage sale in their small home in Monroe. Soon after in 1959 the Verona Fathers (Presently known as the Comboni Missionaries) began construction of a facility to train new missionaries and to serve as a home base for the Comboni Missionaries of Monroe
The Groundbreaking Ceremony for the new site.
The original building (Date unknown)
The original complex appeared to feature several buildings, this one was likely a dormitory.
1965 would see the addition of a large chapel as shown in this recovered
parcel sketch
Sadly for the Comboni Missionaries in 1979 disaster would strike, a raging fire would completely destroy a third of the complex leveling all but one auxiliary building and leaving the main facility partially burned and smoke damaged.
The Comboni Missionaries would continue to use the building through most of the 1980s and even potentially into the 90s before making the hard decision to leave Monroe.
After the departure of the Comboni Missionaries the site would be picked up by the "Brothers of Holy Cross" or most commonly known as "Boysville" The site would now function as an all boys juvenile detention center. The site would operate as "Boysville of Monroe" or alternatively "Moreau Center" until 2010 when state budget cuts killed off the Boysville program entirely.
The site roughly 1 year after closure.
It appears that up until 2016 the site was still being looked after and the owners likely planned to sell it as evident by online listings, security documents and some very loud alarms. After roughly 6 years of no success in selling the site, it was gifted to a local Catholic school and was left to rot away.
This is the end of the history segment, yay you made it congrats. I was going to add some jokes in to make it less boring but I didn't really see any appropriate places to fit one in. Anyways now I am ranting, get used to it a lot of ranting is coming, the rest of the blog post will be fairly long and some parts are drastically different than others, therefore I will be implementing chapters or headers or whatever you want to call them.
Chapter 1: It begins
Genesis 1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"- oops not that far back lets fast forward to the year 2015 for some reason in my old blog I put 2014, turns out it was 2015, anyways It’s a brisk autumn day, I was about to leave the Monroe area after attempting to get inside the old Newport Naval Air Station when I remembered that my friend had told me about a place in Monroe a few weeks prior. After a quick GPS reroute we were en route to good ol Boysville.
We pulled into the property with zero clue as to what the place even was, the trees outside the parking lot were covered with NO TRESSPASSING signs so we knew it wasn't the most welcoming place.
After discovering that locked doors do in fact not open I found an unlocked window and quickly clambered inside, As my feet hit the concrete floor my heart was racing, this place was untouched! However this victory was short-lived as suddenly alarms began to blare throughout the entire facility, assuming this wasn't the sound of a welcome party I quickly bailed and we sped off before the cops or whatever underpaid security company intern showed up. We continued onwards to the Glass City and this place quickly faded from my mind.
Chapter 2: Feeling the Heat
It is now spring of 2022, that blissful fall day in 2015 is nothing but a faint memory, a blissful world is nothing but a faint memory. Anyways I am hanging out with a good friend and future urbex partner of mine and we are thinking of entertaining things to do.
At this point I had been sort of out of the whole urbex thing for a bit but I figured it was better than nothing, So I suggested we go explore something abandoned to which my friend seemed intrigued.
Despite the fact that my friend lives in Toledo a place that rivals Detroit with it's abandoned buildings per non abandoned buildings I figured it probably wasn't the best idea to take him to the inner city on his very first explore.
As I scoured my database I noticed two prime spots to hit that were away from civilization, however one of them (Newport Naval Air Station) was already being demolished so Boysville it was. We hopped in the bright red loud ass firebird and headed over in the baking heat.
The beginning of the droopy fan saga.
As we arrived we decided to park out back behind the building, normally I wouldn't do this for fear of tipping off locals about my activities but this place was in the bum fuck middle of nowhere so nobody cares right? RIGHT?
Luckily for this trip nothing went wrong and we had a great time exploring and hanging out. This place got my friend hooked on urbex and he would later become my Toledo person who would go onto explore a decent amount of places with me, many of them are on this blog.
We even ended up climbing onto the roof and messing around as well as climbing this weird spiral staircase up a mini tower in the front.
Overall despite the heat it was a fairly fun and easy place to explore, a perfect starter. Now of course this place isn't really that exciting or worth a revisit unless I was trying to get a new friend hooked on urbex, so of course no need to revisit right?
Chapter 3: Writing on the wall
(Around 1 year later) Despite the relative boringness of the site it's role as a gateway drug to urbex is undeniable, the minor thrill, the easy access it was perfect, so when I needed to force uh suggest another friend to start exploring with me of course I took him here. We made a quick run over one day after classes let out. As we pulled into the back of the site we literally came face to face with the most Karen Karen I have ever seen and her little hell mutt. Despite currently being unemployed at the time I already felt myself writing my manager's phone number down so we decided to leave and come back another time.
Chapter 4: The Van Man
A week later we decided to try again at this place, this time I decided to bring my GoPro and actually brought my Nikon along too, which I forgot takes terrible photos in the dark. I was a bit uneasy about parking my car behind the building again due to the activities of our dog walking manager talking public stalking friend, so me and my friend decided to play it safe and park at some rectal imaging place roughly a mile away and walk to Boysville.
Part of the Boysville property had been converted into a "sports" area.
We trekked along the roads and through the world's most itchy grass in 95 degree heat for about 15 mins before finally reaching Boysville.
Torture.
Upon arriving we quickly checked for our dog walking buddy and headed inside after seeing no sign of her.
I could tell my friend had a similar reaction to my other friend before, his third eye opened and he discovered how amazing asbestos really tastes, Just kidding! he was petrified the entire time.
After a bit though he began to lighten up and I could tell he was enjoying himself some.
My scale at home was broken and I had an online doctors appointment after this.
After around 15 mins of fun filled urban exploring I suddenly felt extremely uneasy and for some reason decided to check out back. Before I can even take a look my friend yells under his breath "There's a van, There's a van!". Not wanting to stick around to find out what our uniformed unmarked van companions were up too we bolted out the front door as fast as our legs would carry us.
We got Usain Bolt over here.
After running out the front door to our horror we realized the van was searching for us, with no time to spare we dove into the tall itchy grass and laid there until the van drove past. It then began driving up and down the road to the building forcing us to bail into the woods. One farm field and 3 stranger's backyards later we were free and back at the rectal exam place. However I suddenly realized in the panic I had dropped my favorite pair of $3 gas station sunglasses I bought after I snapped my old pair in half.
Chapter 5: Shady Business
Now I'm not one to leave behind my worthless pieces of ugly tattered clothing, I actually jumped onto a moving ship into the Bahamas to save my ratty running shoes. So the following day I pulled up right to the back door and like a SWAT team cleared each room until I found them.
With my precious back in my possession I swore to never return.
Chapter 6: Bad Boys
I returned. This time it was a three person trip, one of my classes had rescheduled for a later time so me and a few friends decided to drive down and explore here for some reason.
We didn't have a ton of time here so today's mission was to climb the little bell tower thing again. However we had slight complications.... I sort of broke my ankle a few weeks prior and I was still wearing the big ass boot that the doctor made me wear after I refused to use crutches.
Anyways we quickly realized that I couldn't get upstairs in the area we usually go through due to the fact that a large table was blocking it and I couldn't climb around. I ended up having to guide my friend on facetime through the upstairs so he could unlock the door for the exterior fire escape.
As we climbed to the top of the tower thing and peeked outside I suddenly realized that we had a visitor in the parking lot. None other than the Monroe County Sheriff of course. Immediately we sprinted for the fire exit to get outside as quick as possible (Which felt great on my broken ankle btw). Once outside we realized we were blocked in because our stupid asses had parked our cars behind the building.
In a moment of panic and stupidity I hatched the most genius stupid plan ever: The woods around the building were apparently "haunted" or some dumb shit so we went into the woods away from the officer's view and made sure to come out of the woods in an area that was visible to the officer but indicated we were not in the building. We then sheepishly walked up and hit the officer with a "Hey we were just looking for ghosts in the woods can we not be here?" to which he replied "I think you are fine to be in the woods just not the building", of course we all pretended to understand and left with no issues.
Chapter 7: Snowfall
All the trips with cool stories have zero photos
When I was going through my camera roll I realized I had all three seasons here but winter, So naturally I had to waste a ton of time and come back again.
After taking a wrong turn which turned out to be a 10 min detour I had arrived once again. This time I didn't hang around for very long as I didn't feel like having bad things happen to me which this place really seemed to want.
The droop is gone :(
This trip was rather uneventful and it seemed like lots of vandalism and scrapping had happened since my last time being there. Looking back on it I wish I took pictures in more areas of the building instead of the same few areas.
Chapter 8: Tragedy
This part of the post is of rather serious nature so for this part I will cut the sarcasm and jokes. On March 2nd 2023 the body of Kayla Sedoskey was found inside the facility by a group of unnamed explorers, She was only 23 years old at the time of her death. I found out about this while I was at work and was honestly shocked, it's unfortunately not uncommon for bodies to be found in the areas that I explore (Those mostly being Detroit or Toledo) but the last place I would expect this to happen is a small town like Monroe. This was a dark chapter for the facility and marked the beginning of the final chapter for Boysville.
Chapter 9: The Beginning of the End
I heard through a friend that the current owners of Boysville (SMCC) had announced plans to demolish the site in order to construct a new sports complex. While SMCC claims the death on the site had no impact on the decision to tear it down, the timing seems rather coincidental.
Is it just me or does this excavator feel weirdly skinny?
I waited like a week after I heard the news before heading over because I hoped that it would be a little more demolished so I could get some pics for my blog and have closure for once.
By the time I had arrived the workers had mostly gone home and the remining few were on their way out.
The interior had been mostly stripped out at this point leaving a bit of a boring explore.
With the floors swept and drop ceilings removed in some areas the building actually appeared to be in surprisingly good condition.
Interestingly the basement that is usually under 4 feet of water had been drained which allowed me to take a short look, however the black mold was terrible down there so I didn't stay for long.
The boiler room had a bit of water still in it.
Outside the main entrance appeared to be a pile of objects removed from lake Boysville aka the basement.
A few desktop computers and an IP phone server, Guess the IT guy got stuffed in the basement.
Chapter 10: The Grand Finale
Because demolition was progressing at college finals levels of procrastination I decided to give it another week or two before coming back.
This time the destruction did not disappoint, luckily there was no workers around today. I had ended up going with one of my friends from Chapter 6 because he was also bored.
At this point most of the building had already been demolished with only two hallways from the original wing still standing.
It seems they didn't even bother removing a lot of the furniture in some areas, I spy a lunch tray, whiteboard, network switch, and table, we also found some of the stuff from the kitchen in another area.
Mother Mary stands defiant until the end.
The remains of the chapel, you can still see a bit of the sound booth up top but I'm sure like every single other person I've showed this too your eyes went right to the offensive graffiti.
Someone finally cut the brush down.
The night before we explored this place it had rained a ton so the ground was nice and muddy.
Stepping through the exit for the last time was a strange feeling to say the least, a pretty mundane building that otherwise would have just been another blog post had become a sort of obsession that could only be broken with the complete destruction of Boysville. The curse was finally broken and I was finally free, As I pulled out of the site onto the road for the last time the sheriff slowly drove by and waved, I guess that means we are chill, what a storybook ending.
That night for some reason my car's back window literally exploded, like for no reason what so ever, it absolutely soaked my back seat too because it shattered during a torrential downpour. Some might say it was the supernatural but all I know is I was super pissed. Anyways I hope you liked reading this long ass blog post, I might do another one tonight because I am in a good mood, I guess we will see.
Mutagen Out!
.JPG)
.JPG)
