When I was a kid, we used to hang out in an abandoned Georgian cold-store - it was on the grounds of my school, with an entrance hidden in a thicket.
We called it "Dick Turpin's Cave", even though it was self-evidently no such thing, but it was damnably cool - both figuratively and literally - and on a hot summer's day, sneaking off from games to go loiter in our brick-lined flagstone-floored cave and play pog or what have you was... special. And probably incredibly dangerous. One end of it was collapsed - it was shaped like a cross with an entrance in the ceiling of one lobe.
I more than understand the appeal. There's some innate human instinct to tunnel - perhaps at some point in our history we made burrows to live in, in the absence of other construction materials - I mean, we lived in caves, so...
Seymour Cray, the famous supercomputer architect (Cray-1, etc.), built a tunnel under his house:
Another favorite pastime was digging a tunnel under his
home; he attributed the secret of his success to "visits
by elves" while he worked in the tunnel: "While I'm
digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me
with solutions to my problem."
When I was a kid, me and my brother used to scour an abandoned monastery. The materials we gathered there - door frames, plywood, nails, screws, we used to modify an existing animal shelter. We saw a hole in the wooden structure and then proceeded to dug down about 1,5 meters. From there we dug sidewards to construct our own "bunker".
Many times the tunnel would collapse, and eventually the construction became an "open-tunnel" process. Digging a hole and then covering it up with a wooden ceiling.
I can still feel the excitement of having our own "secret space" we entirely built ourselves. Constantly talking about how to expand and improve the structure was more fun then actually using it.
Reminds me of a saying I like about startups: The key to success isn't having the biggest shovel or digging the most holes, it's having the discipline to just keep digging in the same place.
For whatever inaccuracies there may be, it's something I always try to keep in mind.
My elementary School was built in the countryside where once was a train station. The only thing left was A LOT of bricks. Kids used the bricks and trees to build several forts, each one owned by a different faction. We took advantage of playground's most strategic spots. There were wars, alliances, betrayals... It was very fun.
Every summer the teachers would go to the playground and destroy the forts, because they thought them to be too dangerous. Yet, we built them again at the beginning of each school year. Soon after I went to middle school, the adults decided to remove all the bricks.
Regarding the lead masks case, how about: Two guys were interested in taking some weird drugs (equivalent of "shrooms" today). They met someone who agreed to give them the drugs, and as part of the ritual gave them the instructions "Be at the place arranged at 16.30. Take capsules at 18.30. After feeling the effects, protect half the face with lead masks. Await the agreed signal"[0]. They took the drugs, OD'd and died.
We called it "Dick Turpin's Cave", even though it was self-evidently no such thing, but it was damnably cool - both figuratively and literally - and on a hot summer's day, sneaking off from games to go loiter in our brick-lined flagstone-floored cave and play pog or what have you was... special. And probably incredibly dangerous. One end of it was collapsed - it was shaped like a cross with an entrance in the ceiling of one lobe.
I more than understand the appeal. There's some innate human instinct to tunnel - perhaps at some point in our history we made burrows to live in, in the absence of other construction materials - I mean, we lived in caves, so...