If you didn’t know, there’s a secret network of tunnels beneath Loyola University Maryland. You won’t stumble on it unless you wander past the pond by Lange Court, or get roped in by friends who clearly have no fear.
We started at the grassy area near Maryland Hall, slick from a teasing light rain. Patrick, AJ, Nichole, and I headed toward the entrance. The air smelled damp and metallic, like the tunnels were breathing. I called my boyfriend on speaker, and as soon as we stepped in, his voice dropped out. No service. Just us and the echo of our own nervous laughter.
The darkness hits immediately. Deep, black, infinite. The walls are alive with graffiti: layer upon layer of colorful chaos. Neon tags dripping like they were painted mid-storm. Faces in distorted cartoonish forms. A fox wearing sunglasses, an alien playing the trombone. Someone had written “BANANA OVERLORDS” in gigantic bubble letters. A corner was entirely covered in scribbled equations that made no sense. Maybe someone’s attempt at math. Maybe a secret code. One wall had a stick figure stabbing another stick figure with a pencil, captioned simply, “Mondays.”
AJ slipped within the first ten feet. The floor was wet, treacherous, and apparently designed to test our balance. He nearly became one with the tunnel. We all waged a silent war against soaked sneakers for the rest of the trip.
Then came the dare: climb into a tiny crawl space for twenty bucks.
Easy. I'm smaller than the average human. But...spiders. Bugs. What if there's a rat?
But hey, twenty bucks is twenty bucks.
I squeezed in, scraped my hands, and discovered it led to a storm drain somewhere beneath the school. The graffiti continued here too, smaller and more frantic. A line of tiny, almost unreadable letters spelled, “If you can read this, you’re late for class.” Another wall had the words “PINEAPPLE REVOLUTION” repeated over and over in red spray paint. And of course, there was a crudely drawn cat riding a skateboard, somehow balancing a slice of pizza on its head. The crawl space smelled of wet concrete and old rainwater. I wondered if I’d be the one the warning graffiti had been about.
By the time we emerged near Lange Court, the rain had stopped. Climbing the steep hill back up was an adventure in itself: slippery grass, uneven steps, and a few near-deaths (AJ included). But the sun hitting our faces made it feel like a victory lap.
These tunnels aren’t just concrete and graffiti, they’re a living, breathing insider’s history. Layers of student marks, pranks, messages, and art piled over years. Tags from last semester, neon from three years ago, tiny cryptic warnings, bold murals, chaotic scribbles that make no sense all jumbled into this subterranean tapestry. One section looked like someone had vomited a rainbow, another had “HELP I’M TRAPPED IN A TOASTER” scrawled in blue marker. Nonsense meets obsession meets art. You walk through and somehow it all fits.
When we finally climbed back to daylight, everything looked normal again. The pond, the grassy slope, Maryland Hall, they hadn’t changed. But we had. Wet, laughing, a little scared, and a lot more in tune with the secret life of our campus.
And I was twenty bucks richer.
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