Every year, in the two weeks surrounding the 4th of July, my family (Including all aunts and cousins and uncles, etc, from around the states), joins in Leeland, Michigan to spend some time together. We all live in the house together. There are only five rooms, and my whole extending family is there. Each family shares a single room together.

The cottage is cute, cozy, and wonderful, and it's set on the dunes just above the beach. It's not our own beach; my great aunt (who owns it), donated the beach to the public some years before I was born.

And yet, despite its cozy two floors, below it lays a dungeon. Seriously. Our family literally calls the basement "The Dungeon", because of how creepy it is down there. 

What I mean by that is that it's super big, and not a big open room, but a maze of dark corridors and dank rooms filled with spine-tingling, terrifying junk.

Let me explain further. The room I think is creepiest is the bathroom. It has an old, claw-toed bathtub that's dirty and turned on its side, with a once white-now-grey ripped curtain hanging in shreds around it. The toilet has the word "NO" scrawled on the lid in bold letters. The walls are concrete, and, from years of the sand shifting, they lean in and the concrete floor tilts to one side.

The hairs on the back of your neck rise as you continue. Eventually, you come across a workshop. It has a variety of old, rusty tools, huge forceps, porcelain hospital trays, glass syringes, long needles, and bone saws. Yes, bone saws. From World War II, I might add.

Possibly even more creepy, there's a trap door.

(Okay, admittedly the workshop has medical tools because Daddy Fritz, the original owner of the house, was a surgeon in World War II, and the forceps, etc, could be used as tools. But it's still creepy, so...?!?

Also, the house is old, which is why it has a trap door. Apparently, in the old days, they were smart enough to install a trap door in their floor so they didn't have to lug the laundry basket or trash bag downstairs. I envy them. Still, it's also creepy, so yeah!

Also, more embarrassingly... The plumbing doesn't work down there, so the toilet says no to keep people from using it.

STILL! IT'S CREEPY SO IT COUNTS I THINK!!!!