A pair of urban explorers are standing in
front of a rather creepy looking public school building. One explains to the other that it has been
abandoned for years, though no one in the town seems to know exactly why. The two pull a board off one of the windows
and climb through. The inside looks pretty much like they were
expecting. Their flashlights reveal that years of squatters,
teens partying, and wild animals have left plenty of refuse and debris lying around. There are two wings branching off the central
portion of the building. They pick one of them to explore and start
walking down the hall. As they make their way down past the graffiti
tagged walls they stop to investigate one of the classrooms. It looks to be in the same bad state as the
rest of the building, but incredibly there’s still writing on the chalkboard, as if the
teacher stopped in the middle of a lesson and walked out. There’s even a shriveled old apple still
on the desk. As they exit the classroom back into the hallway
one of them stops, wasn’t the graffiti on the wall different before? Impossible, they must be mistaken. They keep walking and come to a stairwell. Time to explore the upper floors. They head up the stairs to the second floor
and poke their head out, everything looks to be about the same as on the first floor. They go back into the stairwell and start
heading up again. It feels like they’ve been walking up the
stairs for a long time though. They should be all the way at the roof by
now. They finally reach a door, it must lead to
a taller part of the building they couldn’t see from the ground outside. They open the door and see… the second floor
again? How could this be? The two look at each other, they’ve explored
a lot of strange abandoned places, but nothing has creeped them out like this before. They head back down the stairs and after only
a few steps they are back on the first floor. Something is really wrong with this place. Maybe it’s best if they leave. They start walking back towards the entrance
but one grabs the other and points into a classroom. Isn’t this the room they went in before? It has to be, the same apple is on the desk
but the complicated physics lesson has been erased. Now the chalkboard has just a simple phrase
written on it… the children… used to sing. The two scream and run out of the classroom. But which way is the entrance? The hall appears to stretch on in either direction
before turning at ninety degree angles. This isn’t right, the entrance was definitely
visible from outside this classroom before. They pick a direction and start to run. The hallways seem to go on and on, turning
in ways that should double back on themselves, but they still can’t find the entrance. They try going back up through a stairwell
but just like before there appears to be either too many or not enough stairs between the
floors. The explorers keep running, checking rooms
for a way out. Somehow they keep finding that same room with
the rotten apple on the desk. They’re panicking now, everytime they look
away the graffiti on the wall changes, or a new classroom door appears in the hall. They keep running though, turning corner after
corner after corner, until… there it is! The entrance! But it’s then that one of the explorers
realizes he is all alone. He must have outran his friend. He looks at the entrance, it’s so close. He starts to step towards it but no, he can’t
leave his friend, he’ll find him. He turns around and right in front of him,
is the same classroom again, the one with the apple. Only this time, his friend is in there, sitting
in a desk in the middle of the room, asleep. Gathering the last of his courage, he runs
into the room and tries to wake his friend, but he won’t come out of his deep sleep. He pulls him out of the desk, if he won’t
walk out, he’ll drag him out. He pulls him out of the classroom and down
the hall towards the entrance. They’re almost home free. He’s just feet away from the door, he reaches
out with his free hand and grabs the handle… Locked! He starts banking on the door, terrified that
they’ll be trapped in this place forever. When suddenly, the doors swing open. Two stern looking men in suits are standing
in front of him. “You aren’t supposed to be here” one
of the men says, as the other picks up his friend, throws him over his shoulder, and
escorts the both of them out of the school. What these urban explorers didn’t know,
is that they had just unintentionally entered a mysterious anomaly that the SCP Foundation
has designated SCP-026, a strange location that has been given the nickname “After
School Retention.” SCP-026 is a three story building that used
to be a public school prior to it being shut down and condemned after both staff and students
reported various anomalous properties in the building. They described hallways that seemed to change
in length, classrooms disappearing and reappearing, and stairways with different numbers of steps
leading up and down. The discrepancies between the building’s
blueprints and the reported interior were strange enough, but the former school truly
came onto the Foundation’s radar after the disappearances of multiple people in the area
were linked to the location. It was initially believed, after sending in
robots equipped with video equipment to explore the school, that the spatial anomalies were
actually caused by an anomalous mental effect the space was having on people’s perception,
and that the physical layout of the school was not actually changing. However, additional exploration has proven
that this is not the case. The physical space of the school does in fact
seem to change, and even the exploration robots are affected by this shifting geometry. The inside of the school is covered in a substantial
amount of graffiti and most of it is the type you’d expect to see in any abandoned space
- gang signs, names, and street art for example - but it appears to fade in and out and will
change location. The writing on the chalkboards in the classroom
appears to do the same, and just like the graffiti, much of what is written on the chalkboards
is what you would expect to find in a school. Most of the writing relates to basic subjects
like math, literature, and biology, however some of the subjects that have appeared are
highly advanced and out of place in a non-university setting, such as the notes on quantum entanglement
that were found on a chalkboard. Bizarrely the phrase “the children used
to sing” has been found multiple times in a variety of places around the building, though
researchers are still left without an answer as to what it means or what significance it
holds. But the anomalous nature of the writing inside
of SCP-026 doesn’t stop there. The written content of books, notepads, and
other pieces of paper brought into the school have been observed to disappear, leaving blank
pages behind, only for the writing to reappear as graffiti or on the chalkboards. It is unknown why or how this is happening,
but those working within SCP-026 are advised to be careful of what written materials they
bring inside. Multiple unconscious persons have also been
found in the building. Several of the people found in the school
have been identified as either former students or faculty of the school including teachers
and janitors, all of whom had been reported missing in the years following the school’s
closure. Despite some of them disappearing as long
as ten years after the school closed, when they are found inside SCP-026, they appear
much younger than they should be with the majority being high school aged and dressed
in the style of the school’s dress code in the time before it was shut down. It is currently not known how they ended up
inside of SCP-026 or why they present as being a younger version of themselves. Attempts to wake unconscious people while
still inside the school are always unsuccessful, however once they are transported outside
of SCP-026 they will immediately awaken. All have displayed signs of confusion in their
brief moments of consciousness, before quickly dying from what appears to be severe dehydration. Their bodies will then experience rapid advanced
decomposition. No useful information on the nature of SCP-026
has been gleaned from any of these subjects in the brief period after removing them from
the school that they are conscious and alive. There have also been several cases of D-Class
personnel who had participated in SCP-026 research disappearing from Foundation control,
only to be found within the school at a later date. All are found sleeping, and experience the
same fate as the others who mysteriously appear within the school. The same inability to wake up while inside
the school appears to also apply to those who enter SCP-026 and fall asleep, though
they do not suffer the same gruesome fate upon being removed from the site and waking. Such was the case for a Foundation Agent who,
during a routine security check of the site, was found sleeping in the entranceway of the
school by his partner. They were unable to wake the agent up, and
he was moved outside the building. As soon as he was outside of SCP-026, the
agent regained consciousness and appeared to be in a state of extreme agitation. In later interviews, he reported that he had
dreamed he was in a strange classroom, and the same dream has been reported by all subjects
who have fallen asleep in the school, as well as by the D-Class personnel who were later
found inside. They all describe that in the dream, they
are sitting inside of a classroom that closely resembles those found in SCP-026, though in
the dream it is in a condition that matches how it likely appeared while it was still
a functioning school. The bell rings but no one moves, and raising
their hand does not get the teacher’s attention. Everyone is just sitting, silently. If they try to leave the classroom, they find
the door is locked. They then notice what is really off about
the dream, everything is in black and white, except for the dreamer who looks down at their
own hands and realizes that they are in color. Just as they begin to realize that they are
dreaming, and that they are the one who is out of place, they wake up. This dream will persist, recurring over and
over, and each time it takes the dreamer longer and longer to realize that they are dreaming. They also notice each time that their hands
are a little more gray. Research into SCP-026 is ongoing, and all
potential entrances including both doors and windows are to remain locked and boarded up
in between investigative missions. Alarms have been placed around the location
to alert Foundation personnel in the event that civilians or any other unauthorized personnel
gain entry to the site. Due to the fact that even with these precautions,
people continue to be found within SCP-026 and there has not yet been a reliable way
discovered to prevent it, this anomaly has been classified as Euclid. While you do not appear to be at risk of any
serious danger if you have not previously fallen asleep in SCP-026, pay attention to
your dreams, and if at any time you find yourself back in a classroom setting where things seem,
well, off… contact the nearest SCP Foundation personnel
to receive Class A amnestics in order to minimize any risk of you experiencing an After School
Retention. Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, and make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications, so you don’t miss
a single anomaly, as we delve further and further into the SCP Foundation’s classified
archives.
