First Tunnel Revealed
Teigan first consulted with three likely authorities on the matter: Mr. Bonn, and two other longtime faculty members, math teacher Ken Fowler and Latin teacher Lisa Countess.
“There used to be, when I first started here, this little teeny weeny faculty room,” said Mr. Fowler, who came to Friends in 1998. “At that time, a lot of faculty smoked. So the first time I walked in, there was all this smoke around and faculty huddled together trying to eat food and smoke cigarettes.”
Fowler said he was unsure of the old faculty room’s location. But he was able to connect Teigan with Ms. Countess, a 49-year Friends School veteran with intimate knowledge of the school – and its secrets.
“You know where the girls’ bathroom is downstairs [in the present-day Upper School building]?” asked Countess.“That’s where the old faculty room was.”
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“But it used to have an entrance, like as soon as you came down the steps,” Fowler said. “And they walled it off.”
“That’s right,” affirmed Countess. Then, she said something even more surprising. “In the floor there’s a trapdoor that leads to an underground spring under the building, and I think it goes all the way to Stony Run [Creek].”
With the school’s master key in hand, Countess took Teigan and Fowler down to the girls’ restroom off of Freshman Hall. She unlocked the storage room with a grin.
The room was small and dark. There were windows, with a few rays of sunlight sneaking in. The lights didn’t turn on, and the room was full of cobwebs and racks of textbooks. The trapdoor was on the floor, a grated panel that Fowler lifted with ease.
With the help of a flashlight, the trio was able to see the floor of the tunnel.
“Think there’s still any freshmen down there?” Fowler joked.
With the existence of the first tunnel confirmed, new secrets beckoned to be investigated.
Excited, our investigative team started firing off emails to various teachers. With each interview we did, we uncovered more and more rumors: the existence of an old scene shop tucked away in the ceiling of the Forbush building, an old dumbwaiter in the Upper School, and 9-foot wide tunnels under the turf field.
But we still had yet to see anything with our own eyes. That changed when we set up a meeting with Bill Smith and Carl Grant, both important figures in the history and maintenance of our school.