text by Brian P. Hudson, (c) 1999

Below is one of few surviving photos of the graffiti that once virtually covered the walls of the Warriner Pit, a concrete access shaft that dips some 15 feet into the ground near Warriner Hall.

The graffiti seen here is but one example of the various Satanic messages that covered these walls before 1996, when the Administration ordered it sandblasted off. While there were never any known reports of actual activities--Satanic or otherwise--in the Pit, rumors were many up until a few years ago, and the possibility isn't unbelievable. To this day, some remnants of the graffiti can be seen on the walls. No additional graffiti has ever appeared.

The Pit is actually an access tunnel. The dark rectangle you can see at the far upper left of the photo is a door, leading into the tunnels beneath campus. The tunnels are used today as maintenence shafts (power, water, and gas lines run through them), but at one time they were actually used by students in winter, travelling from dorm to class and back again. The tunnels were closed off to the student body after a number of incidnets involving lost and disappearing students, and today, any unauthorized student found down there is automatically expelled from CMU. Residents of the Terrace level dorms (those directly above the tunnels) sometimes claim to hear noises coming from them, but these are usually explained away as loud pipes and the occasional maintenece worker ...