This set of tunnels is called the Main Tunnels for a very obvious reason. These cover, according to my estimation, the whole school. They are very different than Tunnel #1: they're dirty, smaller and seemingly go on forever. I have only a very small map of these tunnels, but it seems pretty big.

The only way I know of to get into these tunnels is to go through the Maintainance Rooms in the various buildings. I've never seen a ladder to climb up that led to a manhole, they've always led to the maintainance rooms. How you get into the maintainance rooms is up to you. I know of at least one set of doors to a maintainance room that might as well be made out of paper, you can easily open them from the outside.

Notice the difference between Janitor rooms and Maintainance rooms. Janitor rooms hold mops and soap and such. The maintainance rooms are rooms that house the various systems for that building: the furnace, the water heater, the breakers. Most of these rooms are on the lowest floor of the building and labeled something like M1 or 342M, not 4J or J31.

I turned a corner and saw two beady little eyes staring at me. Almost wet my drawers. It was a giant (at least at the time, it seemed) raccoon. I shooed him/her away and calmed down, until later I happened to see him/her sitting on a pipe right next to my head. It was pretty cute, it's little nose was sniffing at me. I managed to take a picture of it, covered my head up and walked past it. I don't know if raccoons carry rabies or not, but I wasn't going to risk it.

At about every intersection of the tunnels are red painted light switches. These control the lights for the various tunnels. Turn them on or off at your own risk. It's easier to walk with them on, but somebody might notice from above.

If you walk around at night above ground, you may see some metal plates in the ground with slits in them. If you look down there you might be able to see the tunnels if the lights are on. Hence, if the lights are on somebody may see you. Every so often underground you'll see a pile of leaves and cigarette butts. These are directly under the manholes.

You can see I haven't mapped very much. The dark areas on the above map lead to places I haven't been.

---

Any stories, suggestions, comments or if you want to explore OSU or Columbus, send mail to: underosu@geocities.com

(Main Tunnels Page last updated, Jan 23, 1999)