Once I was in the car with my friends, I explained to them where we were heading and why.
A couple of weeks ago I had had a dream that I visited this place with one of my two friends who was with me that day, and an old childhood friend. We went there in the evening, set up tents and camped.
Except in the morning they wern’t there. Their tents, sleeping bags, gear and backpacks had vanished. They hadn’t showed up for work. In fact their workplaces didn’t even know they had ever existed at all. A visit to this location had entirely cancelled their lives.
I asked my friends if they still wanted to go, and they were like hell yeah. I asked if they would like to go even if they found out horrifying things about the place. They were still like hell yeah.
And so we found ourselves at a narrow dirt road next to a railway track.
We knew that the place had been demolished years ago, and there would only be a ruin left. We knew the approximate location, but there was very much undergrowth in the forest.
And finally we did manage to locate the foundations of a building not very visible here.
The most recognizeable part were the former stairs. The stairs, which were climbed by a mass murderer. But it wasn’t until we walked back to my car when I told this to my friends.
Back in 1953 this was the small, rural railway station of Soso located approximately in the middle of nowhere between the city of Oulu and the municipality of Muhos. On Easter eve the family of the station master were going to bed, when he heard noises downstairs.
There he met a man, who wanted to rob the station. Surprised at the fact that somebody was home, he asked to be able to stay for the night. He was denied, so he got a hammer from his bag and attacked the station master. When his wife tried to interfere, he bludgeoned her to death.
The robber heard noises from upstairs, where he continued his spree by murdering the station master’s 18-year-old daughter and the six-year-old son of one of the station master’s sons. He then used dynamite to blow open the station safe, which was empty.
All in all he got a bit more than 3 000 euros and also stole some music discs and fabrics. He left by foot, but encountered a taxi and took a ride, which he paid with the robbed bills.
The murders were discovered that very same night, when the station master’s two sons returned from a night out and found their relatives killed. The taxi driver contacted the police, and a description of the robber was issued in the news.
This alerted the attention of the robber’s landlord, who not only recognized him from the description, but had become suspicious about his behaviour. The man, who usually didn’t care about news was exceptionally curious about them the next day. The landlord alerted the police.
The case against the perpetrator was pretty solid. Stolen items and money were found in his home. He had used gloves, but one of the fingers had a hole in them, so his fingerprint was found on the scene.
He eventually confessed, stating financial trouble and loneliness as his motives, but later withdrew his confession. He got a life sentence and died in prison in the early 1970’s due to kidney failure which was caused by the heavy medication he was taking. He suffered of even more loneliness, as the other prisoners had no understanding for his crimes. His wife filed for divorce and he never had any contact with her or their daughter again. The only person he was in contact outside the prison was his mother.
The station was closed in 1977 and demolished later. Now only the foundations and the stories remain.
We drove home and went to our beds. The first thing in the morning I called my friend to ask, if she still existed. She swore she did.
This was to be my final adventure in the North of Finland. A few weeks later I had finished packing, and that same friend accompanied me, when I hired a van and drove my stuff to the capital region.
But of course this wasn’t the end of urban exploration for me, quite on the contrary. I soon had loads of new ground to explore.