Army Ammunition Plant

About

An explosion in the late 1980s killed two workers, a man and a woman, and closed the plant for more than two years. When work resumed in 1990, just in time for the Persian Gulf War, part of the building was closed. To prevent sympathetic detonation in case of an accident, work areas were located several hundred yards apart, connected by ramshackle, unpainted, wasp-infested wooden ramps. Inspectors, supervisors and parts managers rode old-fashioned bicycles with wire handlebar baskets between areas. They used thumb-operated bicycle bells to alert other bikers and "pedestrians" before crossing an intersection or entering an adjoining hallway. As production of the cluster bombs continued -- with 202 bombs tucked inside each one -- rumors spread that the workers killed by a single exploding bomblet was haunting the closed area of the plant. Only two of the employees who survived the explosion returned to the plant, but they each began to have nightmares about their former co-worker; one was being chased through the dark, wooden ramps by the woman, whose face was destroyed in the blast by flying shrapnel. The other survivor was plagued by visions of a male co-worker being vaporized…