On October 4, 1997, the Oakridge Mall in Shelby County, Illinois, was alive with the hum of Saturday shoppers, the clatter of arcade games, and the laughter of children. Among them were five kids at a birthday party for Cammy Reese: Marin Kepler, 9, with her pink balloon; Cammy, 10; her brother Eli, 8; and twins Max and Mason Harlo, 9. By 2:07 p.m., a grainy security camera captured them walking hand-in-hand toward Service Corridor 4 behind the JC Penney wing. Three minutes later, their balloon floated free, untied, down an empty hallway. The children were gone—no screams, no witnesses, no trace. For 28 years, their disappearance haunted Shelby County, a wound that festered as the mall decayed into a condemned shell. In 2025, a demolition worker’s vanishing and a cryptic message—“Level Minus One. I can hear them down here”—led Detective Adeline Russo to a hidden sublevel, a child’s skeleton, and a chilling truth: the children were part of a secret experiment that never ended.
The Oakridge Five, as the media dubbed them, vanished without a ransom note or a body. Police evacuated the mall, deployed search dogs, and scoured the sealed concrete wall behind Service Corridor 4. Nothing. The door, inexplicably open, led nowhere. Rumors of tunnels, cults, or trafficking swirled, but no evidence emerged. The mall closed in 1998, its stores abandoned, its food court left to rats. By 2022, it faced demolition. On March 14, 2025, worker Grant Lively disappeared beneath the south wing, leaving his flashlight and a scratched note: “Level Minus One. I can hear them down here.” The words sent a chill through Detective Adeline Russo, a former Chicago cop who’d grown up with the mall’s ghost stories. At 17 in 1997, she’d clipped articles about the case, haunted by its mystery. Now, she stood in the mall’s ruins, determined to uncover what lay beneath.
The demolition site was a skeleton of glass and ivy, the air thick with a fog that unnerved the crew. Russo found the foundation wall where Grant vanished—too clean, not on any blueprint. A faint outline revealed a hidden panel, and behind it, a 52-foot shaft led to a concrete room marked “Subject Six, Observation in Progress.” Inside: a bolted chair, a shattered two-way mirror, a butterfly nightlight, and tally marks with a child’s plea in red crayon: “I was good today. Please let me out.” A rusted clipboard listed “Subject Six, Female, Age 9, Discarded.” Russo’s stomach churned. This wasn’t a hideout—it was a lab.
Digging deeper, Russo uncovered a 1995 blueprint for Sublevel 1B, a “conditioned holding” space built without permits, erased from records. A sixth child appeared in a party photo, unidentified, watching from a kiosk. Robert Harlo, father of the missing twins, revealed his sons spoke of a “room with no lights” and a “blue square” where a man in a red jacket told them to knock three times if lost. In the mall, Russo found a scuffed blue square and heard knocks—three, then two—behind a sealed wall. Cutting it open revealed a foam-lined corridor with four rooms, each with a chair, mirror, and speaker. A cassette labeled “Subject Three” played a child’s hum and a chilling command: “I will be still. I will be quiet. I will be useful.” Door Three held a pit with a broken speaker and a carved note: “She didn’t listen. She was given the humming room.”
The investigation spiraled. A hidden file, “Project St. Augustine, Silence Protocol,” detailed a 1993 experiment to test sensory deprivation and conditioning on children aged 7–11, using soundproof rooms under the mall. Children like Cammy Reese, labeled Subject Two, were isolated, subjected to white noise and whispered phrases like “You’re doing better now” until they complied or broke. “Discarded” meant no death record, no trace. Room Infinity, a mirrored chamber 30 feet deeper, held a crayon-etched infinity symbol and a note: “She sang when we were afraid.” A tape there spoke of a girl who hummed to survive, her voice echoing in Russo’s headset.
Messages taunted Russo: “Our infinity still hums.” A figure, Subject 13, emerged—a survivor, now adult, who’d lived in the sublevel, mimicking staff, leaving clues to ensure the children weren’t forgotten. They revealed a final door in the city records vault, behind a butterfly lock. There, Russo found a padded cell, a child’s skeleton, and chalk drawings screaming, “Don’t forget her.” The skeleton was Subject 12, starved, her silence a final act of defiance. A new message warned of Subject 13, a moth symbol, and a chilling truth: “Not all of us stayed children.”
Russo’s own memory surfaced—she’d been at the mall in 1997, drawn to a blue square but turned back. A tape labeled “Subject 14” named her as an observer, initiated into the loop. In a mirrored room, ghostly children urged her to “finish it.” She handed her evidence—tapes, blueprints, photos—to a journalist, David Halberg, with a plea: “Don’t let them seal it again.” As she fled the city, the humming followed, a chorus of voices demanding to be heard. On April 4, 2025, her video went viral, exposing Project St. Augustine. The mall’s demolition halted when a worker heard humming below, whispering, “She’s not a child anymore.”
