Loring's Weapon Storage Area


Click here to see photos from the WSA taken during the mid 70's

taken from the top of one of the structures





taken from the top of the alarm tower






Points of Interest within the WSA


The Vamp House


The Vamp House has been a mysterious structure for decades. Many ghost stories and theories have been told and retold about this place; everything from radioactive mutants living inside and the tunnels below to part of the Manhattan Project. The name itself was shortened from "vampire". Just recently one of the members of the Loring Ramprats posted a section of a manual that described these buildings as part of "Q-Areas" or specially protected areas that were used to store, test and assemble special weapons (read nukes) back in the 1950's.

This structure, called an A structure, appeared as a two-story building with the windows sealed with concrete. The only visible entrance was a small anteroom in front that lead to a steel vault door. The building, as well as the Bank, were designed to look like office buildings from a distance. It was used to store 120 detonators, 30 per room.
The vault door had been welded shut when the building was sealed. After the base was closed, a team was sent to access the building to see what was inside. They had to cut through the 6 inches of steel in order to do that. Inside, (after releasing a large amount of what was thought to be radiation, later "officially" identified as radon gas) they found more vault doors.

There were 4 doors, 2 on each side of the corridor, one of which was open.
The others had been cut through.

In front of the Vamp House were two of these pillboxes, guarding the entrance.



The second story is not an actual floor but 17 feet of reinforced concrete.


The one and only entrance.



The Bank


The Bank is another structure that was from the same era as the Vamp House. For years it sat on top of the one hill inside of an otherwise level area, sealed. A building has a lower level that actually goes into the hill under the structure. Years ago someone actually forced the door which had only been spot welded. (Shame on them....) We then had the obligation to investigate. With stories of mutants running rampant in our minds, we entered the corridor (at night no less). What we found was a vault door that was rusted open. Inside was another corridor with two rooms on each side. These had regular doors on them. Inside were empty metal shelves. The strange thing I discovered quite by accident, was there was still power in the building. As three of us stood outside the vault door debating on the merits of going further, I turned to a fuse box on the wall and randomly flipped a switch. A loud, screeching noise filled the room. As one of our brave security policemen, armed with an automatic weapon disappeared screaming down the hallway, I flipped off the switch that had turned on what appeared to be a wallmounted heater.

One minor note to add to the mystery, we had a K-9 patrol in the area that night. The dog refused to go into the building no matter how hard the handler tried to get him to move.

Who says animals are dumb?



The only door in

The vault door inside
The interior corridor of the vault


Shelving inside of the rooms within the vault
(These pictures are courtesy of a fellow Ramprat)

This was identified as an A-2 structure, stored the booster capsules for the thermonuclear or hydrogen bombs. Like the Vamp House, it was designed to look like an office building but the lower portion was buried in an earthen berm.


Weapon Storage Structure


This the typical structure used to store the nuclear weapons.


Entry Control Point and Alternate Security Contol


This was the only way and out of the WSA. The entry controller and alarm monitor were stuck in here for the whole shift.