Tales at the school are chilling, but never threatening or demonic. The custodial staff has come to accept the goings-on as part of their everyday routine. So much so, that they are hard-pressed to recall anything "unusual" because the unusual has become the "usual" in their daily duties, such as misplaced equipment, strange voices, unplugged sweepers, and lights that go on and off. It is only when the activity interferes with their work that they take notice and ask the mischief-maker to cut it out.
At the end of the school year, the female custodian, Joyce, employs two of her sons, David and John, to help scrub the lockers, clean the classrooms, paint, and polish all the floors. On their first day, they made a plan to start early on the second floor and work their way down. When schools are vacant, the buildings bear a palpable emptiness. The walls that vibrate with teenage energy only hours earlier, are suddenly thrust into a hollow vacuum. That emptiness expands tenfold each year when the last student leaves for summer break. However, Joyce sees this emptiness as an opportunity to get some serious cleaning done.
Joyce and her sons entered the quiet emptiness of the second floor through the staircase at the end of the hall and wordlessly began the routine of pulling open lockers, sweeping out the scraps, and scrubbing the interior. From the other end of the hall, they heard the gears of the elevator engage and begin climbing from the first floor to the second. The elevator was only used for the injured and handicap, or to deliver large shipments. Either way, no one should have been using the elevator that early in the morning. The three of them stopped working and looked down the hall to the elevator.
When the elevator clicked to a stop on the second floor, the doors opened and the distinct sound of someone stepping off of the elevator was heard by all three - the swishing of a skirt and the clacking of heels on tile - except that the second-floor hallways had been recently carpeted! They sat silently in disbelief as the footsteps clickety-clacked down the hallway. The steps paused and there was the distinct sound of a door opening. The actual door remained locked, but the sound of the door opening and closing echoed through the empty hallway.
"Did you see that?" asked David, the youngest son. As soon as he spoke, they all released a breath they hadn't realized they were holding. Although Joyce and John agreed they had heard the elevator, the clickety-clacking of shoes, the swishing of a skirt, and the door opening, they had seen nothing. Only David, sitting cross-legged in front of a locker, saw a pair of woman's legs stepping from the elevator. She was wearing closed-toe black pumps and her full black skirt hit mid-calf, but the apparition faded away just above the hemline.
As soon as he described the phantom legs, Joyce recognized not only the description of Sister Ann's daily attire, but the pattern of her morning routine.
Sister Ann spent her entire career in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati school system, the last 30 years of it at the same school. She had passed peacefully five years earlier in the house she shared with her fellow sisters. Age and arthritis limited her mobility in the last few years of her life. The elevator was installed as much to accommodate her as it was to meet handicap accessibility requirements. Each morning, at least one hour before the first students arrived, Sister Ann would take the elevator to the second floor, cross the hallway, and enter the classroom that Joyce had earlier unlocked for her. Always tidy in her appearance, it had only been in the last few years that she had switched from the full length habit to the more comfortable black skirt, vest, and white shirt ensemble. Joyce would stop by on her morning rounds to chat with Sister Ann about everything from how quickly the world was changing to Friday night's football game. The room that the phantom legs had crossed to had been Sister Ann's classroom for 30 years.
Comparing notes, others in the building realized that it must be Sister Ann's presence they were also experiencing. Denise, the assistant principal, and Sharon, another employee, stayed for a late night meeting and were in charge of locking up. While securing the doors between the old and new wings, they heard the clickety-clack of heels purposefully striding down the hall of the adjoining old wing. Concerned they were going to lock someone in, they opened the door and hollered down the hall that they were about to lock up. Getting no response, they continued to lock the doors. Again they heard the clickety-clack.
A bit perturbed, Denise pulled open the door and quickly headed down the hall to see who they were locking in. Finding no one, she returned to the new section and once again began locking the door. For a third time, the clickety-clack of a woman's heels walking the tiled floor echoed through the old hallway. By now her companion was visibly frightened and Denise wasn't feeling so brave herself. They quickly locked the door, set the alarm, and hurried to their cars.
Denise had convinced herself that it was her imagination until she heard Joyce's story and that's when she realized that the the footsteps had the same purposeful cadence she had listened to for years when Sister Ann walked the halls of the old school.
Despite everyone's stories and her own experience, Denise continued to harbor disbelief that the school was haunted. However, she shared an infectious enthusiasm with the principal for allowing the students to explore their interests, including an interest in the paranormal. Which is how I found myself late on Halloween night sitting with a bunch of teenagers in the old gymnasium.
While compiling local ghost stories for their class project, my creative writing class asked teachers for their own experiences. The class was surprised to learn that nearly every teacher had an experience in the school. Even the most skeptical of teachers had heard stories of the school being haunted by wandering, robed priests, Sister Ann, and Coach Mike. Many teachers and staff experienced things throughout the building they couldn't explain. In order to gain a sense of the atmosphere for their stories, and to give themselves a good scare, they asked the principal if they could stay overnight in the school. With his permission, we made arrangements to lock ourselves into the school from 9 pm until midnight on October 31.
The energy level was high when we entered the school. Ghost hunting was a fairly new phenomenon not yet popularized by television. Armed with cassette recorders and flashlights we joined hands for a prayer of protection then divided into two groups. One group went to the second floor, while I stayed with the other group in the old gym. I turned on my recorder and set it on the floor and then, unsure of ourselves, we meandered around the gym, across the stage, and through the bleachers. "How about we sit on the floor and ask questions?" suggested one of the students. She and I sat down a couple of feet from the recorder and waited for the others to join us. While we waited, we joked about the popcorn left behind by Sunday bingo.
Up to that point the evening was very light-hearted, but the tone was about to change. We sat in a circle on the center court of the gym floor and began timidly asking questions. No one wanted to appear foolish, so the early questions were very general - Is there anyone here? Can you give us a sign? Are you Ok with us being here? But we soon got more specific directing questions to Sister Ann and Coach Mike.
After a question directed to Coach Mike, there was a loud bang from the equipment storage room.
One of the girls leapt to her feet and headed out the door. With a little coaxing, she returned to the circle and we resumed asking questions. This time we addressed Sister Ann. Another loud bang, this time from the stage hallway door, once again startled us, but this time we held tight to the skitterish girl.
We continued to ask questions and we continued to get loud bangs from the equipment room and the hallway. The guilt that accompanies a Catholic education took over and one of the students suggested we stop. In response was a loud crash from the equipment room.
We all ran for the door and crashed into the other group coming in the main door.
"Very funny, guys!" I was sure they had played a practical joke and were the ones making the noises, but the looks on their faces made me realize they had no idea what I was talking about.
Just to be sure, we went back into the gym and checked the two doors we had heard the knocks coming from. The hallway to the stage was securely locked with no way of entering or exiting without going through the gym and walking past us. The only entrance into the equipment room was the steel double doors in the gym. Again, we would have seen anyone near the doors, entering or exiting.
It was nearing midnight, so we needed to wrap it up. As we headed down the hall toward the parking lot, I rewound the recorder and started listening to the tape. Soon after we began recording, you could hear me joke about the bingo popcorn followed by a loud, unfriendly laugh directly into the recorder. That was the final straw. We all rushed to the exit and, like my colleagues before me, I hurriedly set the security code and locked the doors before escaping to the safety of my vehicle.
You would think that these experiences would deter anyone from entering the building alone, especially at night. But, nope. I, like my colleagues, was guilty of putting in too many late nights and returning after hours to catch up.
One night I returned to the school well after midnight to tidy up some loose ends, including running copies of my passport for an upcoming trip. Stepping through the back door, I first stopped in the teacher workroom to warm up the copier and then headed down the hall to my classroom. Halfway down the hall a locker was shaking violently. It was a surreal moment and I continued toward the locker, reaching my hand out to touch it. Just as my hand was about to make contact, the locker stopped shaking. Two lockers away a water pipe ran from floor to ceiling, so I concluded that heat and water passing through the pipes caused the locker to shake. My late-night rational did not take into consideration that only one locker in the entire row was shaking.
Once in my classroom, my imagination overtook rationalization and I began to see and feel every story I had ever heard about the old school. My eyes continually darted to the hallway envisioning robed priests passing by the door. My ears perked at every noise, both inside and out, sure that the clickety-clack of purposeful heels were headed my way. And now I had the added dilemma of heading back down the hall to the workroom to make my copies. I briefly contemplated climbing out the first floor window to get to my car, but the mental image of trying to explain that scenario in the morning, or worse, to a patrolling officer, made me face my fears and head back into the hall.
This time I scurried past the locker and got my work done in record time before once again heading to the safety of my car. When I got home I realized that in my hurry I had left my passport in the copy machine.
At school the next day, Denise met me at the door with a bemused look on her face and my passport in her hand. As we walked to my class, I told her of the previous night's events, even stopping at the shaking locker to give a good once-over. Cautiously skeptical, Denise went through the same rationalizations that I had, until she realized that the pipe was from an obsolete heating system that had been replaced at least 15 years earlier. With a chuckle and a shrug, she left me at my classroom and we both let the issue drop.
A couple weeks later, Dennis was waiting for me in my classroom. "You're never going to believe what happened last night" was her greeting. She was alone in the new section of the building and a locker was violently shaking. Thinking that a student had been locked in, she reached for the handle and, like me, it stopped shaking just as she was about to touch it. She jerked the door open and there was no one inside. This time Denise could not use logic to understand what had happened. Although she continued to claim skepticism, it was obvious that she was no longer a nonbeliever.
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