Real Haunted Schools

St. Joseph's College, Emmitsburg, MD

This former women's college was used as a hospital during the civil war. The apparition of Mother Seton, the foundress of the American Sisters of Charity, which was the first sisterhood native to the United States, is often seen gliding throught the corridors accompanied by the ghost of an unknown doctor carrying a medical bag. She was a brilliant writer and faced each day with eyes of faith, looking forward to eternity. Mother Seton's tomb is located on the campus. She was sainted in 1975.

Lourdes High School, Chicago, IL

Students, teachers and even custodians report hearing footsteps and haunting music echoing through the halls. No one has been able to link these disembodied sounds to any source or history at this point. This school is located at 4034 West 56th Street in Chicago.

Decatur High School - Decatur, AL

White moving apparitions and the unexplainable sounds of footsteps coming from deserted corridors have been reported by students and teachers at this modern high school. No one has ever identified the source of the paranormal activity.

Henderson State University - Arkadelphia, AR

When this was a Methodist college, a young man fell in love with a girl from Ouachita Baptist University. The two schools are just across the street from each other. Friends of the boy convinced him that the relationship was fruitless because of the differing schools and religions, so he stopped seeing her. When the girl found out he was taking someone else to his homecoming dance she committed suicide. Now, every year during homecoming week, her shadowy form returns to the womens' dorms at Henderson State, searching for the girl who won her only love. Students call her the "Black Lady".

Gorman School - Lebec, CA

This Spanish-style stucco school building has been haunted since it was built in 1938. It was built on the site of a farm where a 12-year-old girl named Harriet lived and was accidentally crushed by her father's tractor. She was buried on the property. Her body is said to rest under the stage in the school's auditorium, where her ghost has appeared to a number of teachers, custodians, and students over the years. In the 1940's, after a womens club meeting in the auditorium, the child appeared to an elderly lady and warned her not to go out the front door. Ignoring what she thought was a hallucination, the woman walked out the door and slipped in freshly fallen snow. She broke her hip in two places.

Reynolds College - Denver, CO

This historic house is haunted by Madge Reynolds, who had an adulterous love affair with Denver Post owner Fred Bonfils. She collapsed and died in her bedroom after returning from a horseback ride with Bonfils. Ever since, her white ghost is seen in the rooms on the north side of the house.

Eastern Illinois University - Charleston, IL

A ghost named Mary haunts the Pemberton Hall female dormitory here. Her spirit moves silently from room to room, making sure doors are locked, turning stereos and TVs off and on, and generally behaving like a housemother from the Other Side. In 1981, one of the girls left her door slightly open late one night, and the apparition drifted into the room as if it were checking on her. According to legend, Mary is the spirit of a counselor bludgeoned to death by a crazed custodian on the 3rd floor of Pemberton Hall in the 1920's.

Read about more haunted schools at HauntedSchools.info.

AUSTIN, TEXAS - The corridors, once filled with bustling activity, now were quiet and dark. School posters and lunch menus had been replaced by graffiti, and the men who walked the hallways were not teachers, but contractors sent to demolish the school. They would have problems; the dilapidated old building was not as empty as it looked.

Metz Elementary opened in 1916. That same year, the school board decided that Spanish-speaking children should attend a separate school. The board felt that the children would learn better if they had lessons in Spanish as well as English. Up until that time, the Mexican-American community in Austin had not formally protested any action taken by the school board, but many people from the neighborhood most affected appeared before the board to disagree with the decision. The proposed school would be several miles away, making transportation difficult for the children and their parents; there was also a concern that if the Spanish-speaking students were segregated, they would not have the same opportunities as the those who spoke English. While the board never formally backed down from its position, Spanish-speaking students who attended the nearby school, Metz Elementary, were never asked to leave or to attend the other school, and after a period of time, the matter was quietly dropped.

Metz Elementary served the community through the better part of eight decades, but by 1989 the school was considered too small to meet the growing needs of the surrounding neighborhood. The decision was reached to tear down the structure and build a new and bigger school in its place. The crew who arrived to do the work did not anticipate any problems; there appeared to be nothing difficult about demolishing the crumbling structure.

However, they realized from the first day that someone or something wanted to make the job almost impossible. The first strange thing was hearing the sound of children's laughter when they had assured themselves that the condemned building was empty. Then they saw writing on the blackboards when no one had been nearby. Equipment that had been running perfectly before reaching the site broke down. Bulldozers and trucks stalled out for no discernable reason, and even workmen's watches would suddenly stop running while they attempted to pull down the school's walls. Understandably, men begin to quit or just not show up for work, but the construction company refused to give in to supernatural pressure. They continued trying to work even as strange accidents plagued them. Finally, after a workman was fatally injured in a wall collapse, a clergyman was brought in to bless the building and the area was leveled. The odd occurrences made national news, and the Metz School Mystery has been puzzled over by curious people nationwide.

A new school stands almost in the same spot as the old Metz Elementary and now fulfills the same role in the community that the first smaller school did for so long. Perhaps the ties to the neighborhood and the school are so strong that some students never really leave.

Article Source: WhatWasThen.com.