Contemporary Legend – California

Haunted School House

Apparently back in the 50’s and 60’s the hillside behind Mt hamilton was used as a missile test site and other government tests and was highly top secret. Those who worked back there made new lives for themselves because they were rarely able to leave. They had food and other products delivered to the small communities and the children even went to a school back there. The teacher of the school was going insane from the isolation and one day she hung all of the children (some say she even slit all of their wrists). She then took her own life and since then it has been haunted. People told me the story and said that if I went there and actually walked into the school, the kids try to help you and push your car away from the school to keep you from the ghost of the teacher, leaving fingerprints on the car. The first time I went there I was too scared to get out of the car and nothing happened. I went there again with my friend Trent and Dusty and oddly enough three other people were there. The weird thing was, the three kids went to my school Cuesta college and majored in architecture – same college as me, same major, all of which I thought was extremely weird because we were 200 miles from our school in San Luis Obispo. Then we went inside and saw a few ropes hanging from the ceiling and the atmosphere of the school was freaking me out. We then walked back to the car and parted ways with the people we met. They left first so we know they didn’t follow us but we happened to see them a few blocks from my house. We then got home and noticed a few finger prints on the car and the whole experience was pretty hard to comprehend.

Chris went on to tell me that has never been so scared in his entire life especially when we went into the school and saw ropes hanging from the ceiling. In retrospect he thought someone else might have gone in there and hung them to make it even scarier. Also the fact that the three other kids whom he had never seen before even though they were students with the same major at his college were there hundreds of miles away. He claims since seeing them that night he has never seen them again. The combination of all these things scared him to no end.

I feel this ghost story does so well because of the childhood aspect. The childrenÂ’s handprints on the car are a very nice touch to the story that add a twisted aspect to the story. The children were innocent in this case, although sometimes in the media we see the children portrayed as evil. This story in general invites discussions about the belief of ghosts, after all, Chris did say he noticed some hand prints on his window. A ghost story is so popular in my opinion because of that unknown element, who knows why those handprints showed up or why there happened to be kids from his school there that same night.