Published: October 10, 2009 10:38 pm      

A night with the school ghosts

Join in on the scary story fun

It’s once again time for the Pharos-Tribune’s Frightening Finale contest.

Pull out your pens and have some fun finishing the scary story we've started.

How this terrifying tale ends is up to your imagination. The contest is open to all students in grades 6 through 12. Stories should be typed and no more than 500 words in length. Include your name, address, age and telephone number. Submissions should be e-mailed to John Dempsey in a Word document to john.dempsey@pharostribune.com. Stories can also be mailed to him at the Pharos-Tribune, 517 E. Broadway, Logansport, IN 46947, or faxed to (574) 732-5070. The deadline for submissions is 6 p.m. Oct. 23, and the winning entries will be printed on Nov. 1. So think scary, use your imagination and tell us what happens next for our Frightening Finale.





The author, Garry Williams, is a Cass County resident who makes a living as a writer.



I knew I’d made a bunch of mistakes the second I heard Big Jim, the maintenance guy, lock the door behind him as he left.

I knew I should have had my friends park my car within walking distance.

I knew I should have charged my cell phone before I left the house that day.

I knew I shouldn’t have lied to my parents.

I knew all these things, but too late. I was stuck in the school. Alone. For the entire night.

OK, I have to admit, that was my plan. I had climbed on top of the PE lockers and slid way back into the shadows for the express purpose of getting myself locked into the school.

But now I was having second thoughts. Third thoughts, actually, because there were three things that scared me.

One, I was afraid of getting into trouble with the police. Pretty reasonable fear, right? Student found lurking in school after closing. Yeah, that might be a police matter.

Two, I was afraid of getting into trouble with my parents. That’s a reasonable fear, too. I had told them I was spending the night with my friend, trying to finish up the Social Studies project we were supposedly working on together. I clearly wasn’t.

And three. ...

The third thing was the one that scared me the most. I was suddenly afraid that the stupid ghost stories that had been told about the school for years might actually be true. Ironically, that was the thing I had been least afraid of before hearing those doors close behind Big Jim.

It was as if the click of the lock triggered the one unreasonable fear of the three.

What had I gotten myself into? And why? Well, I knew why. I was trying to prove that I was braver than all my friends, that I would actually spend the night alone in the school and perform the ridiculous midnight ceremony that was supposed to make the ghost — or ghosts — go away forever. Other people had tried it through the years, the stories went, but no one had had the guts to actually get it done. They had either run screaming out of the school in the middle of the night, or they had been found the next morning huddled in some corner somewhere, shaking and sobbing.

At least that’s how the stories went, but I didn’t believe any of them. Everybody knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who had tried it, but I’d never talked to anyone who actually claimed they had done it themselves.

I was determined to be that person.

Listen to how easy this sounds. At the stroke of midnight (of course, clocks don’t strike these days, but that’s always how it’s told), you’re supposed to walk backward, three times, around the four hallways that form the main square of the school. Then you’re supposed to say, “I release you, I release you, I release you.” And, voila! The school is ghost free.

Nothing to it, right?

Oh, wait, one more thing. You’re supposed to start and finish in front of the bronze memorial plaque. You know the one. It’s for some guy named Stockton, and his face is staring out at you all metallic and creepy. I guess he was principal for, like, a hundred years or something, way back when.

So, is old Metal Face the ghost? Most of the stories say he is. They claim he died from a heart attack while he was yelling at a student, and his spirit never left the school.

But there are a lot of other stories kind of jumbled up in with his. There’s the one about the Library Woman who moves books around, even with kids in the room. There’s the Jolly Janitor, who supposedly laughs when someone slips and falls in a puddle of water that wasn’t there 10 seconds before. There’s the one about a little girl, the daughter of a teacher, who fell down the main stairs while her mom was grading papers. They say you can hear her scream as she falls.

Stupid, right? Well, the stupider the stories got, the braver and mouthier I got, until I found myself hiding on top of the PE lockers and listening to the click of the doors as Big Jim, the very unjolly janitor, locked me in for the night.

The first order of business was to find out what time it was. I wanted to know how long I’d have to keep myself entertained before this midnight ceremony. If my cell phone wasn’t dead, I could find out from up here on the lockers. I could also set my alarm and take a nap. But I didn’t want to take a chance of sleeping past midnight, so I decided to go find the nearest clock.

If I had seen the puddle of water on the floor, I wouldn’t have jumped down from the lockers. ...



The author, Garry Williams, is a Cass County resident who makes a living as a writer.