My old elementary school was being torn down, and I had bitter sweet memories of it. Kindergartin to 3rd grade, and I was disruptive and preferred to doodle. This was the place where I was drawing depictions of Doom, the PC game during free time and it got me into a lot of trouble with our Principle, who was super religious. The drawings contained blood and demons, so to her it was a bad look, but I just really liked Doom and I liked watching my older brother play it.
She had me transfer schools and see a psychiatrist, but I was fine- just creative. The classes I were in were a setback, so I looked at her and that school with contempt. My brother went to the same school, told me about it being torn down, and had a blast taking a trip down memory lane and looting whatever he could find. Like a brick, an old stage light, a lan line telephone for some reason, I thought it was kinda dumb.
But curiosity bested me. It wasn't much of a detour on my way back to my childhood home. One weekend night, 2 in the morning, after playing D&D with some friends, I swung by.
The area was chain-link fenced off. Some heavy machinery remained parked in the lot surrounding the building, and parts of the roof were torn up, a cross hatching of rebar and uprooted ceiling material jutted up, carving a perimeter at the top, but walls and windows remained intact.
I pulled in and parked near the back, where faculty would normally park. The temporary chain link fence could've benefitted from being secured by two wires, but two sections nearby were only secured by the top, so I squeezed through the bottom in a half crawl, and walked towards some nearby doors.
It was windy, but quiet. Which made for my approach all the more startling when the wind glanced off one of the wrecked air conditioning units up top, caught a loose panel on a hinge and clanged it against the rest of itself. I froze. My brother told of grafitti and garbage that would indicate looters, squatters, and miscreant teens that could be hanging out there in weird hours. Thats not frightening to me, but I was aware of the possibility. But as we approached the witching hour, he made me aware of a presence he felt.
I haven't experienced a haunting before, but he claims to have. He said the building was very old, but it felt fine except for the cafeteria. The kitchen area specifically seemed to have an overbearing presence that didn't want him there. I was aware he did this excursion during daylight. I wondered if that presence roamed at night.
I stepped over loose bricks knocked loose during the demolition and found easy access to a rear door that lead immediately to a hallway. Armed only with the flashlight of this phone.
Doors were ripped out and thrown into the hallway or propped up against the walls next to the open frame. The silence was a suffocating contrast to the winds outside making chimes of the fences, busted metal, and trees.
My light was insufficient and my senses heightened. I tried looking upon the walls and the floor to spark memories long-lost, but were only met with silence. This bleak sight with cutesy posters still hung, never to inspire or encourage a child again. Old-world furnaces exposed with charred brick that in my developing years, I had no recollection ever seeing. Nothing nefarious...probably just how this building stayed warm in the 50s.
As I slowly walked down the straight hallway, the occasional passing traffic would cast light cascading down from the windows from one room to the next. I realized I should probably keep my phone light more downward aimed, should a cop be alarmed to my trespassing. But the paranoia of police turned behind me. Not cued by a noise, but a pressure. Like I was being watched, or someone was trying to get the jump on me.
I froze again. First aiming my light eye level behind me in the hopes to blind them. Then swiftly turning, to nothing. This would be the part where I breathe a sigh of relief, but I wasn't calmed by this. The hidden pressure, the feeling of dread persisted everywhere I wasn't looking. And it was rising in the deafening silence and swallowing blackness.
I grabbed a whicker end table and a brick. Threw it in my car and drove home. Took those two things to work that Monday. Tried to get a squad of coworkers to check it out so I wouldn't be alone. None of them were interested. That place was completely flattened a week or two later. RIP old elementary school.
