Haunted Schools

Schools, houses of higher learning, institutions of education, but they are much more than that. They are the place where we spend the majority of our young lives and where we start to become who we are going to be. But, underneath that there lies a darker side. It may surprise, even shock some people to learn that one of the most commonly reported haunted locations is that of schools. Tales of haunted school buildings have graced countless pages in an unlimited number of books on hauntings and ghost stories.

Why? That is an amazing question and one that deserves an answer, or at least in this case an attempt at an answer. First we must classify the type of school haunting we are speaking of. I am not referring to locations such as Ohio's Ohio University, commonly called Pentagram U by it's residents. This location is haunted because of events that occurred when the school was an asylum, as well as suicides and tragic events that took place within it's walls. I am referring to locations where tragedy did not strike and death was not present in the desk of the school house. What makes those places haunted?

It is a very widely expressed notion in our field that the displacement of emotional energy can result in what we refer to as a residual haunting. This type of haunting is not a ghost per say as much as a recorded moment in time that is played back on a loop at different intervals of time. It is thought that surrounding objects can record this emotional displacement of energy as a cassette tape records audio and a video camera captures visual data. Some items have been known to record these types of images better such as stone types and wood.

Taking into consideration that most residual haunts involve murder and death we start to ponder how a school can be haunted when those elements are missing but let me explain energy displacement a little better. A child in a hurry to get to class to avoid a tardy may displace as much emotional energy as an adult running from a would be axe murderer. The stress levels would both be high and the fear of the end result could cause a visual and audio recording to occur within any structure. Schools, while often the best years of our life also share the most stressful years of our life title. The want to be different, the pressure to fit in, the need to succeed, and the such all combine for a very stressful time.

That being said it is possible, at least in theory to see how schools can be haunted by way of residual images. What about the haunts that are interactive and even talkative to the school itself. These intelligent haunts are much more difficult to explain but I will give it a try. Some of us are very attached to the schools they attended and think highly of them. I myself am a victim of this as I cherish the last year I attended school and regard it has the best year of my life. That emotional attachment could result in a binding effect that will cause the person's detached personality (ghost) to remain at the school. We as researchers see this a lot with cemeteries and people who were so attached to their physical self they could not leave it behind. (Resurrection Mary).

That being said it is possible for a person's ghost to haunt a school because they had such great and sometimes bad memories of the location but let's look at a theory that has come a long way since first being described decades ago. That is the theory of PK induced activity.

For a long time now researchers like myself have dealt with an anomaly called a poltergeist. In terms it means noisy spirit but in truth it is no spirit at all. The poltergeist is a result of pent up frustration and stress that is manifested physically on the surroundings of what we call an agent. An agent is the person the activity stems from.

In some cases it is an adult but in most it is an adolescent youth who is undergoing some stressful times in their lives and thus the pent up frustration is transformed into activity. This activity is almost always unknown to the agent as their fault but usually is easily detectible after evaluation of events occurring. A school is full of youth enduring various stressful events and situations. Drugs, the opposite sex, problems at home, and other pressures follow the students through their daily routines.

These events are sure fire induces of PK activity. So in a sense we could rule school hauntings to the ever popular poltergeist. These three theories are in no way the final word on this subject and are not meant to be taken as such. They are merely a look at some possibilities and I hope they have helped you in a way, even if it is a little one. Thanks for your time and happy hunting.