I Quit Teaching Because Of This Terrifying Incident. I’ve Never Told Anyone About It Until Now.

Earlier in my career, I was a teacher at a high school in Vancouver’s east side. When I was first hired there in the late 90s, one of my colleagues told me that it was “a jewel of a community” and “the best East End school you’d never heard of.” And she was right. I grew up in Vancouver but had never even heard of this school, but as I began my tenure there, the reasons for its relative anonymity became apparent. It’s near an area of our city affectionately called The Drive, which is known for its cultural vibrancy, social justice advocacy, and eccentric personalities. With a student body of less than a thousand students, cloistered in a tight-knit neighbourhood of old wood-framed houses dating back to the turn of the 20th century, and quietly, humbly plodding through its history without feeling the need to trumpet its innumerable academic successes, its many charms drew me in like a siren’s song.

The school had been there since the late 1920s and was in need of some major repairs. Then, in 2001, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit our American sister city of Seattle. Its epicentre was 230 kilometres away, yet our building still swayed like a drunken sailor.

As you can imagine, that quake worsened the state of our structural disrepair, leaving a two-inch crack in the basement floor. I only know this because the custodian who cleaned my floor, Manny, confided in me after the quake, “We’re lucky this is an old wooden school. It absorbed everything. But our concrete took a beating downstairs.” Apparently, it also damaged a pipe causing water damage on the bottom floor. Manny was part of the crew charged with the clean-up.

That was a Thursday when I spoke with him.

Friday afternoon rolled in and I was stuck at my desk marking papers for an hour. Parent-teacher meetings were being held at the end of the following week and I was well behind in my grading as usual. That’s when I heard Manny sweeping the hallway. I stuck my head out of my room to ask how the repairs were going. He was a stocky Filipino man in his 40s with a strong accent, so I didn’t always pick up on every detail of the stories he shared. He relayed events with so much gusto that I was reluctant to interrupt him. It was the joy of the telling that was important, I thought.

He began telling me of all the damage he had seen in the basement — and the smells. “Like something died, rolled around in poo, then died again,” he said. There were several spots where two inches of brown water had pooled so that probably had something to do with it. When they pumped the water out, it revealed a crack that nearly extended the whole length of the boiler room. It was one-inch wide in some places, and quite deep. I only inferred this because of what Manny told me next.

They found a small metal box in one of the deeper cracks. It looked to have been encased in the concrete itself and then loosened by the earthquake. When they opened it, they found two things: a bible and a long lock of black hair tied by a small red ribbon.

I asked Manny if he had seen it himself. He hadn’t, but he had heard it from his friends who were in the boiler room at the time of the discovery. He said they washed off the bible and found the lock of hair in its pages, as if it had been used as a book marker. I remember getting the shivers and laughing because it was a hell of a creepy story. Manny laughed, too, and then did the sign of the cross over his chest before returning to his work.

On my way into work the following Tuesday, I saw that workers from the district had condoned off the area around the boiler room entrance to start their repairs. At the end of the day, I found myself again stuck in my room marking papers. And like clockwork, Manny’s sweeping could be heard in the hallway an hour after the last bell.

I poked my head out to ask how everything was going. And for the first time since I had known him, he didn’t look happy. I don’t recall the particulars of this conversation but he was evasive. It was very much unlike his character — or rather, it was a stark contrast from the persona I usually saw.

But when I asked whatever happened to that bible they found, he looked sternly at me and said, “Don’t talk about that. I shouldn’t have told you.”

I assured him that I had not and would not relay that information to anyone else, but I’m not sure if that’s what he was getting at.

Turns out Manny wasn’t the only employee at our school who talked about the discovery in the basement. The news spread throughout the school like a line of dominoes with the attendant gossip even reaching the staffroom by that afternoon. I don’t want to say too much here because the subject of the gossip and her family’s history is well known in our community. Suffice it to say, a student at our school went notoriously missing during a volleyball tournament hosted by our school. This was way before my time, but even I had heard of the event as a general missing persons case in our city and had seen her face plastered on newspapers all over town. A few months after the student’s disappearance, one of our school engineers was arrested on separate charges related to misconduct with minors. I don’t know what happened to him after his dismissal and imprisonment.

But I found the gossip distasteful for one major reason: The missing girl’s younger sister attended our school. I had not met the girl, but it was announced at the beginning of the year at a staff meeting as she was an incoming freshman. The school counsellor had gravely warned of possible triggers to avoid in classroom discussions of our school’s history, especially during Orientation Week. The staff generally regarded our school as one big family, and we were going to protect this child. And for the sake of clarity while respecting the family’s privacy, I’m going to call her Amy Waller.

The next day, I found myself at my desk later than usual. It was just after five o’clock and with it being late February, it was already quite dark. My classroom was on the third floor, and there was a large oak tree outside one of my windows facing east. The exterior school lights automatically turned on at dusk, so when the tree suddenly lit up, it jolted me out of my grading stupor. I was hungry, so I quickly gathered my things and walked down the stairs and down the long back corridor towards the staff lot.

That’s when I first saw Amy Waller. I had just reached the main floor and turned the corner into the hall. It was long and narrow with windows all along the north side. And standing at the opposite end, in profile, was a tiny waif of a girl. She stood at the entrance to the taped off basement. Her long, straight black hair obscured her face at first. But as I approached, she turned towards me and that’s when I saw her eyes. They looked just like her older sister’s, just like the face I had seen in the papers and on the evening news so many years before.

My heart immediately sank for her. She must have been so young when her sister disappeared, yet here she was standing by the stairs leading down to the site where rumours grew of grisly deeds and macabre rituals.

I didn’t want to call her by name and risk having her know that our staff had held a meeting about her at the beginning of the year. So instead, I just called out, “Excuse me!” I thought I could engage her in conversation or something, maybe help comfort her against the gossip.

She turned from me and walked away down the adjacent hall leading to the west wing.

The next morning, I reported the incident to the principal. She closed her eyes and nodded her head, pained for the little girl. “If I were her, I wouldn’t want to go home either,” she said.

At the end of the day, I had two of my eleventh graders in for extra work. They knew they were at risk of failing and pleaded for a side project they could do just to get them past parent-teacher night. An hour into it, I could hear the familiar sound of sweeping in the hall.

I walked out of my class and was surprised by another face. It wasn’t Manny. Apparently, he had taken ill and this man was his temporary replacement. The man explained that the office got a last minute call saying Manny would be unavailable for work for a week. I was about to walk back to my class when the man inquired about our school’s recent discovery.

“I heard you found a box of evil,” he said. He stated it with just enough mischievousness to annoy me. The thought of Amy wandering the halls alone, burdened with the grief and gossip from her family’s loss filled me with a righteous anger at that moment.

“You know this is not a joke, right?” I said. “A person, a child, might have been hurt in this very school.”

He was taken aback by my tone.

“Oh, I know it’s serious. I wasn’t joking.”

Then, he looked down the hall to make sure we were alone and then motioned me to come closer.

Then, quietly, he explained himself. And to this day, these words still burn in my ear.

“The man who did that was not a good man,” he began. “People downtown already talked about weird things that happened everywhere he worked. In one school, a rabbit went missing from a classroom. It was found the next day hanging from a tree, skinned and headless. Another school had a small fire in the park behind the building. There were dead animals burnt on a big table or something. And there were candles all around that table of dead animals which caused the fire. And here, before this year, I heard of strange drawings appearing on different walls. That guy worked at all these places. He did something bad with that girl.”

I had forgotten about the graffiti placed around the school the previous year. I had heard some kids broke in at night and placed demonic symbols — pentagrams, occult numerological signs, strange phrases — all over the building. That’s when they installed security cameras all over the facility. But I felt he was conflating different things just for the sake of sensationalism and it was frustrating.

“What makes you so sure of that?” I asked.

“That box,” he continued, “with what it had in it. My uncle is into reading about this kind of thing. He told me. The hair — a remnant of pain and sacrifice. The bible — to mock what’s in it.”

Then, he leaned closer. “I bet there’s something else down in the basement.”

My palms were getting sweaty just hearing this man talk. There was something unstable in his eyes, the way he stared as he spoke.

That’s when I heard the screams. They were coming from my room.

I ran as fast as I could back to my class. Both of my students were huddled together in the middle of the room, staring at the windows. They were not small boys, quite athletic, in fact. But there they were, almost in tears.

It took some time to calm them down, but they relayed the strangest story in a week already full of strange stories: They claimed to have seen a girl staring in through the window. We were on the third floor so that was impossible, yet here were these two 16-year-old young men in a cradle of pure fright, spewing gibberish. They described the girl as thin, pale, with long, straight black hair and large, penetrating black eyes. Of course, they had described Amy’s sister since stories of her were all over the school.

It was clear to me that the gossip about Amy’s family had infected their imaginations and senses. I had suspected they had smoked up before coming to my room after school. Mix that with the present goings on, and you have a cocktail for a floating girl.

The next day was a nightmare. Every student wanted to know what happened in my room the day before. The students whispered stories to each other but it was like the Telephone Game so that the story grew increasingly macabre. By the end of the day, it was awful. The ninth-grade English class was the worst: “Is it true there was a girl hanging from your tree by her hair last night?” “Is it true her eyes were totally white and wide open and she was smiling the whole time?” “Was she really holding a bible while grinning, swinging by her hair?” The students gleefully relished these stories as much as they were repelled by them. And for each group of students, I had to remind them that we were talking about real people who suffered real pain and loss and we were turning that into entertainment. They, of course, nodded in agreement, their heads heavy with concern, until minutes later when I could hear them theorizing about the stories again.

That evening was parent-teacher night so I went to the gymnasium where the conferences were held and found a desk with my name on it. We were arranged alphabetically so I was sandwiched in between the art teacher and gym teacher. I taught mostly senior English, so my schedule was packed. For 90 minutes, I had a nonstop procession of 10-minute meetings with various parents, encouraging the father of a borderline failing student, advising a woman on how to restrict her daughter’s social media usage, filling up the egos of the proud parents of an A-grade student, and so on. It seemed never ending.

Then, a student-volunteer finally ushered a parent away to his next meeting and he whispered to me, “You’ve had a cancellation, sir.” Which was music to my ears.

I was leaning back to stretch when I heard someone ask, “We’d like to talk about our daughter, Amy.”

I was shocked out of my fleeting moment of rest. There, standing before me, were Mr. and Mrs. Waller. (They had name tags.) The first thing that hit me was that they looked like nice people. To this day, I don’t know why of everything I could have noticed, that that was the most salient thing about them. Perhaps it had to do with my empathy for them leading up to our meeting. Regardless, I had to break the news to them.

“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Waller. I don’t teach Amy.”

They looked down at their itinerary, confused.

Then, Mrs. Waller called out to someone behind me. “Amy, isn’t this your teacher?”

I turned towards their daughter, and that’s when my temples started to pound. My back pressed up against my chair as I suppressed everything within me that wanted to flee. I strained every muscle in my face to force a smile. And I could feel my breaths coming in heavy waves through my nostrils.

The girl standing before me, Amy, was not the girl I had seen in the hallway. This Amy looked nothing like her sister. This girl was tall, with smaller eyes. And though her hair was black, it wasn’t straight, but wavy.

“No,” she said, before scanning the gym for her teacher. “There she is over there.”

Her parents smiled and apologized for disturbing me, and then moved on.

I would, too, by year’s end — from the school, that is. There were other disturbing incidents that year that distracted me too much from my teaching. I loved that school and the people there, but by the end of the year, I was no longer comfortable in my own room. I don’t believe in the paranormal. Still don’t. I think.

But what was later found in the basement forced too many questions.

A bunch of us teachers went out to a pub a few blocks away for drinks immediately after the parent-teacher conference. It was a longstanding tradition at this school for the principal to buy the first round. She lifted her glass and toasted in her slight Scottish lilt, “To you all, thank you for displaying both passion and restraint in equal measure.”

Later that evening, with a few beers in me, I cornered the principal by the pool table and tried to finesse some information from her. I asked how Amy’s transition into high school was going.

“You don’t teach her, do you?” she asked.

I told her I didn’t but was concerned given the recent discovery in the basement.

“Ah, that,” she said. “Don’t you worry about her. Her grade counsellor is ready if any red flags are raised.”

I was about to walk away when I thought of another question.

“Lorna, does Amy have any other siblings?”

“None,” she said. She put her arm around my shoulder and gave it a strong squeeze. “Don’t let these stories get inside your head. I’ve been hearing them for years. Christ, just let the dead be dead and be done with it, I say. Go get another beer on my tab.”

Near midnight, I found myself walking out of the bar, still bothered by the experience of seeing Amy — the real Amy. I was standing at a corner, thinking about hailing a cab, when I suddenly got the urge to go back to the school. It was only a 10 minute walk. It would help clear my head. The moon was out so it would partly light my way through the dark neighbourhood.

I know that in hindsight it sounds ridiculous, like one of those scenes in horror movies where you think, “Why the hell is he going back there? This is so fake!” I know how stupid this all sounds as I type this. Perhaps it was the beer amping up any youthful foolhardiness I had left in my bones, fueling my inner need for answers to questions spinning in my head. Or maybe I had a flair for the dramatic moment, the kind that leads some men to stand under balconies to unburden their hearts.

Regardless of the reason, I found myself standing on the grass under my classroom window, unburdening my heart of nothing at all. On the contrary, it was heavy with foreboding, as if a thick fog had settled in its core. I stood by the tree that provided shade to my room on some late autumn afternoons. The moon cast long shadows across the school lawn and a slight breeze was noticeable now that I had stopped walking. The tree squeaked under its own weight, and I could hear the branches tapping against one another.

And as my head grew tired and heavy, I thought of the strange, manic eyes of Manny’s replacement custodian. When did he have time to ask a relative about the events of our school since he just started working for us that day? And why would he care so much to even bother?

The wind died down as I started thinking of the walk back to The Drive to catch a taxi.

And that’s when I noticed it: the tapping sound of the branches. I could still hear it despite there being no breeze. I looked up and all was still.

Then, I caught movement in the corner of my eye. I turned to look up at my classroom window. And there, three stories above me, was the girl staring down at me. The one I had thought was Amy.

Her fingers were tapping the window.

Slowly.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

A pair of soulless eyes staring down at me.

I backed away, rubbing my eyes. I looked back up and she was gone. It had been a figment of my overactive imagination, mixed with a few pints of beer in the eerie, exaggerating influence of moonlight.

That must have been it. But my heart was still racing, so I put it to good use and ran back to The Drive where I caught a cab for home.

I had the whole weekend to process it all and concluded that I required more answers. Obviously, I was starting to see things, nightmares embedded in my imagination. My mind needed coherence, I needed things to make sense.

On Monday, I went to see Lorna, my principal. I asked her what she had meant at the pub when she said she’d been hearing these stories “for years.”

She looked at me incredulously, as if I were joking. She wanted to know why I was so curious. I told her that several students had approached me with concern and I needed a way to reassure them with facts.

“You want facts, eh?” she began. “Here’s a fact: Vancouver is filled with old schools. And every one of those schools has an urban legend about some ghost. Here’s another fact: it’s not just schools. You can say that about any old building in Canada, the States, England. Hell, my old school back in Glasgow had at least three ghosts I’d known of. People like telling ghost stories, and people like hearing them. So that’s why we’re hearing them. Now, go teach your kids more facts.”

I reminded her I teach English, and she laughed.

The day proceeded the way most teaching days do: some yelling, some laughter, some revelations, and much rubbing of my forehead. A typical day in the life of a high school English teacher.

I was an assistant coach of our varsity soccer team so I held practice after school on the west field as usual. We worked on our drills for most of the afternoon and then wrapped it up with a brief scrimmage. I had my two assistants help me lug the ball bags back to the equipment room. It was getting dark and I could see clouds gathering in the north by the mountains.

When I walked into my room to grab my belongings to take home, there was a sheet of paper on my desk. I spotted it immediately since it looked so out of place, nowhere near my regular stacks of marking. I didn’t remember leaving any paperwork on the desk itself.

I walked towards my desk and picked it up. Nothing. I turned it over.

I suddenly felt my chest sink inward, as if collapsing into itself, making it hard to breath.

It was a drawing, a crude pencil sketch, as if a young child had hastily drawn it. The drawing was of me, standing under the tree outside my window. It was drawn from the perspective of someone standing in my room looking down on me.

As far as I knew, no one had known I was standing outside the school Friday night.

I ran downstairs and headed to the office. I tried the door and it was locked. Everyone had gone home.

Then, I had an idea. I jogged back to my wing and searched the hallways. I then took the back stairwell up to the second floor and walked quickly down the corridor. I heard something up ahead and saw one of the classroom doors still open.

That’s where I found Manny’s substitute custodian. He was moving desks out of the way so he could finish sweeping the room. I folded the sketch and placed it in my rear pocket and walked in.

He was surprised to see me. I asked him how he liked working at our school. His name was Oscar. He said our school suited him just fine. As far as he’s been told, he was going to be with us for the remainder of the week. I tried to make some more small talk but I could sense he was suspicious. He had every right to be. It’s not like we were old friends catching up. Why would I care how he liked cleaning the floors at our school compared to the floors of other schools?

“Is there anything else I could help you with?” he asked. He had one of those faces that, even at rest, it looked like it was about to curve into a creepy grin.

“The other day, you mentioned that you believe there’s something else in the basement. What makes you think that?”

He then moved to the door and poked his head out into the hall. He then turned towards me.

“This school has a dark history,” he began. “You wouldn’t think it with its bright paint job, the quiet houses across the street. But they’ve had families here that…” And he stopped, as if searching for the right words. “There are good families and bad families. And then there are other families.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

He hesitated, then spoke. “Are you a religious man?”

“No,” I answered.

“You should look in the basement,” he said.

You know that feeling you get that makes you want to drive into oncoming traffic? The kind that softly urges you to leap off a balcony when you’re peering over the edge of a patio? The part of you that needs to know and feel unknowables? It’s as if we’re drawn from the abyss screaming into the world, and then, eventually, we subconsciously miss it and are quietly called back into that abyss. I think that urge towards an end was pulling me in the direction I found myself on.

I think that’s why a few minutes later, I found myself standing in front of the basement entrance. The large metal door was propped slightly open, taped off for repairs. The lights were off so that I peered into the blackness of its depths. I had never been down there so had no idea what to expect.

I took the large door and opened it wider to let the hallway lights down into the stairs.

And as the door swung wider, as the florescent light of the hall expanded into the stairs, I saw someone standing down there. It was a girl. With long black hair. Her back was to me, so I couldn’t see her face. She was near what I thought was the bottom of the staircase.

I bent forward to get a better look. It was the same girl I had seen standing outside this very door the week prior. I was about to call out to her when I noticed something very strange.

There was something odd in the way she was standing. It was as if she were leaning too far back towards me. It struck me as unnatural, and disturbed me just enough to make me catch my tongue for a moment. But she must have heard me because she started walking down the steps.

And that’s when I saw it.

My eyes had travelled down her back. She was wearing a cream-coloured sweater, waist-high. A dark knee-length skirt flowed neatly out below that. But at the bottom…

Her feet were turned the wrong way. They were facing me.

I couldn’t really tell because the angle of the stairs obscured my vision so that I couldn’t get a full view of her feet. But I saw enough when she lifted them to make me step back in horror.

To this day, I don’t know for sure if that’s what I actually saw. But accurate or not, the image has been burned into my memory so that on some restless, sleepless nights, the vision of those feet still come to me from dark corners of my room.

I was hoping to finish this account today but there is too much to tell. I had to find out who that girl was. I had to know what was in the basement. And I had to do it without losing my wits. I will write more as soon as I am able.