(no subject)
someone sent me this thing on the ellerbe road school thing. you can read it if you want to.
The School
Old Ellerbe Road School is the most infamous haunting known to the area's thrill seeking high schoolers. It rests on the edge of a cow pasture about 10-15 miles south of town on, you guessed it, Ellerbe Rd. If it's Friday night and you want a good scare, and you're not afraid of the land owner and his shotgun, this is the place to go.
Finding out the truth behind it's abandoment and ghostly inhabitants has thus far proven rather difficult, perhaps owing to my reluctance to go to the library and look it up. Who wants to sit for hours searching through microfilm copies of old newspapers when it's musch more fun to just guess? I've heard several conflicting stories about the place from the people I've questioned. Some say it was a school for the children of the wealthy farmers who inhabit that rural locality. Others identify it as a black school that met with an very nasty end. It was involved in segregation. It was involved in desegregation. It was involved in a fire. It was just closed down. Seperating fact from fiction is not an easy thing, but, what the hell, I'm not getting paid for this. I might as well go out on a limb.
One of my fellow security guards informed me that he moved to this area in 1955, and remembers that the school was already abandoned at that point. So we know it's been falling apart in that field for at least 45 years. I seriously doubt that it was a black school. It's too nice to be something that would be used by blacks in the deep south. (Hell, even now, they probably wouldn't be given Old Ellerbe School. Welcome to Louisiana!) It resembles the elementary school that I went to; same architectural style, almost the same layout. It's quite possible that the two schools built in the same era. Looking through the phone book has yielded no sign of a Shreveport-Bosser City Historical Society or anything close to it. But hey, we do have five casinos! Just what we need, another strip of wicker for our handbasket to hell.
But I digress. (Really I do.)
Because of the fact that it displays a relatively modern style of architecture, I have to wonder if Ellerbe was built in this century. Let's just say it was built in the thirties, a not too unreasonable request. Why would it be abandoned by the mid fifties? Legend has it that a fire broke out which killed several children and gutted the school to the point of uselessness. Having been there I can tell you that that is simply not true. No hard evidence for such an event exists in the school itself. It's possible that a fire took place, but not to the extent that is claimed.
What I think is more likely is that Ellerbe was simply shut down. It's a extremely small school out in the middle of nowhere, and I doubt even now that there would be enough students in the surrounding area to justify its existence. It probably housed all the grades, from K-12. The state of Louisiana could have decided that putting tax dollars into it was a waste of time and started to bussing the kids to a larger school further away. But then again.....that wouldn't explain the ghosts.
The Legends
I first stumbled upon Ellerbe on a website devoted to cataloging haunted places across the United States. The person who sent in the information about it stated that people have heard bells and the screams of young children emanating from the school's walls. Rather typical of most hauntings don't you think? It gets better. When you question people who have been to the school you recieve tales of terror that are either a testament to Ellerbe's haunted reputation, or to the person's ability to imagine some scary shit while running, half-drunk, through the dark. As short and to the point as possible, here are the ghosts of Old Ellerbe School:
1. One visitor claimed to have seen a classroom full of spectral students sitting at their desks as they had done so many years ago. (This person also claims to have fired a flame round at the ghosts with his shotgun, something which I consider to be a display of natural talent for parapsychology. If they weren't dead yet, they soon would be it.)
2. A group of teens witnessed climbing ropes hanging from the ceiling of the gym. When they returned minutes later the ropes had disappeared. (They failed, however, to notice the big frigging hole in the ceiling that happens to have vines hanging down from it.)
3. A green flash of light has been spotted shooting past the windows of the front buildings.
4. The manhole covers on the site are said to suddenly open by themselves, all at once. Anyone brave enough to aprroach them hear something large moving around in the inky darkness. (At no point in my visit did I ever see any manhole covers. Why in the hell would Old Ellerbe have manholes, much less manhole covers? It sits in a field several miles out of town! "Bob, go down in the manhole and make sure the ground beneath the school didn't change into cream cheese overnight.")
Of course, Old Ellerbe has also been linked to Satanic cults who often visit and no doubt use it for their bizarre rituals which regularly include child sacrifice, unwholesome sex acts, and arts and crafts lessons.
The Visit
So my friend Jason and I decided to visit the school and witness the awesome terror that lay waiting. As usual, terror has chosen not to wait in a nice, well lit, air conditioned building, with a wide range of snack cakes to nibble on as you're exploring. That would defeat the purpose. Instead the terror at Ellerbe waits in a decaying, one story school, complete with crumbling brick work, shattered windows, and creeper vines, slowly climbing up the walls. I have to admit that the first thing I felt when I saw the place was fear. Stepping off the road, onto the arc of weed infested pavement that served as the driveway, the wind seemed to get a bit colder. I suddenly found that I did NOT want to be there. Jason had to talk me into climbing over the gate.
We walked around the side of the southeastern wing, and there in between the buildings, found the only possible evidence that something there had burned. What the hell it was, I have no idea. From what little I remember of it, I'd have to describe it as a blob of charred and hardened goo, roughly a foor in diameter. If you've ever seen the black tar that road crews pour into cracks in the street you know what the texture was like, though this thing seemed to be much more crispy. Later, when we left, I tried to pry some of it up but only succeded in cracking one of my fingernails. Whatever it was, it was not going to be moved. We studied this little mystery for a moment and then entered the southwestern building, which housed the cafeteria/auditorium, and the gym.
Now if Hollywood has taught me anything about ghosts, it's that the majority of them are not very nice to us living people. What I've been able to gather from numerous movies and TV shows is that ghosts tend to thing along these lines:
1. I am dead.
2. That makes me unhappy.
3. After years of unhappiness I have developed an antisocial attitude and some major anger management issues.
4. Here comes a living person. I think I'll scare/possess/kill them!
As we walked through the doorway I had all of this in mind. So, in a act of politness that you yourself should not expect from me unless you're dead, I spoke to the spirits. Explaining to them that we were just there to look around and take a few pictures, I promised that we would not harm anything. We also would not contribute to the graffiti problem, nor would we remove anything from the buildings. In return, I asked them to please not scare the everliving shit out of us while we were looking around. ( I didn't do this to be stupid, if that's what you're thinking. There is a historical precedent for my actions. I involved a British TV crew who had to ask for a ghost's permission before they could film it. Not that what they caught on tape was all that interesting. Just a shaft of light moving from door to door in a upstairs hallway.)
We spent about an hour walking through the school, and, damn, that place is nasty. Electrical wires hang down from the ceiling waiting for you to brush your head against them. Cow chips cover the floor in some areas. There's also the previously mentioned graffiti which covers the wall. We went into all the buildings except the northeaster most, mainly because it was actually fenced up rather securely. Damn property owner. We didn't see a damn thing. (Or at least, we didn't see a thing which I can verify as being paranormal in nature. Jason saw the shadow of something walking through the hall to the gym. I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a shapeless white blob moving across one of the hallways. When I turned my full gaze towards it, it disappeared. Since neither sightings were witnessed by the both of us, I'm going to go ahead and chalk them up to either illusions caused by the low lighting, or just plain delusions.)
In one of the bathrooms we found, amongst the chunks of porcelin, a mostly intact toliet seat. I briefly considered taking it home with me, a rather appropriate souvenier, but decided against it. With my luck it would bring along a little dead student. (Ghostly flushing from a haunted toliet seat, next on Strange Universe.)
Of course I had also made that promise to the spirits. (Though if you've been paying attention, and you haven't, you're probably wondering why we then tried to pull up some of the charred goo from outside to take with us. I told them we wouldn't take anything from the buildings. The goo wasn't in the buildings. I told you I wasn't stupid.)
We walked back to Jason's truck empty handed and broke out the Hooper's Hooch to celebrate the fact that neither of us had had a heart attack.
That's when the little girl screamed.
I looked at Jason.
Jason looked at me.
Perhaps we were celebrating a bit too soon.
We did what any sane, rational person would have done in out place, namely hop our happy asses into the safety of the Jason's truck. We stopped in front of the school and I got out to a few quick pictures before we left. I walked to the edge of the road and raised the camera.
The little girl screamed again.
In an instant I was back at the passenger side window telling Jason I had heard it again. (I can assure you that, despite the fact that I don't remember exactly what I said to him, it was no doubt a profound and witty remark, as is my style. Jason, however, will try and tell you that it was mostly incoherant babbling. He's a liar.)
I returned to the edge of the road, and as I walked around the front of the truck, Jason heard what sounded like a man's scream. I snapped off four quick photos, none of which turned out, of course, and we got the hell out of there.
Or tried to, Jason's truck having decided that it wasn't in a hurry to leave. As we pulled away he swears that he had his foot on the gas HARD. Yet the Ford Ranger accelerated sluggishly, taking it's sweet ass time.
Almost as if something was weighing it down; pulling it back to the school. Nah, couldn't have been. (Although, I DID ask the ghosts not to scare us while we were looking through the school. I neglected to limit their actions once we were outside so that's when they decided to start fucking with us. I guess they aren't stupid either.)
Finally, once the school was no longer in sight in the mirrors, the truck took off.
And that was that.
yup, so that's it. i dont know what i think about this..opinions, anyone?
The School
Old Ellerbe Road School is the most infamous haunting known to the area's thrill seeking high schoolers. It rests on the edge of a cow pasture about 10-15 miles south of town on, you guessed it, Ellerbe Rd. If it's Friday night and you want a good scare, and you're not afraid of the land owner and his shotgun, this is the place to go.
Finding out the truth behind it's abandoment and ghostly inhabitants has thus far proven rather difficult, perhaps owing to my reluctance to go to the library and look it up. Who wants to sit for hours searching through microfilm copies of old newspapers when it's musch more fun to just guess? I've heard several conflicting stories about the place from the people I've questioned. Some say it was a school for the children of the wealthy farmers who inhabit that rural locality. Others identify it as a black school that met with an very nasty end. It was involved in segregation. It was involved in desegregation. It was involved in a fire. It was just closed down. Seperating fact from fiction is not an easy thing, but, what the hell, I'm not getting paid for this. I might as well go out on a limb.
One of my fellow security guards informed me that he moved to this area in 1955, and remembers that the school was already abandoned at that point. So we know it's been falling apart in that field for at least 45 years. I seriously doubt that it was a black school. It's too nice to be something that would be used by blacks in the deep south. (Hell, even now, they probably wouldn't be given Old Ellerbe School. Welcome to Louisiana!) It resembles the elementary school that I went to; same architectural style, almost the same layout. It's quite possible that the two schools built in the same era. Looking through the phone book has yielded no sign of a Shreveport-Bosser City Historical Society or anything close to it. But hey, we do have five casinos! Just what we need, another strip of wicker for our handbasket to hell.
But I digress. (Really I do.)
Because of the fact that it displays a relatively modern style of architecture, I have to wonder if Ellerbe was built in this century. Let's just say it was built in the thirties, a not too unreasonable request. Why would it be abandoned by the mid fifties? Legend has it that a fire broke out which killed several children and gutted the school to the point of uselessness. Having been there I can tell you that that is simply not true. No hard evidence for such an event exists in the school itself. It's possible that a fire took place, but not to the extent that is claimed.
What I think is more likely is that Ellerbe was simply shut down. It's a extremely small school out in the middle of nowhere, and I doubt even now that there would be enough students in the surrounding area to justify its existence. It probably housed all the grades, from K-12. The state of Louisiana could have decided that putting tax dollars into it was a waste of time and started to bussing the kids to a larger school further away. But then again.....that wouldn't explain the ghosts.
The Legends
I first stumbled upon Ellerbe on a website devoted to cataloging haunted places across the United States. The person who sent in the information about it stated that people have heard bells and the screams of young children emanating from the school's walls. Rather typical of most hauntings don't you think? It gets better. When you question people who have been to the school you recieve tales of terror that are either a testament to Ellerbe's haunted reputation, or to the person's ability to imagine some scary shit while running, half-drunk, through the dark. As short and to the point as possible, here are the ghosts of Old Ellerbe School:
1. One visitor claimed to have seen a classroom full of spectral students sitting at their desks as they had done so many years ago. (This person also claims to have fired a flame round at the ghosts with his shotgun, something which I consider to be a display of natural talent for parapsychology. If they weren't dead yet, they soon would be it.)
2. A group of teens witnessed climbing ropes hanging from the ceiling of the gym. When they returned minutes later the ropes had disappeared. (They failed, however, to notice the big frigging hole in the ceiling that happens to have vines hanging down from it.)
3. A green flash of light has been spotted shooting past the windows of the front buildings.
4. The manhole covers on the site are said to suddenly open by themselves, all at once. Anyone brave enough to aprroach them hear something large moving around in the inky darkness. (At no point in my visit did I ever see any manhole covers. Why in the hell would Old Ellerbe have manholes, much less manhole covers? It sits in a field several miles out of town! "Bob, go down in the manhole and make sure the ground beneath the school didn't change into cream cheese overnight.")
Of course, Old Ellerbe has also been linked to Satanic cults who often visit and no doubt use it for their bizarre rituals which regularly include child sacrifice, unwholesome sex acts, and arts and crafts lessons.
The Visit
So my friend Jason and I decided to visit the school and witness the awesome terror that lay waiting. As usual, terror has chosen not to wait in a nice, well lit, air conditioned building, with a wide range of snack cakes to nibble on as you're exploring. That would defeat the purpose. Instead the terror at Ellerbe waits in a decaying, one story school, complete with crumbling brick work, shattered windows, and creeper vines, slowly climbing up the walls. I have to admit that the first thing I felt when I saw the place was fear. Stepping off the road, onto the arc of weed infested pavement that served as the driveway, the wind seemed to get a bit colder. I suddenly found that I did NOT want to be there. Jason had to talk me into climbing over the gate.
We walked around the side of the southeastern wing, and there in between the buildings, found the only possible evidence that something there had burned. What the hell it was, I have no idea. From what little I remember of it, I'd have to describe it as a blob of charred and hardened goo, roughly a foor in diameter. If you've ever seen the black tar that road crews pour into cracks in the street you know what the texture was like, though this thing seemed to be much more crispy. Later, when we left, I tried to pry some of it up but only succeded in cracking one of my fingernails. Whatever it was, it was not going to be moved. We studied this little mystery for a moment and then entered the southwestern building, which housed the cafeteria/auditorium, and the gym.
Now if Hollywood has taught me anything about ghosts, it's that the majority of them are not very nice to us living people. What I've been able to gather from numerous movies and TV shows is that ghosts tend to thing along these lines:
1. I am dead.
2. That makes me unhappy.
3. After years of unhappiness I have developed an antisocial attitude and some major anger management issues.
4. Here comes a living person. I think I'll scare/possess/kill them!
As we walked through the doorway I had all of this in mind. So, in a act of politness that you yourself should not expect from me unless you're dead, I spoke to the spirits. Explaining to them that we were just there to look around and take a few pictures, I promised that we would not harm anything. We also would not contribute to the graffiti problem, nor would we remove anything from the buildings. In return, I asked them to please not scare the everliving shit out of us while we were looking around. ( I didn't do this to be stupid, if that's what you're thinking. There is a historical precedent for my actions. I involved a British TV crew who had to ask for a ghost's permission before they could film it. Not that what they caught on tape was all that interesting. Just a shaft of light moving from door to door in a upstairs hallway.)
We spent about an hour walking through the school, and, damn, that place is nasty. Electrical wires hang down from the ceiling waiting for you to brush your head against them. Cow chips cover the floor in some areas. There's also the previously mentioned graffiti which covers the wall. We went into all the buildings except the northeaster most, mainly because it was actually fenced up rather securely. Damn property owner. We didn't see a damn thing. (Or at least, we didn't see a thing which I can verify as being paranormal in nature. Jason saw the shadow of something walking through the hall to the gym. I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a shapeless white blob moving across one of the hallways. When I turned my full gaze towards it, it disappeared. Since neither sightings were witnessed by the both of us, I'm going to go ahead and chalk them up to either illusions caused by the low lighting, or just plain delusions.)
In one of the bathrooms we found, amongst the chunks of porcelin, a mostly intact toliet seat. I briefly considered taking it home with me, a rather appropriate souvenier, but decided against it. With my luck it would bring along a little dead student. (Ghostly flushing from a haunted toliet seat, next on Strange Universe.)
Of course I had also made that promise to the spirits. (Though if you've been paying attention, and you haven't, you're probably wondering why we then tried to pull up some of the charred goo from outside to take with us. I told them we wouldn't take anything from the buildings. The goo wasn't in the buildings. I told you I wasn't stupid.)
We walked back to Jason's truck empty handed and broke out the Hooper's Hooch to celebrate the fact that neither of us had had a heart attack.
That's when the little girl screamed.
I looked at Jason.
Jason looked at me.
Perhaps we were celebrating a bit too soon.
We did what any sane, rational person would have done in out place, namely hop our happy asses into the safety of the Jason's truck. We stopped in front of the school and I got out to a few quick pictures before we left. I walked to the edge of the road and raised the camera.
The little girl screamed again.
In an instant I was back at the passenger side window telling Jason I had heard it again. (I can assure you that, despite the fact that I don't remember exactly what I said to him, it was no doubt a profound and witty remark, as is my style. Jason, however, will try and tell you that it was mostly incoherant babbling. He's a liar.)
I returned to the edge of the road, and as I walked around the front of the truck, Jason heard what sounded like a man's scream. I snapped off four quick photos, none of which turned out, of course, and we got the hell out of there.
Or tried to, Jason's truck having decided that it wasn't in a hurry to leave. As we pulled away he swears that he had his foot on the gas HARD. Yet the Ford Ranger accelerated sluggishly, taking it's sweet ass time.
Almost as if something was weighing it down; pulling it back to the school. Nah, couldn't have been. (Although, I DID ask the ghosts not to scare us while we were looking through the school. I neglected to limit their actions once we were outside so that's when they decided to start fucking with us. I guess they aren't stupid either.)
Finally, once the school was no longer in sight in the mirrors, the truck took off.
And that was that.
yup, so that's it. i dont know what i think about this..opinions, anyone?