Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986, The School as Haunted Castle

Despite its smallish size, my old hometown had three high schools. There was the public school, Jacksonville High School (JHS), the Catholic school, Routt, and Westfair Christian Academy. But there was also a fourth one. Or more accurately, a first one. The Newton Bateman High School was the home to JHS for many years. It had students who had seen WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. It had history, stories, and legends. 

It was also scary as hell by the mid 1980s.

Jackson Public High School by day and after dark. Mouse over the image, if you dare.

In my personal, real-world history, the Newton Bateman building (named after a local educator) opened its doors in 1921 and then closed them in 1982. Meaning I never walked those halls, and it sat like a grim reminder of a different age. My High School, also then called the "New" High School, was brand new. Slick. The halls were all carpeted, and the HVAC system was brand new. We had, for the time, a state-of-the-art Science Center named for astronaut Neil Armstrong, which included great chemistry labs and a planetarium. We had a great computer lab stocked with all sorts of new TRS-80 computers. And one of the best theatres in all of downstate Illinois. The place was massive and impressive.

It made the "Old" High School, then abandoned, look even older and more grim.

In my Jackson, IL setting, I rather shamelessly copy all of this.

There is the Public School, Jackson Public High School (JPHS), and the Catholic School, St. Michaels Catholic School (formerly called St. Michaels Academy and still called that by some). No stand-in for Westfair, really. I really didn't know much about that school and didn't even know it existed until they posted their graduating class in my then local newspaper.

There is the old High School building, the Thompson-Morgan building, paid for and built by the Thompson and Morgan families back in the 1910s and long before the two families had their falling out. 

The official word in Jackson is that the school closed because it was unsafe. Asbestos, lead, radon, or something. The students would spread rumors that the Morgans used it to dump chemical waste (at least that explains the food in the lunchroom) or that the Thompsons used it for their evil magic to stay in power. The Class of 1983 was the last class to graduate from there. The deaths of Selene "Lena" Marquette and Keely "Q" Ellison were the final judgments on the school. Everyone began the 83-84 school year in the new school.

But the Thompson-Morgan school was not torn down. And the reasons for its closure were never really revealed. 

When my "Tales from Jackson, IL" began, it was this school that called to all the supernatural creatures in the area. The witches, Stephanie, Larina, and Faye, all heard the old bell ring, even though it could not ring. Candy and Denise heard it as well, even though they are not supernatural.

The bell is the important part. A school bell tells students where to go, when to move, when to stop, when to gather, when to leave. In a haunted school, the bell does the same thing. It still gives orders. The problem is that no one knows who is ringing it anymore. 

In the new high school, both in Jackson and in my real-world school, the "bell" was an electronic beep. I mean yeah, it was bell-like, but it was also very, very 1980s. It had more in common with an 8-bit video game than a bell cast in iron or even brass. 

The old school had a proper bell. 

The old school has become something akin to a haunted castle in my game. Old, abandoned, and scary.

In teen horror from the 1980s, one of the unspoken but important characters is the High School itself. Look at the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, or even newer takes like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (80s in all but name) and even "School Spirits." The High School *IS* an important place.

But I get to play around with that idea some. Yes, there are scary things happening at the new High School. But those are not old hauntings. They are new monsters coming to school because, well, supernatural things are attracted to the angst and melodrama of teens. You say "Sturm und Drang" and a supernatural creature hears "Bon appétit."

The new high school is always busy, day and night, so there are plenty of opportunities for me to use it.

The old high school, though, is the Mines of Moria, Dracula's Castle, The Caves of Chaos. Vampires can be nesting in the basement, or the sub-basement with tunnels connecting to the hospital tunnels underground where things still live. There are ghosts in the hallways from 70+ years of student deaths. 

The new high school is where the town is still pretending everything is normal. The old high school is where that lie went to die.

The place isn't just haunted. It is haunted haunted.

And there is no good reason to go there unless you have to.

The cops keep an eye on it all the time. If anything is seen there, well, the newer cops will investigate. The older ones on the force will call it in and then stay the hell away.

Many years ago my younger sister called our hometown a "sinkhole of evil." This was long, long before anyone ever said the phrase "hell mouth." And I want to keep that idea; it isn't just the high school; it is the whole damn town. The high school just has a high concentration of weirdness.

In truth, I have avoided the urge to fill it with monsters. Yes, I know there are plenty of ghosts in the place; that is a given, but I am waiting to see what else *needs* to be there. I think the Hollow King is there, feeding off of the residual emotions of the place, but so far he is the only one I know for sure. 

That is a compelling image, really. All these ghosts, all these monsters, and they are afraid of something hiding in the lowest level (or maybe the Bell Tower). What scares the monsters?

Should it scare you as well?

Mirror Shard: The Bell That Should Not Ring

There has not been a student in the Thompson-Morgan school building since Spring 1983. The place is dark, the windows are boarded up, and the doors have chains on them. Even the bell tower had been out of commission for years before the school closed.

Yet at times the bell will ring.

Not everyone, though, can hear it. Witches and sensitives will hear it, as will ghosts. But some ordinary folk do too, and that is always worse. Denise and Candy heard it, and they had no right to be hearing a dead school calling their names.

When characters hear that bell, something has shifted in the old building. A door stands open where it was shut. A ghost has had a recollection. Perhaps a monster has made its way in or a room has come back into being. Maybe a student who died there is once more in the halls, or the Hollow King needs feeding.

Treat the bell as an adventure call, but do not make it so straightforward that it amounts to "go to the school and have your fight with the monster." It should convey that something is underway, and that ignoring it is to invite something worse later on. 

The Bell is not a call. It is a warning. But a warning the characters have to answer sooner or later.

After the bell rings, the characters might notice something like these:

• The clocks at the new high school are all stuck on 3:33. 
• An old hall pass from the Thompson-Morgan 3rd floor is found in a student’s locker (the new school only has a single floor). 
• A yearbook lies open to the Class of 1983 of its own accord. 
• The school nurse puts down her work to hear students laughing in an empty corridor. 
• By morning, a window at the old school has been unboarded, and unbroken. 
• There is a name on the detention list from 1974. 
• Or the ringing follows one home.

In AD&D terms, this is your haunted castle or ruined abbey bell, the kind from a village chapel whose tower fell thirty years ago, or the warning from the old keep for those with a curse on them.

But in Jackson it is a school bell. And it still expects obedience. It expects the high school students to obey it as they did in the old days.