okay SO the (Christian) school I went to a few years back used to be a mansion of some rich guy, and a few of the classrooms + a restroom unit sat right underneath a chapel, and honestly thank god I never had a homeroom in that building (even though the whole campus was creepy as shit). It was normal for us to hear shuffling/soft sobbing noises in empty classrooms or bathrooms and drastic temperature changes were normal and we just shrugged it off, BUT I have two stories for you (shittily dramatized for your reading enjoyment)!!
(brace yourself, these are some chunky boys:)
My school uniform was a navy blue shirt, a maroon cardigan, and a beige skirt with little metal crosses sewn onto the hem, dangling near the right-hand pocket. During my third year here, the guidance counselor had to call an assembly because several girls were missing the crosses on their uniforms. Upon closer inspection, it seemed the thread that held the hardware were burnt off as they were black at the tips. Our counselor thought it was some kind of sick joke the girls would play to be rebellious, but the 12 girls were all known for being the kindest, most devoted Christians in their respective grade levels. Only one girl from each class was missing her cross.
We were creeped out of course, but we laughed it off as “O, may ginagawa nanaman si Ate Aswang, halaaa~~” and we’d tease each other for it.
A couple days after the assembly, me and my friend were sent to a storeroom in the main chapel to look for some extra music stands. That particular storeroom was a dusty little loft at the ceiling that looks like a birdhouse, with a cross underneath the cutout cement window. This was our first time actually being in it, so we had to dig around. There were boxes on either side and it wasn’t exactly neat, so we rolled up our sleeves and started looking around. In a dark corner behind boxes of old textbooks and chalk, there was a small worn down statue of Mother Mary, staring us down with her stained eyes, and 12 identical centimetre-long crosses with soot-stained rings laid in a circle around her.
My friend and I were kneeling in front of it and broke into a cold sweat. It was ironic, given that it was a hot day in the Baguio summer season, but we both still gaped at Mother Mary, shivers down our backs with a foreboding feeling we couldn’t shake off even as we walked down from the room carrying our music stands.
(We didn’t tell anyone until the year after, when we were sent to the storeroom again. We looked for the statue and the crosses but they were nowhere to be found. Nothing terrible happened to the girls, not that we knew of anyway.)
2. Hide and Seek (not as scary but it freaked me out back then)
This happened when we were younger, around fifth or sixth grade.
Our class was known for our bizarre games, from a Weeping Angel rendition of Red Light, Green Light and Tag, but if you were it, you were a demon chasing your classmate’s souls.
During our school Christmas party, our little gang of 7 got bored after the dinner party and decided to play another game. It was hide and seek, in the dark, and we had flour from our parlor games earlier and decided to put our own little spin on it: one unknown player would hide with everyone else and have the flour to mark the back of the others, and would reveal themselves after they’ve marked 6. Seemed harmless enough.
I hid in the garden shrubs and everyone else took their places and we started the game. My back started to hurt from crouching, and I contemplated walking out and giving up since it seemed I’ve been sitting there for an hour, but I decided against it. We eventually met up again after our parents started yelling for us, impressed at how clever the player with the flour must have been because we couldn’t even feel them place the mark of flour in our backs.
“What? I only marked Hannah and Kyle, they were the only ones I found. Where were you hiding?”
“I was in the chapel” said one.
“I was in the restroom at the haunted building. It would’ve been easy to find Ellis, I could hear her shuffling and giggling in the stall next to me!” another laughed.
“What?” I started to get nervous. “I was in the garden."
Maybe it was our dumb little elementary kid brains, but we decided someone was lying. We argued until our parents dragged away, and almost as if on cue we heard the other mothers scolding our friends.
"What’s that on your back? Why is there - tsk, ‘di 'to malalaba - ash and soot on your back?”
(Yes these are crappily dramatized but they freaked me tf out back then n I’m just tryna spook you like it spooked me 😔 also I hope this wasn’t too long hehe)
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me and tsukki: *staring at the story in silence after reading*
tsukki: i mean, that was... pretty creepy
me: wait, even you were creeped out?
tsukki: from a story standpoint there were creepy things that happened. like, the missing crosses that were burnt off being collected in one place. the weird flour hands on the backs of their uniforms. i’m not saying it was ghosts
me: those were definitely ghosts but i get what you’re saying. ghosts or not that was scary. (although those were definitely ghosts messing with you i mean come on)
tsukki: it could have been some creepy person collecting crosses.
me: but how do you explain the one with the handprints in the second story. they were all hiding in different places.
me: you CAN’T. it was someone else! or something else!
tsukki: kids have weird brains is all i’m saying
me: but even the parents saw it. the parents were the ones who pointed it all out.
me: i’m giving this a full 5/5 ghosts 👻👻👻👻👻 my mouth was hanging open at that first story and i can definitely say for sure that i’ll be thinking of that mother mary statue surrounded by twelve crosses. also, your story-telling is so on point!!
tsukki: ... 4/5 ghosts 👻👻👻👻
tsukki: because of the storytelling. that was good storytelling.
me: it was because you couldn’t explain the handprint story, isn’t it
