Occult Club

(2024)

Something happened to me in my last year of high school that I will probably remember for the rest of my life. It all started when a couple of girls from a grade bellow me asked for my help with a project for their club. I knew them but not too well. They then told me about the occult club and the project they were doing. I had no idea there was an occult club in our school. I couldn’t imagine the principal approving something like this but regardless I agreed to help them out.

You know every school has that one suicide rumor that nobody can trace to a credible source? At least where I’m from every school had a ghost story like that. Every school had at least one story like that. The girls, I’ll call them Kim and May, had compiled a list of stories about our school that other students seemed to believe were true. They wanted to film a documentary about investigating the claims of hauntings happening at our school. Somehow they had gotten permission to film at school overnight but not without supervision from a teacher. I guess they were worried about being alone all night with a male teacher and asked me to tag along. I don’t know why they were so worried, I have a pretty hard time believing out history teacher Mr. Morrison would dare do anything nefarious to the girls.

I figured it was going to be a pretty interesting night so when class was over I got home, did my homework and then went over to the supermarket to get some snacks for the night. The girls borrowed three cameras and they planned to leave them filming all thought the night. I also brought a sleeping bag. I knew we were probably going to crash at some point besides the cameras didn’t need us to stay awake to film. Despite my expectations the first few hours were pretty boring. Kim and May did their introduction while I was acting as their camera guy. We went over to each of the spots that people claimed to be haunted, all expect for one. The girls talked about each location and what people said happened there. After that we just set up cameras in three locations and went back downstairs. Mr. Morrison had ordered a large pizza and I was not about to miss that. He was pretty nice to agree to this since it meant he would be here at the school for two nights in a row.

After some time passed we decided to check the cameras. There were only a couple hours of footage on each of them. We used the computer room to views the footage. Each one of us took a camera and sat down to look through the recording. There is nothing more boring than looking at the screen that wasn’t changing for hours. I was drifting off to sleep while sitting there and looking for any change on the screen. The camera I was reviewing had been positioned in a “T” shaped hallway it was in the “I” part of the “T”. There was a rumor that a bullied student jumped of the roof and you could see the ghost of the falling person fall in the window straight across from there the camera was. The roof was the place weren’t allowed to go so we couldn’t put a camera directly there. I had watched the recording almost all the way thought. Kim and May looked to be asleep, Mr. Morrison certainly was. I tried to keep my eyes on the screen but I was starting to drift off. Something moved across the screen. My brain didn’t immediately register that but once it did I jumped, suddenly awake. I thought I had dreamt it at first. Perhaps I was asleep for a second or two. I rewound the recording a few minutes back. There it was ­– something white. I pressed play and watched it move horizontally across the window in front of the camera. It did not look like it was falling. It was hard to tell what it was because it moved so fast.

I woke up Kim and May and told them I found something. When I showed them the footage they both had terrified expression on their faces. I was feeling a mixture of fear and excitement. I knew it couldn’t have been one us doing it as a prank. We were all here together for most of the night. There were toilets on the first floor right cross the computer room and the camera was on the third one so none of us even had reason to go back up there. This footage was right before the end of the recording, just five or so minutes before we came up to check the camera. I didn’t see or hear anything strange and neither did the girls.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The girls decided to put the camera back in that hallway and move the other two cameras to other locations that were allegedly haunted. Now that there was a possibility of an actual ghost in the school going back into the dark hallways felt kind of creepy. Mr. Morrison was asleep in his chair so we didn’t wake him. I know it would have been more productive to split up and for each one of us to go and place a camera but the girls were pretty scared so we stayed together. We placed the cameras and went back to the computer classroom where we had our sleeping bags laid out. I wasn’t sleepy but the exhaustion started catching up with me eventually. The girls talked for a bit about what the thing on the video could actually be. It was too big to be dust, besides the school was pretty clean. After multiple reviews we had confirmed that what it was not outside the window but inside and moving in front of the camera. So it was definitely not a piece of trash blown up by the wind. The camera was filming in night mode so the quality was not the greatest but it seemed to move along the bottom part of the screen and it was very light colored or possibly white.

Eventually we all fell asleep. I don’t know how long I was asleep. I don't know exactly why I woke up either but it was a good thing that I did - Standing above me was a person. I was on my back in my sleeping bag and somebody was standing above me. I could see long hair but I could not make out the face. From what light came in from the street I knew this was not one of the girls.

"Get out." a raspy voice of an old woman said." Get out of my house."

I head something slice through the air. She brought her hands down She stabbed into my sleeping bag but missed me. That’s when I saw she had a knife. The woman must not have realized I was awake because I was still. My brain was still trying to figure out what was going on. I was certain I wasn't dreaming but now my brain was frantically thinking of a way to get out of my sleeping bag before she stabbed me again.

I tried to shift in my bag but she must have notice it and pulled out the knife bringing it down again. I managed to roll a little so she missed. I had one hand out of the sleeping bag and moved to get the rest of myself out . The woman staggered after missing the attack but continued to stumble towards me.

Mr. Morrison was behind and hit her with a chair. The woman fell forward. I was out of my bag and ran past her.

"What the hell is going on?" Asked.

"I have no idea." Mr. Morrison said.

I saw Kim and May awake and standing in the corner.

The woman was back to her feed.

"Get out of my house!"

She looked frail and old but it seemed that the hit did nothing to stop her. He waived the knife at Mr. Morison now and moved to stab him.

"Everybody out!" He said.

We ran out of the computer room. Mr. Morison held it shut as the woman tried to open it.

"Key are in my pocket." He said." Lock it

Quickly."

He was visibly struggling to hold the door shut. I grabbed the keys and tried to lock the door as fast as I could. A knife plunged through the door next to my face. Apparently the woman gave up on getting it open and just started stabbing the door. I could her hear yelling

"Thieves. Thieves."

It was clear the woman was insane but it didn't explain any of this.

"Do you know her" the teacher asked me.

"No. I've never seen her before."

Kim and May shook their heads at the question.

"How did she get in?" Kim asked.

"I locked the front door after we all came in." Mr. Morrison said." I'm certain of it."

"Does anyone have a phone?" I asked, realizing i left mine inside the room.

"I do. " our teacher said. “but let's get out of here first."

Sure enough the front door was locked which meant that the crazy woman got inside some other way. Mr. Morrison called the police and we waited outside for them to arrive. We could see the woman trashing the computer room. The windows had bars to prevent theft so she couldn't get out the window and come after us. Police and an ambulance arrived at the school after what felt like ages but was probably minutes. Mr. Morison handed them the key to the computer room and they headed inside. We all had to give our statements to the police. This was when we found out that the woman was potentially an escaped mental patient. Aberrantly an old woman with paranoid schizophrenia went missing from an insane asylum near town. They didn't think she would survive this long out on her own and without medication let alone make it to town. God knows how this woman managed to travel 40 miles and end up inside the school. One thing I know for sure– I’ll never forget what happened tonight.