Oakridge School, Provol Utah

by Anonymous (for job reasons)
(Provo, Utah)

I worked as a special education teacher at the Oakridge school for 18 months. The children were severely to profoundly handicapped. Some were extremely medically fragile, and we lost several every year.

When I first began working at the school, I didn't know it was haunted. It didn't "feel" haunted. (I had had some previous experience with haunted places and they felt nasty, evil.)

Some of the things I ignored were:
the automatic doors would not open, or would open for no reason. I just assumed that because the building was old that the electrical systems were malfunctioning.
When I came in every morning, I could feel a tug on my jacket or shirt. I would turn around and there would be nothing there. I just figured my clothes were somehow getting stuck to each other, creating the tugging sensation.
In the downstairs lounge area and in the gym I could hear someone calling my name. Since there were classrooms all around, I thought it was that phenomenon where you think you hear your name and it's some word or name that sound like yours.

What got my attention was the afternoon I had to leave without finishing sorting the toys into their individual bins. I was about half done when I left, but when I came back the next morning, they were all where they should be. I had locked the room when I left, and no one would have done this for me.

I told my cousin, whose classroom was next door to mine, and she casually mentioned that the school was haunted. She told me about a stuffed animal that was a favorite of her kids (called the Purple People Eater). Every night she would put it in its place, and every morning it would be someplace weird like the refrigerator or in her locked office.

I asked the custodians and other teachers if they had had experiences. They told me about hearing a party going on in the music room and upon investigation found it empty. One teacher told me she had a running battle with something that kept turning off her computer. My cousin told me about having to turn off the lights several times. I, myself, have seen the swings on the playground swinging when there was no wind and no one around. The custodians told me that they refuse to be there after dark because of a Casper-like entity that followed them around.

None of the odd occurances were malicious. The school felt friendly. We think that it is the spirits of the children who wanted to hang around and play a while.