Snider High School, Fort Wayne, Indiana

by Brett A Swain
(USA)

I graduated from snider high school in 2007, and I experienced one of the scariest days of my life in the basement about a month before graduation.

I was in gym class with some friends, and our gym teacher said he had a special task for us. He wanted us to take the gymnastics mats by the football field and put them in the basement since it was the end of the year. We gladly agreed because we didn’t even know we had a basement and were curious. So when we get down there, its creepy as hell but really cool. Just stacks and stacks of old trophies and ancient cabinets and broken desks. We were so excited, we begged the teacher if we could go explore for a little bit then return to class, he said he'd give us 20 minutes. So we scuttle off down the long corridors and take the first turn. We were surprised to see our assistant principle down there sitting at desk he obviously visited a lot. At first we were surprised, then I could smell the faint dankness of weed haha. He was sort of embarrassed but we couldn’t have cared less, he was always cool so we just told him we were curious about the basement and exploring, so he let us go on.
So we're walking around the basement and we are just taken aback about how freaking big it was, it seemed like the tunnels never stopped. Well shortly after leaving the assistant principle we come across this huge window type hole in the wall, it was about waist high, three feet tall and about six feet wide.
It was the scary as hell, pitch black, smelled extremely funky, and it gave me the feeling that in the pitch black space, there was multiple people staring back at us, just waiting for us to get closer to the hole. As soon as we saw it, we all froze, our smiles flickered and our curiosity flew threw the roof. We stood talking about what it could possibly be and what was on the other side (because we could see light through distant holes the same shape but from very far away). Then as I'm looking into the black space, at what I would've considered to be the ceiling, I see blue water ripple reflections. I completely freeze, scared shitless, because there isnt any light source from inside the hole, and their is no water what so ever. My friend Megan sees my face and asked what’s wrong, and I point and ask "you can't see that?" after a few seconds and everyone looks, and I hear them quickly inhale. They obviously see what I'm talking about. We were all way too creeped out to keep standing there for too long so we take off and continue our investigation.
We walk and walk and walk what seems like forever, we pass a few more holes but try to ignore them. We keep stumbling on things that are fascinating to us, old desks with old books from the seventies, big boxes that held confiscated items from way back when(including playboys and squirt guns) that were covered in layers of dust broken trophies and old pictures. As we continue to walk we eventually turn and come into this one long corridor or tunnel if you will, and there's absolutely nothing in it. The entire hall is empty which is weird because every other tunnel was stacked with crap. We start walking down this corridor and we come upon the only thing in the entire hall. This very old, and very damaged chair. This chair had actual nail mark scratches all over it, like someone had been gripping it and was ripped away. And even worse, it was sitting right in front of and facing into one of those scary ass holes. My friends and I just stood their, and as if I know what everyone is thinking I say, "what the fuck." My dumb guy friend(cant remember his name) decides to pick the chair up and inspect it. As soon as he touches it, it started to get cold. And when I say cold I mean I immediately start to feel shivers down my spine, goosebumps start to pop up and my hair is standing on end, we all huddle a little closer together just in case. But the even weirder part was, that as it got colder, we could hear water moving and trickling from inside the hole. Not like water drops dripping and pattering, like water movement, someone swimming. He drops the chair and we start walking as fast as our legs will move. Every instinct told to me to run, but there were two cute girls and I think most teenage boys would risk a few ghosts/demons for some girls.
After moving as fast as we could we finally saw a short staircase raise to a door, we risked going through it, instead of finding our way back to the beginning. Thankfully it turned out it lead to the science hall. And it turned out we had spent nearly two hours down there. Of course our teachers didn’t mind we were seniors who were hardly missed. I've heard stories that snider owned a pool at one time but closed it because it became expensive, but never had I heard it was in the basement and never had I heard that a girl drowned. Those were some theories I heard and read from multiple sources as of lately. If i'd have known what i know now..... I probably would've still gone, i just would've had a better time lol.