Halloween Tales

By Diana Hooley

Several places in Idaho are said to be haunted. I was reminded of this while talking to my two tweener grandchildren as I drove them to town to get a hamburger. It was the topic of conversation because of the fall holiday that’s second only to Christmas in their eyes: Halloween.

“Do you know any haunted house stories, Grandma?” my granddaughter asked.

“No haunted house stories, but I just read about a haunted motel.” The Bates Motel in Coeur d’Alene may never have seen a ghost cross its threshold but there’s no escaping the motel’s notorious name, which was featured prominently in that old slasher movie, Psycho.

“Who cares about a haunted motel,” my grandson grumbled.

“Well …what about a haunted school?” I asked them. “Does a haunted school story sound cooler?”

“Way cooler,” they both agreed enthusiastically. Apparently, scary school stories are familiar turf for my grandkids.

“Okay. I have a couple of haunted school stories to tell.” I looked in my overhead mirror and saw they’d both settled back in their seats to listen as they watched scenery out the car windows.

I told them about when I was a young woman living in Pocatello, taking a
summer school class at Idaho State University. One day on a walk downtown I came upon a monumental
old building with a grand façade that looked forbidding to me. I was surprised to find out it was a high school and not some prison or an insane asylum. Several years later, I learned my initial impression of Pocatello High School had some merit. The school was being featured on the popular TV program, Ghost Hunters, because of reported paranormal activity in the building.

“What kind of paranormal activity?” my granddaughter asked.

“Lights flickering on and off. Shadows in the hallway caught on the security cameras. Evidently, a librarian once hung herself on the library chandelier because her fiancé had jilted her on her wedding day.”

“I don’t want to hear a story about paranormal stuff,” my grandson said as he became increasingly restless in the back seat. “Tell us about a ghost.”

I assured my grandson that my second scary story had a ghost in it. I recounted that once when I worked for a newspaper, I wrote an article about the ghost that supposedly haunted the old high school in Glenns Ferry. At the time, Glenns Ferry High School had been abandoned for many years and an electronics company had taken up residence in the basement. I interviewed a city councilwoman and a postman who had visited the electronics company at different times on business. They both said they saw the ghost in the upper hallway of the school. They even claimed to know her name.

“Was she see-through? Did she howl at them?” my grandson asked hopefully.

“No. They said she was the ghost of Ruth Winslow. She looked solid enough, but her hair and clothes were old-fashioned. Ruth was a janitor at the school in the 1940s, about eighty years ago, when she missed a step on a steep stairwell and fell, which contributed to her death.”

My grandkids took a moment to absorb all this information. I didn’t know if my haunted school stories had fascinated or bored them—but I found out a few minutes later, when they dropped the subject entirely. Another topic of importance had risen that had nothing to do with haunted schools and ghostly apparitions.

“We’re hungry, Grandma!” they complained from the back seat. “How far is the hamburger restaurant?”