Open Haunt: A Stuyvesant High Scare

While you may expect to find bodiless souls wandering around a haunted house, you would be surprised to find the exact opposite wandering the halls of Stuyvesant: the soulless bodies of students as they float between classes. The average Stuyvesant student finds over 150 such creatures in the cafeteria alone—the drifting cadavers of students fed up with horrific school lunch. Beyond the cafeteria, the bathrooms are riddled with the whining and moaning of “ghosts,” one of whom met their embarrassing doom when a teacher denied them a restroom break for the entirety of a lab double. A gargoyle even guards the doors of the elevators, denying crippled students entry for lacking a “proper pass.”

Therefore, not even real ghosts or spirits stand a chance at scaring the heebie-jeebies out of the Stuyvesant student body. Students are far more afraid of pop quizzes about the readings they definitely did the night before than any ghoul. 

But what about the average Joe, unaccustomed to the depraved and haunted air of Stuyvesant? 

Year after year, the color drains from the once-lively souls of the eighth graders (or worse, the elementary schoolers dragged over by nervous older siblings or intense tiger parents) forced to face Stuyvesant’s Fall Open House. They quickly realize there might be much more lurking beneath the surface, coexisting with students who are too tired to realize…

This is the story of one such happy and sheltered child and her encounter with the supernatural of Stuyvesant High School. 

Rowena was 10 years old when she first heard of the school’s prestige, and ever since, she had wanted nothing more than to attend Stuyvesant. Now, as an eighth grader, she felt her steps grow heavy as she climbed the stairs of the Tribeca Pedestrian Bridge with her parents for the first time. The pictures she saw on Google could not compare to the overwhelming feeling of standing in the school’s bridge entryway. Rowena was excited to see the inside of her dream high school and meet her potential teachers, and she truly hoped that her enthusiasm was enough to show them that she belonged in a place like this.

However, it did strike her as odd that, every couple of minutes or so, a handful of people came running down those very same steps as if their lives depended on it, desperate to put as much distance between themselves and the school as possible. 

She chose to disregard the strange sight, but her grip on her parents’ hands automatically tightened as she noticed the hushed whispers of visitors in line. 

The closer she got towards the entrance, the more Stuyvesant’s eerie atmosphere began to settle into her body.

As Rowena walked through the foreboding metal doors, she felt the air shift, raising goosebumps on her arms. At some point, she could have sworn she saw floating, black figures reaching out to her out of the corner of her eye. But when she looked back, there was nothing there. 

She looked up to her parents in an attempt to figure out if they were seeing the same things she was, but they looked straight ahead, unfazed. The looks on their faces remained neutral and relaxed, almost trance-like. 

When Rowena looked ahead, she was taken aback by all the upperclassmen surrounding the incoming families. The students were all neatly settled to crowd the entrance as much as possible, which was quite overwhelming for little Rowena, and the scent of body odor and tears saturating the air between them and the families was highly disturbing. Their smiles stretched from ear to ear, almost literally, as if someone had slit their faces open. Each had a matching uniform sporting the striking wear and tear indicative of a scuffle, marking them a “Big Sib.” The dull overhead lights flickered, and for a brief moment, they were engulfed in a harsh shadow. Rowena swore she could see these Big Sibs’ eyes glow with an insatiable hunger as they slowly began to applaud, creating a cacophony of off-beat claps. 

“Welcome to Stuyvesant,” they said, drawing out each syllable. What she assumed was meant to be a warm and welcome greeting was eerily reminiscent of the tortured screams of students upon seeing their final grades. 

The moment they finished, the lights flickered again. On cue, each parent and child shuffled into the theater and began to fill the rows almost robotically, their movements stiff, like some invisible puppeteer was controlling their joints and limbs. The air reeked of crushed hopes and dreams with a hint of frozen coffee and existential dread. 

She looked around for someone her age she could chat with, but everyone else was simply scrolling on their phones, looking bored, a stark contrast to how uncomfortable she was beginning to feel. 

On stage, a man, whom she identified as Principal Yu, adjusted his microphone. It let out a piercing screech that ricocheted off every nook and cranny of the theater, piercing deeply into her skull. Everybody flinched. Rowena thought that it resembled the strained cries of all the kids who had forgotten how to factor polynomials in the middle of an important exam.

Rowena tried to focus on the stage, but she could not help but question the many oddities in the room. Why was everyone so still, barely even breathing or blinking? Why did the material of the seats seem to cling to her with desperation? Why did the unlit corners look as if they were hiding shadowy figures? She shifted in her seat. The lights flickered again, as if the theater was reconsidering its life choices. She looked around to see if anyone else noticed. Not even a peep. Students stayed glued to their phones, and parents stared intently at the stage almost hypnotically, as if they were watching somebody solve the last question on the AMC 12.

When the presentation was over, the room erupted in seemingly rehearsed applause, though no one seemed to know why they were clapping. Each clap echoed through the theater like a contagious yawn as everybody stood up and started to leave the room. 

As the theater doors creaked open, Rowena couldn’t help but feel reassured by the hallway’s bright lights after dealing with the haunting nature of the theater’s dimness. She brushed all the unsettling occurrences off as byproducts of her nervousness—after all, she was at her dream school for the first time.

She, along with a large herd of people, followed two robotic ARISTA tour guides up the escalators. She tried to maintain eye contact with the guides, but they seemed too keen on holding it, so she looked away. She pinched herself to make sure that she wasn’t mistaking cardboard cutouts for real tour guides. Other than that, Rowena noticed their only movements seemed to be due to the rickety escalator. Just as they got to the next floor, the escalators shook beneath her feet and let out a low screeching noise, grating on her nerves in the same way nails on chalkboards do.

Rowena soon found out that the hallways were more off-putting than the zombie-like Big Sibs near the entrance. The bulletin boards were scratched up and bare—in fact, Rowena couldn’t spot a sliver of decoration or color on the walls. A majority of the beige lockers were stained by the tell-tale signs of rust; moreover, walking by them was profoundly difficult due to the stench of sweat, rotten eggs, and, oddly enough, iron that escaped through the lined gaps. 

 She spotted students with wide eyes and erratic breathing slumped against their lockers as they stared directly into the souls of the passerbys. A few pressed their faces against the large windows overlooking the Hudson River and let out manic laughs that Rowena was surprised weren’t sharp enough to break the glass with each burst. Desks shook in classrooms as clocks ticked backwards at erratic intervals. A trash can fell on its own, rolling across the hall in an impossible path, stopping abruptly to block her exact next step. At some point, the tour group passed by a sallow student who just kept grunting and sniffing the air, asking for brains and whispering something intelligible about energy drinks.

“Halloween is not for another few weeks,” Rowena muttered under her breath.

The floating, black figures she thought she saw when she walked down the hallway of the bridge earlier reappeared. Rowena closed her eyes to prove to herself that it was just a trick of the mind, but the figures vanished after a suspiciously long amount of time. Gradually, a sense of unease settled over her, fueled by the bizarre atmosphere of the school.

In an effort to escape the creepy hallway, she hurriedly followed the group into the Hydroponics Lab, only to find herself staring at a tank full of fish. Pacific blue tangs and orange clownfish swam through the water, like Dory and Nemo from Pixar. Before she could stop and catch her breath, Nemo swam over to Dory and unhinged his jaw to a freakish degree. In the blink of an eye, Dory was devoured whole, with a loud crunch echoing throughout the room. 

Startled, Rowena jumped back, her shoulder slightly brushing past rows and rows of plants whose leaves felt like fingers, brushing creepily against her bare arm with an unnatural touch. She stole a glance back at the tank. Nemo began to spit out the mangled fins and fractured bones he couldn’t swallow. 

Rowena let out a faint gasp that she struggled to hide under her breath. Nemo turned to look at her, and he gave her a soul-piercing stare. It was a challenge: What are you gonna do about it? 

As the teacher started explaining the logistics of hydroponics, the parents chuckled nervously and shifted their eyes away from the now bright crimson tank. Nervous murmurs and even a few nervous laughs began to fill the room.

Amidst the commotion, Rowena bumped into the teacher. A crazed expression overtook her face as she replayed the horrific, violent scene in her mind’s eye. The teacher looked at her, bewildered and even horrified. Her body further urged her to run out of the lab. She quietly returned to her parents' side, hoping she hadn’t made a scene. Just before the teacher could register what was going on, the group left the lab.

So far, Rowena had made it through almost the entirety of the tour. She didn’t know why she was continuing after being scarred so badly. Maybe it was out of spite for the school trying to scare her out. Maybe she wanted to persevere to prove it was wrong to try to challenge her and that she could take on whatever else it had for her.

The final place of interest for her to visit was the pool. Rowena had always loved swimming and, if she were to get into Stuyvesant, she hoped to try out for the swim team. She eagerly joined a large group as they were led to the pool deck through the teacher’s office. 

When she stepped onto the pool deck, Rowena expected to be hit in the face with the strong stench of chlorine. Instead, she was overcome with a wave of nausea at the foul stench akin to a rotting corpse. 

“Please watch your step, everyone,” advised a teacher, sporting bloodshot eyes and drenched hair. 

The smell was borderline radioactive, and Rowena was developing a killer headache. She freaked out when she looked at the red liquid spread across the floor. Was it blood? Her mind played back pictures of the graphic murder of poor Dory. 

Rowena frantically looked around before locking her eyes onto the red life jackets on the wall. A wave of relief washed over her once she realized the “blood” was just the hue of the life jackets reflected on the slippery floor. She began to tune out the monotonous voice of the teachers and focused on her racing heartbeat and clammy skin. The moment she calmed her breathing, she became aware of a secondary source of sound, just barely audible over the chit-chat of the students. 

She heard remnants of an audience occupying the bleachers, shouting and cheering for the racing swimmers—but all the voices were distorted, several octaves lower than they should have been, and sounded as though they were screaming into an old radio. 

Rowena quickly averted her gaze from the bleachers. There was no way that was happening, right? It was just a trick in her mind. Stuyvesant wasn’t as perfect as she imagined. She was just letting that get to her head. Still, the thought that she couldn’t trust her mind was unsettling. She was worried that her mind might concoct something worse on the bleachers. Something else might just appear sitting on them. All these frightening hallucinations were only worsening her headache, and Rowena wanted nothing more than to go home, dream school visit be damned. Once all these thoughts ran through her mind, she realized how much time had passed. In her now-blurry vision, she could see the parents and faculty begin to shuffle out of the poolroom. She quickly steadied herself to join them—she couldn’t wait to get out of the school fast enough. 

However, just before she stepped out, she caught a particular shadow from the corner of her eye. It was peeking out of the bottom of the stairwell on the other side of the pool. Despite not having a face, it called out to her, an alluring invitation for her to come closer. 

With eyes locked on the shadow, she turned her head slightly and said to her parents, “Hey, I think I dropped my ring somewhere around here. I’ll be out in a second.” 

Only after hearing the door shut behind her did she begin to take small steps towards the shadow. But, when she was halfway there, the shadow faded and recoagulated up the steps. 

She had only just started to run after it when a voice shouted beside her ear: “No running on the pool deck!” She instantly froze in place. Was that a teacher?

Out of embarrassment, she turned away. She lowered her head and asked herself what she could have possibly wanted to gain from chasing a shadow in the pool. But, as she began to walk towards the exit, she was once again filled with a sudden and overwhelming desire to look into the dark, eerie pool. 

She knew from the gamut of her thoughts and emotions that she should not be doing this, yet some strange, carnal force overpowered her. When Rowena leaned over the ledge of the pool, she did not see the comfort of her own reflection but an uncanny replica that followed her movements seconds too late. It had her long, black, inky hair, but instead of her soft, brown eyes, there were swirling clouds of gray, glimmering with an unknown evil instead of pupils and irises. 

Suddenly, a hand lunged from the darkest depths of the water, snatching at Rowena’s sleek, black hair.

Rowena let out a bloodcurdling scream, interrupted only as she was pulled into the murky water with a terrifyingly strong grip. The last thing she saw before drifting into unconsciousness was a figure with her soft, brown eyes hovering over the edge of the pool.