Walter M Williams High School

Williams High

Burlington, NC

There are many things about Walter M Williams High that, upon sight, immediately scream “haunted.” There’s the fact that it’s set on a hill so that it appears to loom over you at all times to an almost comic degree like the castle in Edward Scissorhands. There’s the huge plot of land on the front lawn that’s devoted to hosting the gnarliest, deadest-looking tree I’ve ever seen in my life. There’s the fact that somehow the entire school seems to be held together with literal rusty chains. There’s the architecture of the school itself, which looks like someone wanted to turn the city of Gotham into a place where people are forced to learn calculus.

There’s just this bulldog statue. This statue alone contains 8 million ghosts. Come on.

But here’s the official reason Walter M Williams High School is haunted:

At some nonspecific time in the past (I like to think the 1950s but if you wanna go 80s, Molly Ringwold it up) a super unpopular girl was shocked to be asked to the prom by one of the popular kids. As you can probably guess because people in ghost stories rarely have things work out for them, things took a turn when she found out on prom night that it was nothing but a cruel joke by the popular douchebag and his friends. Distraught, the unnamed girl ran up to the second floor of Walter M Williams High and threw herself out the window to her death.

The haunting today manifests itself in a couple of ways. One is that a stop sign in the nearby Bulldog Alley (because they’re the bulldogs!) appears to bleed, and continues to do so despite having been replaced several times. The second is that, if you walk up to the window where she jumped, one of the ones in the auditorium building overlooking the student parking lot, and start shouting insults at the ghost, she’ll appear. The continuation of verbal abuse toward a person who theoretically died a victim of bullying has never been one that appealed to me, but I’ve heard firsthand accounts from people who have done so and seen lights moving in the window afterward.

The first time I went to the school at night, on Valentine’s Day, actually, the only thing I saw was a light stain on the stop light which miiiiiiight be called “bloody,” in a sense. On a subsequent visit during the day I brought my friend Cameron, who had no qualms with screaming at the dead. Just as he started shouting up at the ghost the blind on the Designated Ghost Window began to move and suddenly a kind-looking girl with light red hair was staring out at us. After a second, I waved, and she smiled and waved back. Then Cameron and I got the fuck out of there. Cameron insisted it was the ghost. I think it was maybe a Saturday theater practice in the auditorium, but I’ve never once tried to confirm that.

Rating: 4/5 Spooky Bulldog Statues

Prognosis: Even if it’s not straight-up haunted, no kid should have to attend this spooky-ass school.