For a long time, Lively Middle School has had rumors about ghosts around the school. Students and staff, both former and current, share their stories about their encounters with the paranormal.
Multiple teachers have what they consider to be ghost encounters on the Lively Campus. “Every teacher that has been on the third floor has had something unfortunate happen to them. My example happened to be when I was playing basketball in the big gym and almost broke both of my knees playing basketball on a random wet spot. It wasn’t even raining outside and so that’s the closest experience I’ve had,” said Johnny Galan, a law teacher who has been at Lively longer than any other staff member.
“When I was the magnet director, we had an incident in my old office which is on the first floor right across from the journalism room. I’m trying to remember the year, but anyhow, my assistant and I were the only people in the building because we had to send out magnet acceptance letters the next day. This is way before COVID and even before we sent out an email acceptance. The only way we sent them out was a letter by snail mail and so we were in the building getting ready to send those letters out and my assistant was having a hard time with mail merge so we were there really, really late way past the time that any custodians would have been there. There was no one else in the building. It was after midnight. And we were in the back part of the office working with the mail merge and that office is right next to what we call the dungeon. So across from the journalism room there is an office and to the left of that is a door that goes basically into the kind of the just the floor level of the school. It’s where the custodians keep a lot of desks and chairs. You can see the pillars of the original building. And it’s got very thick concrete walls, and so we were in my office and we heard on my inner wall, and it would have been coming from that dungeon, three really loud pounds, like something was hitting the wall really, really hard. And of course it scared us because no one else was there and we went to move into the front of the office and we saw a figure run past the door and then they ran back the other way and then they ran a third time and that happened a couple of times. It really scared us. We were finally able to get our stuff done and we got out of there. But we did see a figure and there was pounding on that wall and there was no one else in the building. So that was my paranormal thing that happened to me way before the pandemic, not sure of the year, maybe the 2015 to 2016 school year,” said Leigh Northcutt, former staff and Magnet Director of Lively. Northcutt retired from Lively last year.
Students have had paranormal experiences too. “One time I was going to the bathroom. I was in my math class and the bathrooms were shut so I had to go upstairs and use the bathroom. When I was about to wash my hands, a bunch of toilets were flushing, and stuff was shaking, the wet floor sign fell, and the door shut. I looked outside, I didn’t finish washing my hands yet but of course I did right after, and I went to look if anyone was there but nothing was there,” said 6th grader Christian Cordero.
We have even had custodians have weird experiences on campus like this one told on behalf of a past custodian, “Our custodian a few years ago mentioned that his radio was acting weird when he was on the third floor,” said Galan.
Students and staff answer the question: Do you believe in the paranormal or ghosts? And, why or why not?
“I do believe in energy that is out there that’s unexplained, whether that’s ghosts or not. I think that’s what we try to assign it as ghosts or paranormal activity so that it helps us understand in our minds. Do I believe specifically in ghosts? I mean I kinda want to. I don’t know if I fully believe in ghosts, but it almost feels oddly safe to believe in ghosts,” said Galan.
“My grandmother’s was on an old confederate graveyard and the house was haunted, cousins saw apparitions of a woman in the kitchen. It just had a very eerie feel to it. So yeah, I think that’s possible,” said Northcutt.
“Yeah, a bunch of stuff has happened with ghosts, and stuff. I can’t remember many things but I just believe in them,” said Cordero.
“I do believe in ghosts,” said Principal Melissa Rodriguez.
