Children's Stories (Part 1, unedited)

This is going to sound crazy. I think it's crazy, and I know you won't believe me.

I need to stop right there.

How many creepypastas start out with those sentences, or something similar? I feel like a kid sitting down to write a short story for school, who's read one too many of them online, or been listening to them on YouTube at three o'clock in the morning.

God knows I've done the same. I love folklore, and legends, and myths. Even if they aren't real, they can tell you a lot about a culture, and about humanity in general. But that's the thing -- I never thought they were real. Sure, they might have a grain of truth somewhere in them, but...

Yeah. Superstition and all that. A lack of understanding of science, and the real.

I'm a history major, and about to graduate. And like all history majors, I have very little I can do with my degree on its own. I grew up in a family of accountants and bankers for the most part, but the thought of doing anything like that gags me, to be perfectly honest. My Grandmother Ellie, on my mother's side, was a teacher. She was born in 1944, and after she left secondary school at the age of 17, she studied to become a primary teacher. At the time, she only had to complete a one year certification program, so she was out and teaching at 18 years old.

This was the woman I had grown up admiring, and part of me always knew I'd try to follow in her footsteps. Of course, it would take me a lot longer, but I knew it would be worth it. Grandma Ellie is the kindest, most patient soul I've ever met. She would sit with me for hours when I was a kid, reading to me, playing games, making crafts. She always had a smile on her face, and I suspected the same was true when she was with her students all those years ago.

So. As I said, I'm about the graduate. Next semester, in fact. I had planned on applying to the Faculty of Education, but before I did I wanted to talk to Grandma Ellie about it. I wasn't sure what advice she could give me, if any. I mean, everything is so much different nowadays. I think I just wanted some moral support, since I couldn't really talk to anyone else in my family about it. They all think I'm nuts as it is.

I went to her for support then.

The story she told me, however, is making me question becoming a teacher at all.

Apparently, this is how it happened:

Grandma Ellie -- or, just Miss Ellie Sanderson at that point -- took a job in a small mining town. I won't name any names here. That's not fair to the current residents. But I can tell you that the town was very old, even then. The original gold mines weren't pit mines, or even shaft mines -- they were blast-a-tunnel-into-the-side-of-a-hill old. The kind you see in black and white, silent gold-rush films from way back. By the time she arrived to teach second grade, most of old mine entrances had been boarded up, and the town only had a couple of larger, more modern mining companies producing ore to be processed.

The school she was working at was built at the end of the Great War, in 1918, and had been used as a makeshift hospital in the summer before it officially opened for victims of the Spanish Flu outbreak. It's main and top floor had wide, tall hallways stretching from one end to the other, and my grandmother remembered enjoying the echoed clicking of her heels on the polished wooden slats throughout the hallways and the classrooms. Large windows let it plenty of light, and radiators lined the walls to keep the school warm in the coldest of temperatures. Overall, it was a pleasant building, brightly decorated in the latest 1960s schoolroom fashions, and she loved teaching her little class of students, eager and energetic. The basement was another matter.

She told me she never ventured down there much. It was dark and cold, with a concrete floor. The ceiling hung low, dropping wires and pipes and other mechanical things which distressed her. That was the word she used -- distressed. It confused her, being distressed by basement. It was an "unreasonable" reaction. Miss Sanderson chalked it up to her imagination, and the ramblings of her students.

Though she didn't go down to the dungeon, as they called it, her students went down all the time. Modern toilets had been put down there about a decade earlier, giving them little choice. The children, being children in a creepy setting, came up with all sorts of stories regarding the dungeon, most of them revolving around the school's time as a hospital. The basement had been a temporary morgue. Nearly fifty people had died in the building. No, over a hundred! Mostly children! The ghosts of these children crept around the dark dungeon, waiting for a living child to play with. Or to scare to death. They wanted more playmates, or (my grandmother shivered at the next thought) a new body to possess, to live a life they were so cruelly denied.

My Grandma Ellie knew it was foolish, but she was certainly happy for the toilet in the staff room on the second floor. As long as she stayed in the airy, bright upper floors of her school, she had nothing to fear. What she didn't recognize was the very real danger coming from down the road.

Not more than a five minute walk from the school was one of the boarded up mine entrances, quite possibly one of the oldest ones in town. Though most of the old tunnels had been boarded up in the early 1900s, this one, she was told, had been closed off much earlier. Much, much earlier. A colleague, whom she could remember only as a fifth grade teacher, said he had done a little research on it when teaching his students how to use microfilm. They ran across a newspaper article from just before the Second World War discussing reopening that particular mine. The article didn't go into much detail, however it did say that there was still a large vein to be mined out. Later on, another article reported a unanimous town council decision to leave it closed. Miss Sanderson's colleague found it perplexing. She didn't find it all that odd. She just assumed it had something to do with finances, or safety codes, or something like that. Maybe it wasn't safe to mine. She remembered that though the fifth grade teacher had nodded his head, he didn't seem satisfied with the possible explanation.

That was the last she had thought about the mine until about a month before the end of the school year. It was May when the strange occurrences began, and Miss Sanderson took notice. One of her students, Sarah-Anne, stood in the cloakroom, doing the "potty dance" when she was supposed to be outside for recess. When she was told she had permission to go to the toilet, the little girl shook her head furiously and refused to explain why. Sarah-Anne wouldn't say anything at all. My grandmother finally rushed her to the staff room, and let her use the facilities there.

Over the course of the next few days, several other students nearly had accidents, and not just those in my Grandma Ellie's class. Neither her, nor any of her colleagues could drag any sort of explanation out of their students until Friday morning. One of the sixth graders had been caught escorting his younger sister behind a utility shed on the edge of the soccer field, a roll of toilet paper in hand. He confessed she was too frightened to go to the dungeon -- they all were, he whispered -- but she really needed to pee. Most of the kids had been rushing home at lunch time or holding it until the end of the day.

When asked why, he went silent for a moment. My grandmother said he looked like he was considering something very carefully. It made her wonder how much of his answer was the truth. When the boy spoke, he said there were dead children in the dungeon, but they weren't ghosts and they weren't from the hospital. He said he wasn't even sure they were actually children. Another teacher scoffed loudly, admonishing the boy, telling him he shouldn't be scaring the younger students and ordering him to detention hall to write lines.

Miss Sanderson caught the child's arm quickly, before he could leave, asking one more question: Where did he think the dead children came from? It was a ridiculous question, and she wasn't sure why she asked it. But her students were terrified, and she wanted answers. My Grandma Ellie said she'll never forget the boy's sheet white face as he answered her: From the mine.

Well, in her mind that settled it. The story of the dungeon had changed! Her colleague, and his research studies with his class on the neighborhood mine, had altered the prevailing myth of the dungeon. She had laughed at herself, feeling stupid. Children's stories, and nothing more.

That evening, after working on her end of year reports, Miss Ellie Sanderson found herself walking home a little later than usual, past the boarded up old mine tunnel. This time she glanced over at it incredulously, and stopped in her tracks. There were a few boards missing, creating a hole just large enough for a child to enter. Or exit.

She laughed out loud this time, and convinced herself that with all the rumours spreading around the school, it was most likely some of the older kids had taken to exploring. My Grandma Ellie made a point to speak to the principal about it on Monday. An abandoned mine was dangerous, dead children or not. She thought nothing more of it that weekend.

(to be continued)