It seems that all the schools in Santa Fe are haunted in one way or another.

People say that Piñon Elementary School has a headless janitor that can be seen tampering with water pipes. Gonzales Community and E.J. Martinez Elementary schools are both rumored to be built on ancient Indian burial grounds. St. Michael's High School still receives visits from deceased brothers who used to work there, and at St. Francis Elementary, students make claims on everything from foot steps to flickering lights.

However, it's difficult to separate fact from fiction nowadays. Word-of-mouth rumors seem to be set in stone.

Briana Perry, a sophomore at St. Michael's High School, has had the experience of being enrolled in two so-called spooky schools:
St. Francis Elementary and now St. Michael's.

"I went to St. Francis for elementary school and a lot of scary stuff happened there. Sometimes the lights would start flickering in the middle of class, and for a long time the girls in the school would be scared of the bathroom because some of us would see glowing red eyes coming out of the heater in there," said Perry, who now laughs at her experience but admits it wasn't so funny for a third-grader.

"Besides that, other students and I would hear noises coming from the office even though the lights were off and no one was in there, and some people have even claimed to see ghosts before, but after awhile it became a regular occurrence for us."

Now Perry attends another school said to be haunted. "At St. Mikes, there are couple rumors about ghosts," Perry said.

The most famous story is probably the one told by Mrs. Bados, a former St. Michael's graduate and current teacher, who claims that a deceased religious brother appears at midnight on the 50-yard line at the school's football field.

Bados also told stories of slamming doors when nobody was around, Perry said.

Bobbie Gutierrez, Santa Fe Public Schools superintendent and the former principal of the supposedly "haunted" E.J. Martinez Elementary School, also had stories to share.

"There was often a howling wind through the front entry in the late afternoon and evening, even when the wind was not blowing outside," Gutierrez recalled. But the events that made E.J. Martinez creepy barely stopped there, Gutierrez said.

"Sometimes, or in the late afternoons, you could hear the running water in the block of restrooms next to the office toilets flushing, but nobody was there," Gutierrez said, adding that she could not confirm the Indian graveyard myth. "The history, as I recall, is that E.J. was built next to or over a landfill," Gutierrez said.

Even the newly reopened Academy at Larragoite — which recently moved to a different building off Agua Fría Street — is deemed "a little odd at times" by teachers.

Although Chad Cortez, a junior at Larragoite, said "not much ghost-related stuff has happened" in the new building, he said things were not as quiet when he was a student in the former elementary.

"When we were in this building, a ton of stuff would happen every day, a lot of times I would hear footsteps coming from different classrooms and sometimes it sounded like they were even following me in the hallways. I would hear voices in the middle of class and a couple times I would actually spin around because I thought they were right behind me," Cortez said.

"Another thing, which wasn't too ghost involved but always bothered me was a huge horse poster in the cafeteria," Cortez said, pointing over his shoulder at a spot on the wall which now is covered with a woman tending a garden. "And for some reason that horse's eyes would always follow you anywhere you went around the cafeteria."

When Cortez was asked if he thought the Academy at Larragoite's new buildings were haunted he gave the reporter a "have you been listening to me at all?" look.

Cortez stood up from the wooden cafeteria tables and called over his friend, Sheeree Garcia, who went to school with Cortez when it was an elementary school.

Cortez asked Garcia if she thought the building was haunted.

"Oh, so I was sitting in class one day and the teachers had us sitting in our chairs in a circle in the middle of the classroom. The lights began to flicker but we blamed it on all the electrical stuff and went off to lunch and recess," Garcia recalled. "When we came back to the classroom a few of the chairs were turned upside down and stacked on top of each other, in the middle of the circle."

Besides being haunted by failing grades and zombie-like students who can only be seen very early in the morning, Santa Fe schools have always seemed to be a hotspot for paranormal activity. The schools and other Santa Fe buildings trigger peoples' interest in the paranormal, and chances are their aspirations of discovering the answers to unknown will never perish.

Austin Tyra is a sophomore at SER Career Academy. You can reach him at wannabewriter20@yahoo.com.