Whether or not ghosts, spirits and entities exist is an answer that belongs to the skeptic or the believer. Warsaw High School has its share of believers and nonbelievers alike.
Warsaw’s believers mostly come trailing stories of paranormal activity that they have experienced.
“There are creepy noises, like all houses have,” senior Kamryn Yach said, “but sometimes they’re just really unexplained. The other night, actually, I had my headphones on in my room, and it was like ten at night. Someone knocked at my door and I thought it was my parents so I told them to come in, and they didn’t say anything, so I went and checked and no one was there. I thought it might have been the video I was watching so I replayed it and it wasn’t.”
Those aren’t the only unexplained incidents that have occurred in Yach’s home.
“Two nights in a row, we’ve had an iPad that was sitting on a flat surface, and it just fell off. This was the period of time in which we didn’t have any pets. And then, sometimes, our phones or our computers just start randomly playing music.”
Senior Victoria Esser has also heard unexplained sounds that could send chills down the spine.
“I kid you not, almost every night at 3 a.m., I’ll hear what sounds like a three year-old laughing or crying. There is not a three year-old in my house. My closet light will flicker on and off, and tapping happens on my window and I’m on the second story,” Esser said.
Junior Matthew Schrader said the house he used to live in is one of the oldest in Warsaw, and the underside of the house had been slave quarters.
“At night, our kitchen door would randomly slam open or shut. There were some occasions where we heard walking, and we were all in bed. On occasion, there was some pounding, as in someone pounding on a door,” Schrader said.
Not everyone has a chilling ghost story, especially those who are skeptical of the supernatural.
“Ghosts are fake. There’s nothing scientifically proving the existence of ghosts whatsoever. We had gone to a supposedly haunted hotel, and nothing happened. It was just a hotel,” freshman Justin Stapleton said.
Several of Warsaw’s staff have skepticisms that are rooted in their religious convictions.
“I think people want to believe in it, and I think people’s minds are very powerful,” English and journalism teacher Amanda Adler said. “I believe in God and I believe that people go to heaven, and I don’t believe they hang around down here.”
“‘Ghosts’ basically means that a person is not dead, and I believe the Bible teaches that a spirit, when it passes this life, goes to what the Bible calls the Hadean Realm, where they await for judgement. Therefore, they can’t be on Earth,” counselor Tyler Richardson said.
Quite a few people come trailing second hand stories, ones they hear from friends and family members that they trust.
Junior Kane Culbertson claims his grandmother lived in a house in her youth where locked doors would open on their own.
Math teacher Amy Spunaugle claims that her sister watched her nephew be tucked in by an invisible force, the blanket levitating around the infant.
From a poll of 75 students and teachers, 64 percent of those polled believed that ghosts, spirits and entities exist, while 30.7 percent believe that they don’t. Four responders put other, answering with a belief in aliens, or in angels and demons.
Of those polled, 53.9 percent had never experienced something they believed was paranormal, and 46.1 percent had.