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What is this?
photo by Jessica St. James
The Chesapeake Community Center on State Route 7 was once the East School in the upper end of Chesapeake. But today it is a gym and home of a food pantry, which means the place is the hangout for adults. So who is mysterious apparition of a little girl who supposedly roams the halls?
PROFILE: Is the old Chesapeake school really haunted?
Published Saturday, February 21, 2009
CHESAPEAKE — There was a time when the sight of a young child would not be unique in the halls of the what is now the Chesapeake Community Center. That’s because the old buff brick building on State Route 7 was once the East School in the upper end of Chesapeake.
But today it is a gym and home of a food pantry, which means the place is the hangout for adults. So who is that little girl who allegedly roams the halls?
Her story remains a mystery but her “existence” is a reality, at least to those who claim to have seen her.
It begins one afternoon about a year ago when a Marshall University student was working out in the gym. He went out to the hall to get a drink of water from the fountain and looked down the hall and saw her.
Curious, he went to director Ruth Damron and asked, “Who’s the little girl?”
Damron looked down the hall and saw no one.
“But I saw a little girl in a blue dress and long blonde hair,” he told Damron.
“I just kind of laughed,” Damron recalled.
But the student was adamant about what he had seen.
“He came back and he saw it again,” Damron said.
The next sighting came after that when a young child came to the center with her father. She slipped into the ladies room and saw the little girl.
“I just saw a little girl behind me in the mirror and but when I turned around she wasn’t there,” Damron recalls the child telling her.
That got the director to do some detective work and checked in with a family member who is an informal historian of the county.
What she learned could be an answer.
“There was a little girl who was made to commit suicide with her grandmother when the two jumped off a bridge,” Damron said. “Somehow she has gotten transported into this school. Maybe it is the noise. She has chosen this place to live now.”
The suicide, Damron was told, happened around the turn of the century and occurred at the Symmes Creek Bridge.
The story does give the director some explanation for her own experiences with unexplained phenomena.
“I will hear footsteps in the hallway and think somebody is coming into my office,” Damron said.
But there is never anyone there.
Michael Robare is the founder of the Central Ohio Paranormal Society, based in Columbus. He has spent the past five years investigating places whose owners believe are haunted or have some kind of spirit living there.
Why are they there?
“I believe they are mostly troubled spirits. Somebody refuses to pass on,” Robare gives as his explanation.
He and his crew go into a place where there has been a sighting and set up equipment such as digital cameras or video recorders as well as a tape recorder.
“We’ve documented audio sound or electronic voice phenomena (EVP). What it is we label paranormal,” Robare said. “We will ask direct questions like ‘what is your name?’ ‘What year is this?’ Sometime you will get a direct answer. Sometimes something random.
“I have heard actual voices and picked them up on a recorder,” he said. “(Sometimes) I’ve heard them with my ears and not picked them up on the cassette.”
In 2003 the Harris Poll questioned a cross section of 2,201 adults online and asked them about a variety of religious and supernatural beliefs.
For the age group of 25 and 29 years old, the poll showed that 65 percent of Americans believed in ghosts.
However, only 27 percent of seniors held that belief. Of those who believed in ghosts 58 percent were women.
Robare believes because he has had personal experiences starting back when he was a child.
“I would hear things and feel like somebody was watching me,” he said. “One time I saw a black shadow that came through my bedroom door.”
Since he’s been in the field investigating, Robare has also had a couple of chilling experiences.
“I was actually pushed in a bedroom by something that wasn’t there,” he said. “And there was a spinning wheel in the room, and the wheel jumped off the frame.”
Robare, whose organization does investigations for free, says they take a no-nonsense approach to checking out hauntings.
Investigations can take from three to six hours.
As far as the alleged haunting of the Chesapeake Center, Robare doesn’t offer any explanation.
“Without investigating, I couldn’t tell you,” he said.
“I would go in with my team to give you a direct answer.”
Profile 2009 is The Tribune’s annual section about the people, places and issues of Lawrence County and the surrounding area.
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Comments
Posted by eugene (anonymous) on February 22, 2009 at 9:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I USED TO WORK OUT THERE SEVERAL YEARS AGO. WHEN I WOULD GO TO THE RESTROOM I WOULD SEE THIS GROSSLY OVER WIEGHT GUY LOOKING BACK AT ME. NOW THAT WAS SCARY.
Posted by sherrymersh05 (anonymous) on February 22, 2009 at 10:10 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I have been up stairs in that building to get a dead bird out of one of the rooms, because the employees refused to go upstairs, I wish I had seen or heard something then but I didn't, I also had a double baby shower in the gym a few years ago, and all was good,, no extra guests.....
Posted by EMan20123 (anonymous) on February 22, 2009 at 12:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)
how did they catch that?
Posted by lgibson74 (anonymous) on February 22, 2009 at 1 p.m. (Suggest removal)
My aunt went to high school there in the '50s. My siblings and I all passed through that building over the course of 10 years, with one of my siblings even working as part of the janitorial staff there after school. I find it odd that a young child was drawn to a high school a few miles away from her place of life and/or place of death. I find it even more odd that in 50 years of contact with that building and the people in it, this is the first that I, or anybody I know, has ever heard of this ghost. It would be more likely to be haunted by the cooks who prepared the "green" hot dogs all those years.
Posted by pantherpride (anonymous) on February 22, 2009 at 1:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I find it humerous that this building is still standing. "Chesapeake East" was the nastiest, most worn out building in a decrepit location -- and yet, that's the one they kept for a, uh, 'community center'.
My memories of East are plentiful and most of them not good. The playground equipment consisted of a swing set and a basketball court. Those horrid basement showers and that nasty gym where we all played, then ate lunch, then had phys ed class. The classrooms were miserably hot year round, either from the baking sun coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows or from the steam boilers and radiators that never seemed to shut off. The atmosphere was industrial, drab, and depressing, with the only distraction being the thousands of passing cars on Route 7 and watching the parade of cops and bad guys at the old County Court building across the street.
I often wonder if that building was ever new and nice. The building isn't "haunted" ... those are demons that should have been buried when a giant bulldozer transformed that old nasty building into a nice parking lot.
Posted by CF (anonymous) on February 24, 2009 at 12:05 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The tribune should really be more responsible with their journalism. The event referenced here did not take place at the turn of the century, but rather in 1950. There are many family members still living and who are deeply hurt by the assertion that their family member is not at peace. This is truly just one example of irresponsible journalism as is sometimes seen in the Ironton Tribune. One would think these journalists might take their profession a little bit more professionally and actually write articles with both substance and style.
Posted by craftygirl214 (anonymous) on February 26, 2009 at 1:24 a.m. (Suggest removal)
i went to school in the old ches east school at the time i was in 5th grade they were buliding the new ches high school my great aunt thelma hesson used to volunteer at the community center
Posted by baby_panther08 (anonymous) on February 26, 2009 at 10:53 p.m. (Suggest removal)
i live beside the chesapeake community center across from exxon. the alarm would go off at the center randomly late at night and would wake me up. i used to go up there and play basketball, and when i would go to he bathroom i could hear foot steps upstairs like as if a little kid running. i have also heard a laughter noise near the stairs and i would look over and there would be nothing. no one is aloud upstairs to do anything so thas why i think the little girl is real. when my ex boyfriend and i was together he was chasing me and i had just decided to runup stairs to try out run him i was only up stairs for a minute but i seen a short child that was skipping down the hall. it didnt pay an attention to me,but when my ex got up there he found me scared to where my face was white. i told him that there was a child skipping down the hall past me, after that happened me or him never went back upstairs, because we were afraid of the child.
Posted by ctrygirl (anonymous) on March 21, 2009 at 10:34 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I went to the Chesapeake East Elementary my during my whole Junior High School years.
Personally I have wonderful memories of the school.
The years of being so young and innocent (and YES the school was in disrepair yet if you think of it there were NO property taxes that were laid upon the backs of the community to fix it but repairs were made each summer I KNOW THAT FOR A FACT FOR MY HUSBAND DID THEM!! EACH room was painted each year, each desk was washed down EACH night, each floor was swept,waxed, and buffed each night ...those are FACTS)
...but the building was old and only so much you can do after so many years of use and abuse by kids (like chewing gum placed on floors and walls and bathrooms not treated properly by the KIDS). However, we had a great time in the gym, and I certainly beg to differ on the cooks....they were AWESOME>.came in early made HOMEMADE pies and a wonderful variety of food that you would be very hard pressed to find amongst the fancy new school buildings we have now.
I have no doubt that the school is haunted. For YEARS my husband worked at the school at night (for the furnance that kept the school warm had to be kept stoked all night long for it was a coal furnance....) well, he heard plenty of footsteps and being young would go and investigate to only find nothing there. He heard voices in the hallways, lockers upstairs shutting,and he was there every single night, sometimes over night!!!
I find it sad that a lost soul roams the old school house. Yet I do believe in entities that no one can explain.
I am sorry for the family that mentioned the little girl and the family spoken of in this article.
HOWEVER< I also find it hard to believe that is the girl that is still skipping down the hallways. I distinctly remember losing a classmate during my junior high years to cancer, and won't give the years due to their family still being in the area. But whose to say who it actually is???
BUT how can so many personalities, so many children pass through an area that some of us loved so dearly and not affect the building in some way?
I do not know of course if this is a reality of haunting, (and feel haunting is kinda harsh), more like residing....but I just wanted to say that I personally have wonderful memories of those innocent days of junior high, for I certainly wasn't looking at the condition of the building.
I was learning from some of the most influencial teachers that I had the priviledge to ever have and having fun on the playground with my friends.
JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN"T SEE SOMETHING DOES NOT MEAN IT ISN"T THERE!!! recall the things you believe in that you can't see...ie the WIND!!
So who knows.....I only hope she is at peace....or finds her way to it.
An openminded ex student.
Posted by pen (anonymous) on September 18, 2009 at 6:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)
i went to school there fifth thur eighth grade we used to skip classes and go downstairs and hide in the shower room. we never saw anything. but it could be possible. so that guy in the story need to go there and see for hisself.it would be cool
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