On the night of a recent eighth grade dance, four teachers were walking around Park Jr. High School, looking for students who might have wandered off. Among the group was some of the current staff, principal Philip Abraham, assistant principal Joseph Gage, and P.E. teacher Steven Metz. As they walked from room to room, the group paused in the band room on the second floor. The talk of a ghost haunting this room seemed fake to Metz, Abraham said. Metz jokingly asked the ghost to turn on the lights.

“The light right above Metz flashed on and off, but that wasn’t even the scariest part,” Abraham said. “After the one light, the entire building lost power. We ran out of that room after.”

In 1901, the building which is now Park Jr. High, 325 N. Park Rd. was constructed. However, it didn’t become Park right away. It was originally built to become Nazareth Academy, and house a small group of nuns who would teach. The building looked much different than it does now (more construction took place in the late 1960s).

The story of what happened is altered depending on who’s telling it, but the main story goes: when the building was Nazareth, a nun died there. She now haunts Park, opening the elevators, flashing lights, and causing cold spots to be felt around the school. 

“[The nun] shows her presence in many ways,” Gage said. “She welcomes the students to the school.”

Everyone at Park feels the ghost. Some students even claim to take the ghost home with them and then bring it back the next day, Abraham said. 

“Students will have one strange occurrence at their houses, and then it will never happen again,” Abraham said. “It’s as if she follows them home.”

There are many stories that have been collected over the years. 

One of the first was when Abraham started as assistant principal 16 years ago, he decided to joke around with the current principal. He called her office on the intercom, and used a funny voice to say hello. The principal didn’t answer. Instead a voice he didn’t recognize said “[The principal] isn’t here.” He dropped the phone and ran around the corner to her office, and when got there, he saw that the door was locked and the lights were off. The principal had gone home earlier in the day. He was thoroughly spooked, and thought the nun’s ghost had to be behind this.

The most telltale sign of the nun happened many years ago, when a group of students were roaming the school, Abraham said. They were taking photos of different areas of Park for a project, one photo being of a plaque on the wall. As the students were going through the photos, they noticed a face was being reflected in the plaque. The face didn’t resemble any of the students who took the photo, and when Abraham and Gage tried to recreate a similar photo, they couldn’t. 

“Something is clearly lurking in the school,” Abraham said.