Since being established in 1912, Roseville High School has no secret that it’s gone through over 100 years of being established, this means this school has gone through many events that have taken place in this school. With that long of a history, there are bound to be some creepy or weird things that have occurred in this school. Yearbook Advisor and English Teacher, Jamie Handling has some interesting stories on areas of the school where the wild things are.
“In the band director’s office, I have no idea if there’s any truth to this that there’s like a loft that goes up to a higher place and that an old band director had a bed set up in there and weird crazy stuff,” Handling said. “I’ve heard that the catwalk in the little gym… like everything about the little gym is creepy and then I’ve heard from the librarians that in the library when it’s empty you can see someone moving through the reference section.”
While Handling believes in ghosts and thinks they had some involvement in the weird occurrences in RHS, Physics Teacher, CJ Addington doesn’t believe in the whole ghost or paranormal thing, instead, he thinks that it’s just the feeling of an old school.
“There are certainly places that have like a creepy vibe or just kind of have a weird vibe and there are some on our campus you know,” Addington said. “Like for example there are tunnels under the campus that date back, you know, over 100 years and those are kind of creepy, and then some of the older buildings like I’ve heard you people told stories about the old gym how you can sometimes hear sounds in there when there’s nobody in there and I don’t know if that’s just like old creaky building or what’s going on in there but the old gym does have some weird… weird sounds and things going on in it.”
Earlier, Handling mentioned in the library how something or someone could be seen in some cases. RJUHSD district Librarian, Zenia Treto, has a story that the other RHS librarian, Claudia Hernandez, experienced before Treto’s introduction to the school.
“Mrs Herandaz and the former librarian, because I came in to take over this library the following year,” Treto said. “The year that she was here working with Ms. Dibble, they used to do a lot of things to where they will be in this building [the library] and over in the 900 book room alone and Mrs. Herandaz would hear interesting sounds, things that were unexplained. She would ask Mrs. Dibble and then Mrs. Dibble said ‘Well you know it’s just an old building and you know maybe it’s the ghost of Julie Estridge that’s haunting this particular space.’”
Treto also had some interesting experiences in the library when she was alone at night.
“The first year I was here and I was the only split between two schools, I spent a lot of time here at Roseville and over where I’m facing [the tigers in the non-fiction section of the library], and sometimes you hear doors opening and closing,” Treto said. “Then you hear footsteps, you feel brushes of wind that kind of go by and it usually happens all the time in the afternoon and we do have a very noisy HVAC [heating, ventilation, air conditioning] system, but there are certain things that I’ve never experienced it until I came to Roseville High School and I’ve been to a lot of old places.”
While the many areas around the school do get their weird or creepy stories, they do not compare to the amount of attention the old gyms get. Handling and Addington have already mentioned the old gym and it’s currently sealed off allowing no students inside the building.
“Yeah so the little gym, the old gym, that used to be the girl’s locker room is in my opinion ancient,” Handling said. “I’ve heard stories about the locker room where the coaches would be in the coaching office and no one else would be in there and a toilet would flush or the hand dryer would turn on.”
One of the coaches, who is currently the weight conditioning teacher, Cindy Simon, has first-hand experience with creepy occurrences that have happened in this gym.
“So when I first started working at Roseville High School I was in the other gym that is now condemned,” Simon said. “When I was in there the toilets were on sensors and they would flush without anybody in there. The hair dryers were up in the walls and you had to push the button to make it go off and the hair dryers would go off.”
It wasn’t only the gym bathroom where the creepy occurrences happened, Handling mentioned the coaching office and Simon was in that office when something in that same office did something that creeped her out.
“One time I was sitting there and I was the only one in the office and a computer just started blasting music with nobody touching it so I would constantly go out of my office to see who was in the locker room that was either pushing the sensors or going to the bathroom and there was nobody there.”
Another person who has experienced strange things in the old gym was one of the custodians who talked to Treto about what happened.
“I’ve gone in there [old gym] because I’ve been looking for old library books and old books that teachers have used that area as a storage area and I ran into one of our custodians and he was telling me a story of when he brought his family,” Treto said. “His family was on campus for some event in the evening so he wanted to give them a tour of the campus and he told me that they went in there [old gym] and they were discussing that the building was condemned and that it was going to be bulldozed. Nobody else was in that space besides themselves and a toilet flushed by itself.”
The old gym had plans for demolishment during the year 2019 and no plans have been mentioned until recently about the gym’s destruction taking place in this upcoming summer. The thing about old buildings is that they leave off some feeling once you take a look at them, things left behind hold secrets and history in them and that’s what makes this campus somewhat special.
“I think what happens is that this is a really old campus. I mean it’s over 100 years old so there are some buildings and there are some rooms on this campus that are ancient,” Addington said. “A lot of stuff has happened in there, a lot of events have occurred and they’re old spaces so yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if people hear stuff or see stuff that’s kind of weird or unusual and then might interpret that as ghosts.”
