Don't be afraid. Lock the doors. Turn out the lights and climb into bed. It's time for

a real building. Dead time. Stories. When you're a child, a school is usually one of the places

that you feel the most safe. There's something about being surrounded by all of your teachers

and classmates that give you that warm and comfortable feeling. Some schools though

have more than just your current teachers and classmates inhabiting the building. There

have been a plethora of stories from all over the world that involved haunted schools,

from colleges to high schools to elementary schools. In this episode, you're going to learn

about one such school in the Appalachia during the 1950s, the Pintop School.

It was not uncommon in times passed for the settlement church house to serve also as

the school. As rural transportation to and from schools had not yet come into being, and

the roads were a little more than redded wagon trails, the students walked. Sometimes

they walked several miles a day to the one room church slash school. Students of all

ages and grade levels shared space and a teacher. The teacher generally boarded with one

of the students' families and was most times paid a small wage. Big pop bellied stones

centered the high ceiling rooms and were fueled with wood cut by the older boys. When

the heat became oppressive in the late days of May, classes were often taken outside.

Older children were expected to tutor younger ones and to help look after them. Most children

were eager to learn and schooling was taken very seriously by the students, as well as

by their parents.

As time passed, many schools were built near those churches. The children still played

among the gravestones, drank water from the same springs, and used the same outdoor toilets.

One such latter built school was called Pintop. Same as the church, some hundred yards

...