Chandler High School has stood at the corner of Arizona Avenue and Chandler Boulevard for just over a century. Its halls echo with generations of footsteps, laughter, conversations, and maybe even the spirits of those who no longer stand with us today. Students and teachers at CHS talk of the strange, unexplained phenomena that occur within the walls of Old Main, the school’s oldest standing building. This isn’t your typical scary high school story where teachers hear things after the last student goes home for the night. Not only students and teachers, but even an entire movie crew have witnessed some strange activity. Figures looming in classrooms long after faculty have gone home, hundreds of lights mysteriously turning on to interrupt filming, even things flying off walls across classrooms—although not necessarily common, many live to tell the tales today.
Picture this: you just left one of the most exciting football games of the season at Austin Field, and before you can head to In-N-Out to celebrate with your family, you have to drop off the cash box in Old Main, meaning you’re walking across campus alone, box in hand. It’s already pitch black outside, but no big deal—you want to get it over with and go. As you’re walking through the courtyard, something catches your eye: a dark figure that seems to fill an entire window. Suddenly, food is no longer the priority. The only thing on your mind is getting in and out of the building as soon as humanly possible. Sounds like the start to a pretty good horror movie, right? That’s not what Mrs. Kim Vollaro thought when she experienced this exact scenario. She recalled, “He was not visible other than a black shadow, but you could see that his arms were crossed and he was peering through the window down at me and kind of made the hair on my arms stand.” Maybe it was just late, and she was imagining things, though. There’s no way anyone else saw the same thing, right?
However, Mr. Richard Ramirez, CHS head custodian, did just that. Alone after dark on campus, going through his nightly cleaning routine, Ramirez looked up to see a man-like figure looking back at him. There were no lights on in the classroom, which left Ramirez confused, since he had assumed it was one of his fellow custodians cleaning. How would anyone be able to see anything if it were so dark? He questioned his coworkers over the radio, asking who it was, but each custodian confirmed that half of Old Main had already been cleaned that night and there was no one there.
The story should stop there, but it doesn’t. The next day, Mrs. Vollaro told Mr. Ramirez about her experience the previous night, only to find out that he had had the same experience. Not only did they both see the mysterious figure in the window, but they encountered the figure at entirely different times of night.
Although many scary stories seem less believable since they happen at night, Mrs. Courtney Kemp can say otherwise. The majority of her encounters with spooky activity in Old Main have been during the day, especially when she has students in class. She believes there’s a ghost in her room that likes to mess with her and her students. She calls him Henry, and he even has a backstory. Although unconfirmed, it is believed that decades ago, when Old Main was required to renovate its buildings to become ADA-compliant, a tragic incident occurred involving the work crew that installed the elevator next to Mrs. Kemp’s room. Word has it that a crew member fell into the open elevator shaft and ended up breaking his neck, leading to his later death. Now, some people, including Mrs. Kemp, believe that spirit lives on in the elevator and in her room. The next time you take a trip up the elevator in Old Main, make sure to say hello to Henry!
While we have yet to find definitive proof of the haunting of Old Main, stories of ghostly or mysterious encounters continue to abound. Sharing stories about the present and former residents of our century-old school building seems to have become yet another long-standing Chandler High School tradition that we hope will continue for generations to come.
