I will tell you a real story, which I witnessed myself. I still don’t know what it was. I don’t even want to know… It happened when I was in the second grade. Our classroom was in the basement, and the school was old with a wooden floor. Near our classroom, boards were removed from the floor and something was repaired in the heating pipes running under the floor. It was in winter, during the extended school day. Some of the children had already been taken home by their parents, and those who stayed were waiting until the working day was over for moms and dads.
The whole school was already empty. It was a winter evening. Our class was the only one in the school. We did our homework under the supervision of a teacher. She said we had a break and we could go out on our own. I stayed in the classroom, and some of the children went out into the corridor, where everyone usually gathered near the windowsill, which was not far from the hole in the floor. After a while, something happened in the corridor, and they began to call the teacher. We, all who were in the classroom, ran out into the corridor. There my classmates were standing near the hole in the floor and shouting vying. In a hole a meter deep, they saw a dirty with long nails boy dressed in some rags. He looked at them from there while they were playing, and when they noticed him and came up to the hole, the boy threw a chip at them and hid in the hole where the pipes went. Everyone said it with one voice — it was clearly not a joke.
The teacher left to call someone and returned with the cleaner. The cleaner climbed into the pit and said that there was no one there. Like, the hole is very narrow, only a baby can fit in there, that it’s very stuffy there and she doesn’t know how someone could breathe there. She said that the boy would have to climb foot to get there. As a result, the cleaner doubted whether we had invented this story. The teacher said that we have a rich imagination.
Personally, I have no doubt that the children really saw the boy: we were small, and among the crowd there were excellent students who idolize teachers and are afraid to lie to them. There’s no way they could have made it up. We were looking at the pit for a couple of days, and then the repairs were completed, the floor was covered with boards again, and this incident was quickly forgotten. The following days I tried not to approach that hole. But nothing happened. We didn’t see anyone else. Sometimes I had terrible nightmares about this boy. I was even hearding a noise under the floor, but it was all my imagination.
We tried to find out from the high school students some stories about this boy, but none of the adult guys saw anything or anyone. The history of our school is also quite peaceful, no one has ever died there. However, the next time we were afraiding to stay at school until dark and always disliking when it was time for repairs. It is impossible to get under the floor and crawl many foot. I don’t want to think what would happen if he crawled out.
That’s the whole story. Already as an adult, I bypass this school side. It has always remained a mystery. It’s just creepy right now to imagine how on a gloomy winter evening I and a dozen of my classmates are sitting in an empty school, and some boys are climbing through stuffy cracks under our feet…