Poasttown Elementary School

September 1^st, 2019, was a hot day. But I did not mind because I was driving to one of the most amazing places to investigate paranormal activity. I had heard about Poasttown Elementary School in Middletown, in southwestern Ohio, for quite some time but I had no idea how many paranormal experiences awaited me.

I pulled up to the elementary school about 4 that afternoon, and I was surprised when I saw it was a HUGE building. At first glance you believe it to be a government property until you see the name of the school on the decrepit building.

I parked my car to the left of the building near a small gray door. As I stepped out of my car, I met my fellow investigators. Soon we all were greeted by a nice man in his 60s who stood in the doorway holding a cane. He ushered us all inside and began giving us a small tour and telling us some light history of the school. The man was Darrell Whisman, the owner and caretaker of the building. He had bought the old school with his wife, Brenda and they converted a small portion of it into their living quarters. Darrell’s mother even lived there with them until she died.

The school opened in 1937 and closed its doors in 2000. So the building had a very long run. The owners continue to find school items in lockers, hallways, and inside walls as they fix up, and clean up the school to restore it. “Sometimes things just appear out in the halls,” said Darrell. He showed us some of the items they’ve found including an old textbook that used to belong to a teacher at the school, and a child’s book of poetry.  “All of sudden you will be walking by or sweeping, and suddenly an object will just appear that wasn’t there a minute ago,” Darrell told us.

After speaking with Darrell for some time, we started our investigation by walking through the gym and cafeteria. It wasn’t until we reached the second floor that we experienced anything paranormal.

The second floor had an intense feel to it. It was dark even though we were investigating during daylight hours. After a few hours roaming through hallways and classrooms, a thunderstorm rolled in. Soon it became even darker and hard to see so we had to dig out our flashlights. The thunder outside sure was an experience! The building shook with the thunder’s bangs, and the lightning strikes lit up the old classrooms and hallways. You could definitely feel the heaviness increase in the air as it filled with electricity from the storm.

We walked from classroom to classroom along the dark hallways peeking into closets. My friend was holding a new infrared camera she just bought when her new batteries suddenly drained down to nothing. Luckily, she brought several and changed them out.

We had just walked out of this classroom that had lockers in the back of the room for the students to put their things when my friend said, “Hey, I caught something!” She rewound the footage from her camera and showed us. I couldn’t believe it. You could clearly see a wispy, self-illuminating red orb swirl around like a fish in tank. Then it disappeared into thin air. We hadn’t seen it with our eyes when inside the classroom, however, you could CLEARLY see it on the video.

As my friend was looking at her camera and showing us the footage again, something caught my attention.  “Guys, did you see something?” I asked as I kept looking down the hall. But everyone was so busy staring at the camera that they didn’t hear me.

Then I froze in disbelief. Down the hall I saw an electric green-glowing cat with hollowed-out black eyes walking with its back hunched up as if was spooked by us! The cat walked from the left side of the hallway to the right and stopped once to hiss at us, then it disappeared into the wall. I will NEVER forget that experience!

Later, I was told that the hallway where I had seen the green glowing cat was reported to be the most haunted part of the school.

An hour later we walked into a room that used to be the library. It was full of dolls that people had brought to the school for the children to play with. Now there were so many dolls that the caretakers have renamed the room, the Doll Room. It was eerie! There are so many types of dolls from nice antique dolls to china dolls, and plastic baby-dolls. The room felt very stagnant. At first, I felt intense dread when I walked in. It was so strong that I had to leave the room for a bit. I came back a few minutes later and the room felt very different and safe, so I stayed.

I set up my equipment with my friends and we all began to ask yes and no questions. A little bit into our investigation we began to get responses. The EMF reader lit up in sequence to the questions we were asking. We soon found out we were talking to a little girl who was four years old. She had blonde hair and blue eyes and had died in a train accident on the property on July 4^, 1910, before the grounds became the site for the school.

“Oh, my God!” I exclaimed to my friends. “I saw a documentary about that train accident on TV last winter!” I was shocked that I was standing on THAT property and I didn’t even know it!

Turns out that there were two train accidents on the property before the school was built. The first was July 25, 1891 when employees of the National Cash Register Co. were on their way back to Middletown from Dayton where they had held a company picnic. The passenger train they were on collided with a freight train causing 4 deaths and 50 injuries.

The second was the accident in which the little girl we were having a conversation with had claimed to have died. Nineteen people were killed, and the land transformed into a mini-hospital while the police waited for other trains to show up to transport the injured to hospitals and the dead to morgues.

I felt so sad for the little girl. It was the most interesting experience I have ever had. I ended up having a whole EMF conversation with her for more than an hour and half! Another apparition, a woman, spoke to us via the EMF reader. She was not the little girl’s mother but she also died in the train accident. But we figured out that she was very protective of the girl. I told them both that I was parent and I had a little girl myself. The child seemed to like me asking her questions. If others asked anything she seemed to shy away. But when I talked to her about my daughter’s love for ballet, dancing, singing, and baby dolls, she would answer me every time.

After a long investigation, we were all tired and walked back down to Darrell. We spoke to him about our experiences, and he clued us into some of the incredible experiences he’s had while living there.

He said, once woke up at 4 a.m. on his hands and knees in the middle of his bedroom with his head bleeding. He still doesn’t know how that happened. Another time, he was really hot one night so he got out of bed to kneel on the floor and rest. As he leaned over his bed, and just as he was drifting back to sleep, his pajama bottoms were yanked down. He also has had several health scares since moving into the school and isn’t sure if the two are related.

Darrell is a very kind man who loves to talk about his haunted experiences in the school. He wants to preserve the building. Darrell believes that the school isn’t full of evil spirits, but “when a person passes on, they come back to the ONE place they were happy.” That is why he thinks the spirits are in his school.

Believe it or not, Darrell actually attended Poasttown as a child. He has lived in the building for 14 years and has seen a lot. Darrell says he loves protecting and taking care of the school. He hates to even leave the property even for little things like going out to dinner or for weekend trips! He feels completely at home with the spirits in the school. In fact, the money Darrell and his wife receive from paranormal investigators and other visitors fund the school’s upkeep and preservation.

Would I recommend visiting the Poasttown Elementary School? Certainly! The school is quite an experience for believers and non-believers. You won’t leave without experiencing something!

I still can’t believe I saw the glowing-green cat that hissed at me from down the hall and that I had such a long conversation with the little girl who died in the train accident! How odd was it that I had seen that documentary on that VERY accident not long before? it for that very reason. 

So what will you experience? See for yourself and visit the Poasttown Elementary School!

©Rosella C. Rowe

Poasttown Elementary School: https://www.poasttownschool.com/