Halloween is upon us!

It's that time of the year again... the time of the year when spreading cobwebs, as opposed to cleaning them away, is acceptable--the time of the year when we stock up on sweets for all kids who go trick-or-treating--the time of the year when we carve pumpkins to ward off evil spirits. And also--the time of the year when we tell each other scary stories. 

The scariest stories aren't the ones that happened to strangers in far-away places. The scariest stories are the ones that happened to someone you know, or to a friend's friend; also the ones that happened in a place where you live, work or study--a place that could be haunted by the spirits of the people who suffered there some time ago. 

We have created such stories--horror stories set at Colegio Base. Horror stories told in the first person, sometimes--stories that happened in familiar places, such as the canteen, the playground or the labs. Do you dare read them? 

THE SCHOOL OF THE DAMNED

This story starts like many others, a long time ago, about two years ago. This story happened at a school known since then as the Damned School. Students that now are in 2nd of Bachillerato still remember this story and stills gives them shudders. Some have needed psychological treatment, some have even tried to commit suicide, and even moved school and country. Luckily for us, we could find someone that was able to talk about this story without crumbling down.

One day, a new student, Pablo, came to this school. He was a bit strange because he never talked to anyone, he was always alone at recess, he didn't even introduce himself to the rest of the class the first day. As the days passed, he did not even make an effort to make some new friends or maybe just meet new people: some started to try and talk to him, but he always said ‘Leave me alone, I don’t want to hurt anyone’. This baffled the students and even some started to joke about him. The teachers watched the strange behaviour of the student and tried to talk with him and, as in many other schools, the teachers asked him to do a presentation about his previous school, his family, etc... in order to show it to the class.

At the time of presenting, the students noticed that whenever he talked about his family, he always talked in the past and never in the present, and at the time he started showing pictures, everybody noticed that in every image he showed there was a strange figure at the back of it. He showed the first one and you could see it in between the trees at the back of the image. In the first image they thought that it was just a camera trick, or maybe that it was just a shadow. In the second image, the students could appreciate that the obscure figure came to be nearer, and on the following ones, closer to the screen. The last photo just showed the boy with a mysterious black cadaverous hand on his arm, which was in fact very similar to the secretive figure previously shown on the photos. At that moment students were gripped by fear and didn’t even say a word about it. At that moment they stood up and tried to leave the classroom.

Suddenly the lights went out and in the following seconds only an anxious cry was heard, followed by a devilish laugh.When the lights came back on, they all looked for Pablo, but no one could see him. In the following seconds they realised that on the digital board there was a picture of four of their colleagues hanged on one of the trees in the playground, with the same mysterious shadow at the back, and in the blackboard there was also something written in red: “I told you not to bother me”. The students ran as fast as they could in order to get out of the school, but unluckily for them, the school gates were closed and a really mysterious phantasmagorical fog surrounded the school. They tried to phone their parents, but they had no line and a frightening message could be heard at the end ‘You can't escape this’.

The night arrived, and by that time there were only 10 of the 24 students left. No one knows how the others had disappeared, but they were sure about something--that mysterious figure would not leave them alone until everyone was dead. Their only option was to accept their fate. But suddenly, they came up with an idea to escape: they went to the computer room to find out what had happened at Pablo’s old school. There was some research about a student who escaped that school and discovered the only way of escaping from what he called “Mr. Boogie” was to destroy every image on which the creepy image now called Mr. Boogie appeared.

They started to discuss ways to destroy the images, and they came to the conclusion that the best option was to burn the images with a lighter, so they went to their classroom, but they looked through the little window in the door and suddenly the face of Mr. Boogie appeared behind it. They needed to burn the whole room, so they went to the staffroom and took all the alcohol from the teachers’ cupboards, and then they used it to burn the whole room so that the images were destroyed, and after all this, SOME of them could escape.

Unluckily for us we took testimony from the only student that stayed on at school after this. We could also tell you that there were three of us at first, that one student was strange and drew strange figures on his desk and even showed us some videos about the whole class, but every time we watched those videos a strange figure moved at the back of the scene, but it seemed that nobody noticed it. One weekend, we went to the place where those videos were recorded and after moving down the screen to watch the place, we noticed that same strange figure in the same exact place as in the video, but this time we could see a face in that form, a face that was staring at us. After that, all we remember is running to the exit trying to escape and watching one of us falling down and us trying to pick him up, and a skeletal and dark hand catching our friend and pulling him from the leg, leaving a blood path and taking him to the darkness.

Written by

Alejandro Álvaro and Javier Martín de San Pablo

CHARLOTTE'S SECRET

Before this was a school as we know it today, it was a boarding school just for girls. But it wasn’t a normal school, as mysterious and inexplicable events occurred very frequently.

One day, a very shy girl, called Charlotte, joined the school. She wasn't able to make friends, because of her attitude, and she spent the whole day in her room. Nobody knew what was happening. The nights were the worst; she never slept because she dedicated her time to writing letters with no addressee. Her school mates tried to be kind with her, but she refused their attempts for consolation.

Donna, the headmistress, was very worried and tried to contact Charlotte’s parents, but there were no signs of them in her school profile, there only was the address of her last governess. The headmistress decided to go to the house to know what happened to the girl. The couple who lived in the house told her that since Charlotte’s parents died in a train accident in 1989, Charlotte retreated within herself, and only spoke to her dolls and her imaginary friends. Charlotte wrote all her experiences and her most private and darkest secrets in letters. Letters which nobody had ever read.

Donna returned to the boarding school with the intention of making Charlotte’s stay more comfortable. What she wasn’t expecting to find was the mysterious disappearance of another girl from the school while she was away. There were many rumors that said that the girl had read Charlotte’s letters. After spending the whole night looking for the missing girl, they found her, with a rope around her neck, hanging from the branch of a tree, and with signs of violence all over her body. Although nobody could believe what they saw and they couldn’t find an explanation for the death of the girl, everyone at the boarding school had the same question in mind: what did it say in Charlotte’s secret letters?

A few months before, Charlotte had discovered, while talking with her imaginary friends, that the train accident in which her parents died had been intended. The letters which she had been writing were drawings of a plan to kill the person who had caused the accident. No one could see those letters, otherwise Charlotte would kill them. Charlotte knew how to keep her secrets and she wouldn’t allow anyone to stop her revenge: to kill someone who her parent’s murderer loved.

In the year 2010, Charlotte found out that the murderer’s daughter was going to a private school in La Moraleja, which was called “Colegio Base”. The slogan of the school was: “together we create the basis for your future”. With this sentence, she imagined a whole plan for killing the murderer’s daughter and to create the basis for her death.

She managed to enter the school and started working as a cook. Although she was able to be in the school and analyze all the students, she couldn’t find the girl she was looking for. Years passed and Charlotte still hadn’t killed anyone. After having many attacks of despair, Charlotte decided to end her life. She took the sharpest knife she could find and made a deep cut right in the middle of her chest. Her death was so violent that her spirit turned into a terrifying ghost who kept searching for a girl to kill.

Nowadays, Charlotte’s ghost is tired of looking for that girl who, mysteriously, never appears. In consequence, she will kill every student or teacher who she finds in the school alone. Her favorite place for killing people is the bathroom, were nobody can see her or hear anything. Watch out because, even if you can’t see her, she is always there, watching you and waiting for the right moment…

*This story is based on true events*

Written by 

Andrea Muñoz, Alicia Donoso and Loreto Niño

NIGHT AT SCHOOL

Once upon a time in Colegio Base a terrible thing happened. Some people think it is true and others don't, but to believe in it you first have to know what is it about.

It was a normal afternoon in the cold autumn when a boy called Alfonso didn't get picked up by his parents. He waited outside the school for about two hours, he called them but they did not answer. He was so tired of waiting that he went to look for a teacher and tell them what was happening. He was going to the teachers’ room when he saw an old man cleaning the corridor. The man told Alfonso: “you little boy shouldn't be here at this time of the night, you should get out because bad things happen at night in this school”. He got so scared that he ran to the boys’ toilet when he got surprised with what happened in the mirror, it was broken and on the right hand side corner it said “3:23”. He ran out as fast as he could when suddenly he realised that he hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch time so he went to the kitchen to get something to eat. When he got there he ate some pizza that was leftover from lunch time. He was looking everywhere the kitchen when he saw that one knife was missing, the biggest one. At this moment he couldn't believe all the things that happened to him when he heard someone walking to the kitchen so he hid under the table. He waited there so long that he finally fell asleep. It was late in the night when the school bell rang. He looked at his watch quickly and saw that it was 3:23, and he remembered what he saw in the mirror. He went to the playground because he heard lots of voices singing and then he saw all the teachers in a circle, dressed in some strange clothes and with the director in the middle, just about to kill a baby. The next day he went to tell all this to the police, to his parents, to his friends… but only one believed him, his best friend Nicolas. The next day they stayed at school to record everything that happened so they put lots of cameras around the school. When they finished they went to the technology class to stay there all night. They looked in the computer, wanting to check if something similar had happened before and they found out that two boys had disappeared 25 years before. Then they knew what was going on. The last day they went to show the police all the videos. When they were about to see them nothing was shown in the video, only one thing was written: “3:23”. The police told them that they didn't want to see them again and to get out of the police station. Alfonso and Nicolas were really scared but also really angry because they wanted to show everyone what type of school they were in. The final night they went with the camera in their hands to show the police what was going on. It was 3:00 in the night when they sent a video to the police so that they could see live. At 3:23 they went to the playground and went so close to film them that a teacher saw them and went after them. In one moment when they were running.Alfonso lost Nicolás and the police saw all that happened but suddenly the camera stopped working and everything ended. Both of them finally disappeared and they weren’t found. They still say that the teachers can be heard singing every night.

Written by Jaime López, Daniel Amar and Pablo Aznar

KNOCKS

A few years ago, in winter, a fourteen year old boy named Jacob was at the Bingo night at his school with his friends Matthew, George, Sarah and Olivia. They were starting to get very very bored, so they decided to leave the canteen,  and went to the courts, but what they did not know was that this was the start of a terrifying adventure.

• I dare you to break into the old house next to the court! - Matthew said to Jacob.

And so, that’s what Jacob and his friends did. They climbed the green fence that divided the school from the house. When they jumped they saw an old white van next to the house door, with the inside light on, but no one was inside.

They were quite scared, but they moved on, and entered the house through the kitchen window.

• Look! A ouija board! - Sarah said.
• We should play! - George suggested. As everything George says, this was a terrible idea.

They took the board, lit up two candles they found in the kitchen cupboard and started playing.

• Hello, is anybody here? - Olivia asked.

“Knock knock”

• Did anyone die in this house?

“Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock”

They ran away terrified for their lives, and realized the white van was no longer empty.

During the following weeks, Jacob and his friends had terrible dreams about the house they had broken into, and the van next to the house entrance.

One day, after his basketball training, Matthew´s mom was taking very long to get to school. As Matthew was waiting for his mom, he saw the old white van driving back and forth through the school´s road. He was very scared, and called his mom again and again, but she wouldn’t answer her phone.

A few minutes later, Matthew´s mom arrived.

• Hello son, is everything alright?
• Yes mom, let’s get out of here…

On their way back home, Matthew told his friends what he had seen, and all of his friends had experienced creepy things that same afternoon. Sarah’s lights had gone off while she was alone at home, and she heard the knock again and again till her mom arrived. Olivia´s car was not working and George saw a shadow inside his dad´s car.

The only one who hadn’t experienced anything was Jacob.

The next day, after school, Jacob saw the white van just as Matthew said, driving back and forth on the school road. When Jacob´s mom arrived, he saw a bloody hand hitting his mom´s back window, but when he told his mom, the hand went away…

On their way back home, they ran out of gas, and they were stuck in the middle of La Moraleja.

Jacob´s mom told him to stay in the car while she went out to look for gas. Jacob fell asleep in the car and woke up to a bright light, and hearing knocks coming from the roof of the car. He heard “We are the police, get out of the car, come here and don't look back”

Jacob got out of the car and walked terrified to towards the police car. When he got there, he thought to himself “I am safe now” and turned around. That is when he discovered the man he and his friends had seen in the white van knocking on the roof of the car with a stick, and in the end of the stick there was his mom´s head.

Written by
Celia Manzano, María Sancho, Irene Alonso and Blanca Agüí

INK

Once upon a time there was a small school at the most isolated corner of the posh neighbourhood of La Moraleja, Madrid. In that school there was a girl who was not like the others, as she was not interested in clothes, make up, parties, boys or any of the things that drove girls her age crazy. Instead of that, she was passionate about werewolves, vampires, spirits, zombies or anything that had to do with halloween or paranormal activities.

Her elder cousin, Annabelle, aware of Caroline’s unusual thoughts, had the habit of telling her terror stories. She had told her so many stories that she probably knew every single one that had ever existed, except for one...

A week before halloween, Carol was dealing with her usual, boring, dull routine in French class, when surprisingly Lucie (her teacher) started talking about something that caught her attention. It was a terror story, different from those which her cousin had always been telling her:

At that same school, ten years before, there was a  young girl who suffered from bullying because of her unusual feelings for the unreal. In consequence of the things she had to go through she drew everything that went through her mind in her beloved notebook.

Once she was drawing alone at the back of the school bus when a group of girls started making fun of her,she felt so powerless that she threw her book in an attempt to hit those girls.

The book flew over everyone's head and when it was just above the groups of girls some ink came out of it and the monsters inside the book that represented the little girl’s weaknesses came out of it. The day after no bus was seen around that area, no one could ever find the kids or the driver, not even their bodies.

While listening to this story,Caroline remembered Annabelle, since she also had a book where she drew everything she felt and thought.

That same evening Caroline went to Annabelle’s house and knocked on her cousin's door, and she felt a chill before she decided to enter the room.She found her cousin lying on her bed while listening to some music. Carol managed to catch her attention and told her, excited, the same story she had been told in school and how the main character reminded her of Ana.

When Caroline finished the story she looked up at her cousin, and she was surprised to see her reaction.

Annabelle had a vacant look, her skin was pale as snow and she looked terribly shocked.She looked at Carol’s eyes and started screaming at her,telling her not to ever mention that book again.Caroline was confused and asked what the matter was. Annabelle’s only answer was to grab Carol’s hand as she pushed her out of the house.

It was late,so Carol returned home hoping she could talk to Ana the following day. But the next day Ana wasn’t at home. Carol, fearful, entered her room and found a little red notebook on top of Ana’s bed, her notebook. Carol remembered Ana’s reaction the other day so her first thought was to leave everything as it was and not to touch the notebook, but the intrigue was so hard that she found herself opening the forbidden book slowly. A blast of cold air came out of it, followed by some spectral laughs which frightened the life out of Carol. As she trembled with fear,she threw the notebook on the floor and ran away as fast as she could out of Ana’s house. Some hours later,when Ana arrived home she found the most terrible of the surprises… her notebook, half-open, lying on the floor. “Oh Carol, what have you done?”

Time passed and it had been one week since the girls hadn’t seen each other.Caroline was at school, not paying much attention to her maths teacher, when she looked at the window and saw a tiny black drop of ink stuck to the glass. Terrified, while remembering what happened with the book,she asked if she could go to the bathroom.

When she crossed the corridor she saw her cousin apparently waiting for her with a look of concern.

Annabelle explained as fast as she could why she had freaked out the other day, and Caroline couldn't believe what she was being told.

The spirits inside her cousin’s book were the spirits of the kids in the story, who had been dragged inside the drawing book. If anyone opened that book,the spirits would search for the sacrifice of the closest relative of the book owner, in order to carry out their revenge.

Those spirits were coming for Caroline and for a moment she felt like fading, as a mix of fear and incredulity covered her whole body.

Annabelle asked Carol to please believe in her and let her try to save her.Carol took Anna's hand and ran with her,as she was the only person she had ever trusted so much to put her life in her hands.

Both entered a dark room to hide from the spirits, Annabelle struck a match while she held tight Carol’s hand.Carol was looking around as she heard some growls from outside the room.Suddenly the light went out. She could no longer feel Annabelle’s hand.

Caroline waited for a few more minutes, until she was absolutely sure that she could hear nothing outside and she went out and ran without a direction.She fell down to the floor, and, as she got up and lifted her eyes she saw her cousin at the end of the corridor.

She ran to her and jumped into her arms to hug her, but the only thing she felt was a cold chill crossing her spine.

She fell to the floor and as she looked up she could hear her cousin whispering “Im sorry...Im sorry...Im sorry…”

Caroline blacked out.

She finally opened her eyes, and as she looked around she couldn't see anything but a white,infinite room.She looked down at her black,sticky skin.She couldn't hear anything but a empty silence as she looked up again to encounter Annabelle at the distance of that white space.

Written by

Claudia Prieto, Bárbara Recio and Sara Gómez

BINGO NIGHT

‘’Yes, mom, I’m at school. No, I don’t know when I’m coming back, just don’t stay up for me. Bye, I love you.’’ said Pablo as he hung up. It was the bingo night at his school and because he was in 1st of bachillerato he had to help organize everything and it was his task to document the evening by taking pictures for the school website, so he had to stay until the night was over. He suddenly stumbled across his friend Miguel outside the room where the bingo was being held . ‘’Hey, what’s up Miguel, I’ve been looking for Miriam everywhere. Have you seen her?’’ said Pablo.

“No, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen her. I just got here. Hey, where is everyone else?’’ answered Miguel

‘’I think they’re there, in the canteen. Hey, if you see Miriam, could you tell her I’m looking for her?’’

‘’Yeah, sure’’

“Okay, thanks, enjoy the party!”

Pablo headed to the canteen as he turned the camera on and started taking pictures of everyone he saw, the students, teachers, or even the doorman, kitchen staff, etc. When he arrived at the canteen, where the bingo was going to be held, he realised that the bingo had already started.

‘’Why are you always late, Pablo? Focus!’’ he thought to himself. He continued to take pictures through the night hoping that nobody had noticed him being late. Every time a big prize was won Pablo took photos of the winner with many other people so he or she had a great souvenir of the night and his or her classmates. After a few hours it was time for a break, so he decided to take a look at the photos he had made. He continued to flip through them until one particular photo caught his attention… At first, nothing seemed out of place, but when he zoomed in, he saw something that gave him the chills. In the background, behind all the smiling students around the prize winner, there was a body on the floor surrounded by blood and a knife on its chest. Horrified, he looked at the previous picture to see if he had captured the moment when the crime was committed, but unfortunately all he could see was a shadow. Still holding his breath he raised his head and looked for the spot where the body was in the picture. He didn’t want to alarm people, as he knew it could be a prank. He approached the place where the corpse was in silence. The closer he got, the worse he felt. As he got to the place where the body was, he realised that it wasn’t a prank and that a real person had been murdered at school. He checked the person’s pulse to see if it was alive. Sadly, that was not the case. He slowly turned the body around to see terrified the pale face of one of his now ex best friends, Miriam.

He ran and ran until he was alone, to realise what had just happened. He could not believe it, his best friend had just been found dead and the worst part was that the murderer could still be at school. He turned around, to head back to the canteen and saw his biology teacher, who gave him one of his usual fake smiles as he passed by. He thought of telling him about the murder, but telling people what he had just seen would make things worse, so he decided to discover the murderer on his own. He realised that if he took a look at the other photos he had taken he could identify the murderer, as there would be someone missing.

He looked through the photos again and tried to think of some unusual things that could have happened throughout the evening. Miriam had been absent all night so it would be a waste of time to look for her in the photos. Instead he searched for the photo which was taken at the time of the murder to see when it had happened. He had a list of all the teachers in the school as he had been one of the organizers and realised that the one that didn’t appear in any pictures was Hector, his biology teacher, the same one that he had come across outside the canteen, the same one that had given him a suspicious look…

He decided to confront his teacher so he headed to his classroom to speak with him. When he arrived there, he noticed that the door was open.

‘’This is unusual’’ he thought ‘’I’d better be careful’’

And as he opened the door, calling his teacher’s name, his face went pale. His teacher had been murdered too! How could this be possible? His teacher was the killer, right? Or was he not? Hector being dead meant that the murderer had to be another person, and the worst part was that he hadn’t got a clue of who that could be. He decided that all of this had gone too far, so he went to find someone who could help him.

He went back to the auditorium and on his way back he stumbled across the cook in charge of making the cake..

‘’Excuse me, can you help me?’’ and as he spoke these words he realised that the cake hadn’t been served and he remembered that in one of the pictures, in a corner, there was the cake with a knife stuck in it. At first he thought that it was normal, that it could have been just to cut the cake, but then he realised something. It was the same knife used to kill Miriam and Hector. In addition, he hadn’t seen her throughout the night and she didn’t appear in any photo he had taken.

“Yes, sure” replied the cook.

And before she finished speaking, he started to run as fast as he could, but it was too late, the cook had already pulled the knife out. He looked back to see where she was, only to realise that it was a mistake. She was right behind him and was getting closer and closer and closer and in a matter of seconds she stood right next to him. All that he could see was her pale face and her deep eyes staring at him.

Written by

Alexandra de Witte, Sofía Pérez and Regina Salazar