wHAT LURKS IN THE Basement?

Sam, 10th - Oakland, CA
As most of us know by now, our school is haunted. Oakland high school has been around nearly 2 centuries, being established in 1869 and having a rich history of famous individuals including jack london and damien lillard, as well as many others. Our school also used to host an ROTC and firing range inside, although that program stopped a while ago. Many people know these things, but what most do not know is what is hiding under our historic campus, which I discovered with a group of friends when we unwittingly stumbled upon a secret basement underneath our school.
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To start at the beginning of our story, we need to go back several weeks to when me and a group of my friends stayed after school and walked around to explore the empty halls, what we ended up coming across was an unfamiliar door, tucked away from the halls and nestled between an electricity room and a janitor's closet. We couldn't open it by ourselves, since it had a big lock on the door. We decided to come back later with bolt cutters to see if we could explore further. We planned to come back the next day, but unfortunately I was headed on a trip so we couldn't do it then, so we resolved to explore when I got back. Finally, two weeks later I was back from my trip and we were all prepared to explore, we met up outside the door and looked over the supplies we had brought; flashlights to see incase the lights were out, food for if we got hungry, disposable cameras to capture pictures to document what we find, big bolt cutters to get rid of any locks in our way. We were prepared to go in. We cut the lock…

When we opened the door it was obvious no one had been down there in a long time, it was pitch black dark except the wooden rickety stairs leading down, of which we could only see the first few steps leading down. What we could sense however, was this smell that seemed to come up from this basement, it shocked our noses with the smell of stale air. We decided to wait a few minutes before going down to let new air circulate and to be safe to breathe again. When we decided it had been enough time (around 10 minutes later), we turned on our flashlights and headed down the stairs, staying close together and holding the shoulder of the person in front of us. Our flashlights cut like knives into the pitch black, illuminating small circles of light that expanded out. From what we could see from the dim light of our flashlights the stairs lead into a massive room that didn't contain much of anything, it looked like it was just left abandoned and empty. At the bottom of the stairs I could see a small box with a switch that I hoped would control the lights so we could save flashlight batteries, it worked! As our eyes adjusted, my friend spotted a door that was slightly ajar on the far side of the room, opposite the stairs. 

We all decided we would check it out together, to keep us all safe as a group. When we got to the door we quickly pulled it wide open and peeked our heads through. What we saw gave me and all of my friends an uneasy feeling. It looked like someone lives down here, or did. We saw a sleeping bag, along with cans of food and water bottles, thrown askew without care. Me and my friends looked at each other and decided without saying a word we were going to leave quickly and quietly. Before we did though, I snapped a few quick pictures to send to the police so they could investigate what we found. We all ran out and slammed the door behind us, bolting it shut from the outside. We left the school and went home, we were all shocked and freaked out by what we had seen.