High school hallways are full of gossip. Some high school gossip is so legendary that it carries on for generations. The question is: Were those stories true, or just rumors that have stood the test of time? Believe it or not many of them are true, and these students and former students found out the real stories for themselves.
1. Teacher’s Secret Lair
My high school building had a big square with a courtyard in the center. There was a utility tunnel that ran under the whole building. It was like the creepy places you see in horror movies. There were a bunch of rooms attached to the tunnel, mostly used for storage of old junk that hadn’t been touched in decades. No students were allowed in the tunnel for obvious reasons.
However, during the day, the doors were unlocked so staff could get in if they wanted, and of course students would use it as a shortcut around the building and to smoke. None of the rooms attached to the tunnel were locked, not even the boiler room with the steam boilers—except for one, mysterious room. The rumor was this room was set up as a bedroom that teachers would use to get it on with each other.
Yep, that was true. It was exposed when one teacher went to law enforcement after another took her down there and forced himself on her.
2. Doctor Fraud
One of our computer science teachers seemed totally normal. But he was hiding a huge secret. He was faking his doctorate. In fact, it turned out that he never even went to college at all. We weren't allowed to talk about it because he kept working there for the rest of the school year. He would even go absolutely bananas on students who called him Mister instead of Doctor. It was ridiculous.
3. There Was No Padding This Story
I attended a newly opened high school that apparently used to be a school for troubled kids. Someone told me there were padded rooms somewhere in the school. So, one day, I skipped lunch with a friend to walk the halls and find them. They did exist, but by the following year they were renovated into offices and storage rooms. I seriously wonder what went on there before it was turned into a "normal" high school.
4. The Project That Lead To The Truth
Our high school’s tap water was dark brown and we weren't allowed to bring our own water bottles or get filtered water from the cafeteria without paying $3. We sent hundreds of emails asking the school board to look into it, but they said it was fine. In my senior year, we finally got revenge. A student did a science fair project on the amount of lead in the school’s tap water. This forced the school to investigate and fix all the taps.
5. Repeat Offender
There was a rumor that our IT teacher slept with his students. He was attractive, young, and friendly. Then, suddenly another rumor went around the school that he was sleeping with an underage student, and he was suspended for a while. After he was cleared of wrongdoing, he decided to leave. He got a new job at another high school across town...where he was caught with another 17-year-old. He was fired shortly after.
6. He Went Out On A Low Note
There were stories about the music teacher sleeping with some of his students in exchange for solos, better grades, prestige, or jobs after graduation. They turned out to be true. He was found guilty and was given a six-month prison sentence. He was also barred from teaching and lost his pension. Except there was a twist. The news hit my dad really hard: They studied together at college and were good friends. He had no idea.
7. There Was Some Pep In His Pepsi
My high school history teacher would carry around a two-liter bottle of Pepsi with him all day, every day. It was rumored that he would put hooch in it and drink while at school. One day, he was caught trying to buy booze for some senior girls, which resulted in a car chase that we all watched. Law enforcement had to pull out the spike strips to catch him.
8. European Vacation
We had gone on a class trip to Europe for a week. Stories about two teachers hooking up on that trip started making the rounds when we came back. Two weeks later, a rumor emerged that the one teacher got divorced. Then, during the last week of school, the two were spotted at a restaurant together. A couple of years later, after I graduated, I looked them up. They were married.
9. The One That Got Away
There was a crazy rumor that our history teacher was a bank thief. He had his sleeves pulled up and it exposed a really bad and unidentifiable tattoo, so I asked him what it was. He told me that it was a reaper that he got it while he was in prison. I couldn't help asking what he went away for and he said he was a getaway driver for a bank heist. It blew my mind.
10. Shop Class Sting
There were rumblings that the principal was cheating on his wife. The rumor started in shop class when he donated his car to us to change his flat tire. We weren't supposed to snoop, but we looked in his trunk. Our discovery made my heart pound. We found a pair of high heels and panties that would NOT fit his wife, or him if he was into that.
It turned out he was sleeping with a freshly graduated 18-year-old. He and his wife divorced after that was discovered.
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11. The Administrative Kingpin
For years before I got to my high school, there was a rumor that the Administrative Assistant, who was the guy you went to when you got in trouble, was doing drugs, selling them, and confiscating them from students without turning them over to the authorities. About five years after I graduated, he got busted a couple towns away for possession with intent to distribute.
12. Frozen In Time
There were rumblings that our high school had an extensive network of underground tunnels and shelters left over from WWII. Not long after I graduated, they were renovating one of the weight rooms that was partially underground. They found an entire walled-off room stocked with supplies from the early Cold War era. There definitely were hidden shelters that had been forgotten about.
13. Wood You Believe This?
There was a rumor that all of our metal and woodshop machines were to be taken away and replaced with worse versions because of budget cuts. The shop and drama teachers that were in the building at the time didn't like this idea. So they took matters into their own hands. They hid all the machines in a false wall somewhere in the building.
When the people came to pick them up, they were told that they were late and that others had already picked them up. The people looked around and couldn't find the machines, so they gave up. A few years and one principal later, the machines were brought back out from behind the walls. According to the story, that's how the district’s smallest high school, with only around 450 students, became the best school in the area to learn metal and woodwork.
14. Poker Party Palace
There was an English teacher who was close with students, not in an inappropriate way, but more like he was a fellow student instead of an authority figure. It was said that he would host weekend poker parties with his closest students where he would serve booze and weed. One weekend, someone prank-called the authorities claiming one of these parties was happening.
They went to his place and found there was one taking place, as described. But there was one crucial detail. There were also racy movies on every TV in the house. The teacher was immediately fired, had his license revoked, and disappeared for a couple of years. Students tried protesting the firing because he was the cool guy who liked to party.
15. The Predator Had A Past
There was a rumor that the chemistry teacher was a pedophile. He was an older, overweight guy with a physical disability, and I thought it was just people being judgemental and mean. I even defended him. Until I looked him up and found out the whole story. He was caught in a "to-catch-a-predator" style sting at his last school trying to meet up with minors.
I have no idea how or why the school hired him. I even sent a message to the superintendent, but never received a reply.
16. She Went On A Radical Adventure
My algebra teacher was having an online affair. She would teach for about five minutes and then tell us to read to ourselves and do our work, while she typed away on her computer. Then, one day, she just didn’t show up. It turns out she just up and left in the middle of the night to move to Ohio and be with her internet boyfriend. I lived in a town of 700 people, so it was big news.
17. This Story Made Quite A Splash
I once went to a school with a particular water fountain that nobody would drink from because apparently someone had peed on it. About a decade after graduation, I returned to the school to work as an educator. I stopped to drink from the fountain because it was the only one that was free, but one of my students stopped me and said, "Don't drink from that fountain Miss! Someone peed on it!"
18. Things Were Cooking In Shop Class
The auto mechanics teacher was suspected of doing illicit substances. There were some disturbing signs. He would act strange while in class, and it looked like signs of withdrawal would take over and entirely consume him. As it turns out, he definitely had a problem because when he was let go, we found needles and spoons under the seat of a school vehicle we had been working on.
19. Bad Reaction
My science teacher was lying about being a soldier. He claimed to have come back from Afghanistan, when in reality he was in Colorado with his girlfriend. He flipped out when someone asked him to name a person who had been killed in action. About three or four years later, it was revealed that he had been lying about his service record and job experience.
20. I Couldn’t Resist This Story
Word on the street was that one of the teachers, who had retired before I got there, was a WWII resistance fighter. We had heard about it a lot but never knew who, until one day he came back in to share his experiences and photos with us. It turns out that all the stories were true. He was at a Dutch boarding school when the Germans invaded.
He eventually found his way into the care of a Dutch resistance group. He fought with them until the Canadian forces showed up. He was given a spare Canadian uniform, and asked whether he'd like to go home. He decided to stay and fight, helping to translate for Canadians and organize logistical runs. When the fighting was over, he finally came to Canada, and in his 60s he joined the Peace Corps. He was a true legend.
21. Caught In The Knick Of Time
There was a rumor that a kid had a hit list and was going to hurt people. The story spread like wildfire and the school resource officer was alerted. The next day, the bus the kid rode was singled out and isolated at the drop-off zone. The school resource officer, a local officer, the assistant principal, and the kid’s counselor all boarded the bus.
They searched his bag. What they found made their blood run cold. He had an enormous kitchen knife. The kid was taken off the bus and taken into custody.
22. A Textbook Case Of Mold
There was this weird closet built into the middle of the hallway at school. It wasn’t flush with the wall; it was a giant freestanding block that you had to walk around. Its door was always locked. Every morning before the bell rang, we'd meet up by the closet block because it was close to our lockers. Rumor had it that it was full of mold because our school was underfunded and gross.
I figured it was just janitorial supplies, even though I had never seen a janitor go in there. Then one day, the door was unlocked. There was MOLD! SO MUCH MOLD! There were multiple stacks of German textbooks rotting inside this closet. The pages were wavy and stuck together, and the whole thing was covered in black spots with white dust on top.
They had literally melted together and dried. I simply closed the door and said, "Well guys, I guess this is why we only have Spanish as our foreign language."
23. Caught On Camera
There was a story going around our high school that one of the substitute teachers was showing her self-made racy videos to students on her cellphone. The rumors spread rather quickly, but no one believed them because we all thought no one could be that stupid. Our minds changed instantly. We saw the authorities and news crews show up to film her being escorted off the premises in cuffs.
24. She Lost It From Both Ends
There was a story going around that the reason a long-time substitute teacher was let go was because she pooped herself during a class when she lost her temper. The story turned out to be true. It took forever to get out because a good portion of the class wouldn’t show up to school to begin with. It was amazing that those involved were able to stay tight-lipped for almost seven months.
25. Head Of The Class
My friend had told me there were two teachers at school with funny names. One was Mr. Nec (neck), which I knew. The other was Mr. Head, whose first name was Richard (Dick). I told her that it was probably a stupid rumor, like the rumor about there being a pool on the third floor, as no parent would be cruel enough to name their kid that.
The next year, Mr. Richard Head was my biology teacher. Apparently, there were two others in his family with the same name, as he was Mr. Richard Head III.
26. Camera Shy
One of my teachers allegedly wouldn't take any photos. She apparently believed that taking a picture would take a piece of her soul, at least that is what she said. I was in the group that worked on the yearbook. I was surprised when, lo and behold, we just left an empty box where her photo was supposed to be. I guess she wasn’t kidding.
27. Knocked By His Knock Up
My school had many stories that started out as rumors, until they ended up being true. One had to do with one of my own friends. I had heard that he got his girlfriend pregnant and they ended up having twins. I half believed the part where they got it on, because the guy was a "jock," but I thought the whole pregnancy thing was a load of garbage.
I was mistaken. My friend spilled the tea, and even showed photos of him, his girlfriend, and their twin kids. I was shocked.
28. Abandoned Opportunity
We were told by our school that we were merging with our rival school in an attempt to give students a better opportunity. This caused a lot of issues in relation to transferring credits and also caused a lot of teachers to get laid off. In actuality, the superintendent got a deal to sell the school’s land for a huge sum of money. When the deal fell through, the old school was then left abandoned.
29. Stranger In The Restroom
There was this conspiracy that somewhere near our school was an abandoned, two-storey, old, creepy house. In the residential lot there was also an external restroom that was locked. A few people who lived nearby could hear strange noises at night coming from it. Common hearsay stated that a strange person was living inside there with nothing to eat.
So, during a break, we decided to check on it. We couldn't believe what we found. We went to the lot and found the locked restroom only had small, decorated holes on it, so we could only peek a little. We climbed up and peeked into the holes. AND THERE HE WAS. There really was really a strange man living in it, with nothing, and emitting a very foul odour. The man started screaming and threw stuff on the walls. We got out of there fast and never went back.
30. Mall Meet-Up
Everyone in my class was a real jerk to our social studies teacher. She was a 30-something year old woman who peaked in high school and for the life of her never seemed to find love. We all thought she was desperate to find a husband. Rumor had it that she had been on dating websites during class. Then it all unraveled in the most embarassing way possible.
Once, when we were on a field trip, we went to the mall’s food court for lunch. Instead of chaperoning the students, she actually had invited a date to meet her there. So, we were all sitting in the food court snickering and watching her flirt with some random guy. As an adult, I feel bad that we picked on her, but to this day, thinking about her bringing her date to the food court is so cringey.
31. The Old Man Who Lived In The School
There was a door on the side of my school building. There was a rumor that a homeless man lived there, but I just thought that it was a janitor's closet. One day, a guy kicked a ball into that door, and a guy in overalls opened the door and started screaming at the kid. We were terrified. Teachers confirmed that a homeless man lived there and in return he usually cleaned the school after we were gone. I never walked in front of that door ever again.
32. This Rumor Blew Up
I had heard that years back, some AP chemistry students had to come up with a final project. One student thought it would be fun to make DNT, an explosive precursor to TNT. The chemistry teacher saw no problem with his plan to make an extremely toxic and combustible substance in school. She even helped him and they successfully made it in her chemistry classroom.
She casually asked the school officer where he would recommend they ignite their contraption. He was obviously just bewildered and a detonation squad wound up disposing of their project. The teacher nearly lost her job but they kept her because she was actually a great teacher. She later became my chemistry teacher so I asked her if she had really made TNT with a student. She said, “Oh it was just DNT, it would have been fine!”
33. Something Didn’t Add Up
There was a young math teacher who seemed a little psycho. She was always on edge and she never talked about her personal life. Any attempt to ask her about it was ignored. Because of this, the running joke became that she did away with someone in the last place she lived and moved away to escape suspicion. Unfortunately, we found out this was more accurate than we thought. It turns out she helped her brother chop up his ex-girlfriend and hide the parts. They found everything, except the left arm, scattered across five different states.
34. Beauty And The Beast
We had an English teacher in her 50s who was conventionally unattractive. She had scraggly grey hair, wore outdated ill-fitting clothes, and was very overweight. There was a rumor that she used to be a gorgeous model before having a bunch of kids and letting herself go. Well, it turned out to be true. We found pictures of her in the library's old yearbooks from 30 years prior that showed her winning Prom Queen and local beauty pageants. It was insane to us!
35. Where’s Wanker?
It was rumored that there was a male dong painted in our high school’s Wing Mural. No one knew where it was, but the artist painted it in, hidden, along with Waldo, some teachers they didn’t like, and Nosferatu. Only I knew the truth. Why? Because I was the one who painted the mural when I was a senior, and those figures were indeed there.
Also, if you looked at one of the houses in the mural, one of the chimneys is straight up a male wanker. I painted it in front of my art teacher and she didn’t notice it. It’s still there all these years later and the teachers still don’t see it.
36. They Drummed Up The Past
There was a conspiracy about a band student who was a dealer. Apparently, he would hide his stash in the band room drum closet. He got expelled for something unrelated and it is said he was unable to retrieve his stash. Many years later, the drum line and I were practicing in the band room. The student who played the bass drum entered the closet to retrieve a new pair of sticks.
He threw his broken stick at the ceiling in an attempt to get it stuck in the tile. The ceiling tile fell out and lo and behold, so did about two ounces of cannabis. The bag was incredibly dusty, one of the corners had been chewed by a mouse, and the weed inside was a bit moldy. But there it was in all its glory. The rumors were true.
37. Holy Nunsense, It’s True!
There was a rumour that the door in the gym’s storage closet led to a pool that students were not permitted to use. One day we were in gym class. Suddenly, we saw two nuns from the convent come walking through the gym wearing robes and swim caps. They went straight into the storage closet. We finally had confirmation that the rumor was true.
38. There Was Some Funny Business Going On
There was a couple who taught physical education at school. The husband lost his life in his late 20s while jogging, and there was a charity trust set up as a college fund for the couple’s children. Then the horrific truth came out. The business teacher was embezzling funds out of the charity trust. He had been close with the couple, but apparently had no problem taking money from the widow.
39. Don’t Mess With The Stache
We had a substitute teacher who was an older gentleman. He had his hair parted to one side and a thin-style mustache. EVERYONE always made fun of him for it. The guy always brushed it off and smirked about it. One day, a group was talking to our principal, who was formerly in the service and someone made a joke about said substitute teacher.
Our principal dropped his smile and became very serious and said, “If you guys only knew what that man went through in Vietnam. He was a former Army Special Forces member and ran black ops. He doesn’t let anything get to him any more.” Everyone stopped joking about him and began treating him with more respect. However, it was never confirmed.
So, one day after school, I asked the sub if he was indeed prior Army Special Forces in Vietnam. It turned out he didn’t run black ops, but was a former MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam–Studies and Observations Group) operator in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos against the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong. I had to look up what that was. It changed my whole perspective on bravery and heroism.
40. Walking The Line
My school was split into two buildings. We had to go between an east and west portion, and “the path” to walk in between classes. The rumor was that the east building was designed by a guy who designed prisons. I thought it was just a false rumor that started because most people dislike that building. The interior classes do not have windows, and the building gives off weird vibes sometimes. However, a teacher confirmed this to actually be true.
41. The Curse Continues
At the highschool I went to, there was a story circulating that the school had a "one sacrifice per year" curse. This meant that every year, one person passed due to some weird circumstances around the school grounds. Well, every year a person did. Sometimes it was a student, sometimes a teacher, but every year the curse continued, and is still ongoing. And that wasn't all.
To top it all off, the same high school was well known for being both a mental patient asylum before and after WWI and a service hospital during WWII.
42. They Weren’t Counting On This
There was a rumor that two students who were looking to get some extra explanations on some math problems during an off period caught the math teacher pleasuring himself in his room. Turns out it was totally true. The teacher never got fired though, he just lost his classroom. He became one of those traveling cart-pushing teachers, since he, obviously, couldn’t be trusted with a closed door.
43. Teacher’s Pet
There was a kid who was absolutely terrible at singing and acting, yet every year, he was given the lead role in whatever play or musical the drama class was putting on. The reasons were scandalous. Rumor had it that he was banging the drama teacher. It was never actually confirmed, but the summer after graduation, the two of them went on a trip to Europe together, so go figure.
44. Are They Pooling Our Leg?
My high school was supposedly designed like a prison. It had a massive amphitheater, and didn’t have any real walls aside from dividers in the wing areas. There was a rumor that it had an underground pool that only teachers had access to. Every person had heard about the pool rumor. It was supposedly right under the gym floor.
It was said that the gymnasium itself could open up to reveal it. We'd occasionally scout the gym to see if there was any hidden access port to it, but so far nothing. However, the teachers often joke about it and make references to it, such as it was the last thing built, or that it wasn't filled with water so it can’t be used.
45. The Truth Was Staring Right At Us
When I was in school there was a rumor that there was an old man living in the school, and that sometimes he would appear in the hallways. No one really believed it, until one day while walking with some friends, we saw him behind a fence, just staring at us. We got really scared, but the truth was stranger than fiction. It turned out that this old man was really the founder of the school. He lived there because the land was his, and therefore he was allowed to do so.
46. Worth A Fortune
I went to a private high school. Every year, the computer teacher would host an "invest in the stock market" competition. He would only pick 10-20 kids, and you would "play" against other schools. We started with 50K of fun money and you got to see what would happen if you would invest. It was a lot of fun. However, people started noticing that the teacher was living way above his means. We found out that he realized the kids would always average out wins overall, so he was using our picks to get rich.
47. High School Musical
There were rumors about a music teacher and a student, but they were both pretty dramatic people and did very little to dismiss the talk. So, half the school wanted to believe it for the salacious thrill and half just waved it off as attention-seeking gossip. Later on, the teacher was let go without explanation, but most of us thought it was just budget-related.
Years later, I randomly caught up with the student and she said the rumors were true. But the details made my jaw drop. She had freaked out and tried to end things in hopes of shaking off her reputation. Eventually, the teacher showed up trashed and naked on her family's front lawn, in the rain, yelling for her. It was like a messed up version of John Cusack in Say Anything, minus the boombox.
48. Bridge Over Troubled Water
There was a girl during my freshman year who went missing. They ended up finding her body in the river. There were rumors that she was seen on a bridge with her boyfriend the day she went missing, and that maybe he had a hand in it. Nothing was ever discovered, so, it was assumed that there was an accident, or that she took her life.
Twenty-five years later, the boyfriend did away with his best friend of several decades, set a fire to cover it up, and went on the run. A couple of days later, he killed a woman at a rest stop in the bathroom to take her car. They reopened the case about the high school girlfriend. That rumor was correct all along. He will be behind bars for the rest of his life.
49. Driven Together
The school bus driver started receiving a bunch of anonymous letters accusing her of having an affair with the superintendent. Then they started sending them to her husband. But that wasn't the worst part. Her husband got a phone call that was so bad, he ran out, got into his truck, and peeled off. He ended up getting into an accident and didn’t make it.
The bus driver completely denied she was having an affair. After her husband passed, she got together with the superintendent but swore up and down that the relationship started after her husband passed. Too coincidental.
50. Lost In Paris
Each year the senior French class, or the ones who could afford it, took a trip to Paris. About eight years prior, one of the girls on the trip snuck out of the hotel they were all staying in to meet a guy. It ended in tragedy. Nobody ever saw her again. I always thought it was just some quasi-urban legend, but the French teacher who was on the trip, who was still teaching at the school, verified it.
Sources: Reddit, ,
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