When I started my fourth grade year I was once again starting from scratch. New in town, new in school and new to the kids surrounding me. I managed to make a few friends easily enough, but my favorite for the few months that I attended that particular school wasn’t one who was able to play with me on the playground with all of the other children.

I don’t think I placed it at first with other paranormal events in my life, probably because it took a while to realize that Sam wasn’t a living kid like all of the others. He sat in a desk sometimes, in other moments he wouldn’t be looking out the window while the teacher stood at the head of the room talking. I had heard nothing of the school before hand and if it had a reputation for being a haunted school, I saw nothing of it. I have looked back since and can find no reports of a death there, so why Sam liked to hang around…well that’s between him and the walls I guess.

The point is that during that time I was still becoming familiar with the concept and I still sometimes mistook the haunting and ghosts, or other paranormal beings, for part of the normal world that everyone else would also be aware of.

It took a couple of weeks for me to speak with Sam. It happened in the large closet where all of our cubbies for coats, gloves and such were kept. I was the last one in the room at the end of a bitterly cold day. I was having trouble buttoning the large jacket I needed to wear for the walk home.

Sam stepped inside and asked me if I needed help. I told him I did and he proceeded to help me, though he seemed to have as much trouble as I did and eventually I took over the job again and managed it. Whether he was able to actually touch my coat and buttons or not, I have never been absolutely sure, but I do think he tried.

With my task finished, I was able to look at him more closely as we talked and it was then that I noticed, up close for the first time really, that he didn’t look quite right. No gashes or gaping holes or bloody injuries, nothing of that sort, just…off somehow.

We spoke for a little while, normal chitchat. When I finally set off for home I asked if he would like to walk with me. It was then I think I knew for sure that he wasn’t on the attendance list. The look he gave me wasn’t sad, but surprised. He said he didn’t walk home and I left it at that.

I started staying behind whenever I could after that to speak with Sam. I never asked him if he was dead or not being like the rest of the kids. He told me about his family, his favorite toys (which I now realize were fairly outdated,) and his favorite television shows (also a bit on the older side.)

I often watched his behavior in the class when we were all working and quiet. Sometimes he would sit at his desk and work with the rest of us, he even appeared to have a pencil and paper, which I now know must have been some kind of an illusion as I believe other students may have noticed the moving pencil without a hand to guide it.

Most of the time he fit right in, but occasionally he would just get up and walk into the closet or sit on the window sill, something I should have noticed before as it undoubtedly would have caught the teacher’s attention if he had been one of her students.

Eventually I think we became friends. Not the sort that can go to the park together and we never did breech that subject of “Are you a ghost?” Still, he was kind and interesting.

Years later I tried to find out if he had attended the school at any point in time. I could find nothing that could confirm it, but there was one photo, a class picture that I could swear included him. No way to be sure, but perhaps.

What I can say is that though Sam did seem to be stuck in the school, I don’t think he was unhappy. In so many cases people believe that if ghosts are hanging about it must be because they are upset about something, but I don’t think that is always the case.

What he did in the hours when those halls were vacant, what he thought of the time when there were no children to watch, or even ones like me who he could, once in a while, chat with…I don’t know. I hope that he is happy and that some day he might move onto wherever it is he needs to go. In the meantime I will think of him as I do many childhood friends I passed from town to town and wish him well.

Goodbye for now, another end.
Until a time we meet again.

-Seline