Which Came First? Chittyville Hauntings.

This is kind of a chicken or egg situation – which came first, the haunting or the ghost-seekers?

If you run a Google search on “Haunted Houses in Illinois,” one of the responses will be the Chittyville School located near Herrin, Illinois. The website for the school explains its history:

“Over a century ago, in 1836, a small community, drawn by the local coal mines, began to grow in the area now known as Chittyville. Here, they worked hard, raised their families, and died. The dead were buried in a cemetery somewhere along Chittyville Road . As years went by, most of the early settlers died or moved on, and the cemetery became overgrown and unused. 

Slowly, the wooden tombstones rotted away, leaving no sign of the sleeping souls. In October 1912, officials claimed the land to build a new school needed for the thriving community. 

The townspeople were thrilled at the prospects of a new school, except for one man, a local who was very old and tended to keep to himself. He warned the officials not to build the school or face dire consequences. “You should never disturb the dead” were the last words ever heard from him, as he was never seen or heard from again. 

Officials ignored the old man’s ominous advice, and construction began. The project was soon plagued by problems. Workers reported constant unexplained events. Nine workers perished over the next ten months due to mysterious construction accidents. The entire project seemed to be cursed. 

With construction complete, the school opened in August of 1913. Almost immediately, the children and teachers complained of seeing ghostly figures in the hallways and strange noises coming from the boiler room. 

It wasn’t until October, however, that the real horror began. On one cold October day, Mr. Haney, the school custodian, thought he heard the sound of someone crying. He went into the boiler room to investigate and never returned. 

Teachers and students could hear screams emanating from the boiler room, but no sign of Mr. Haney was ever found. Following the incident, each October, a student or teacher would vanish without explanation from the school. 

Officials refused to close the building, blaming disappearances on the “Big Muddy Monster” as sightings of this creature were beginning to grow in the Chittyville area. The officials knew the truth, but they took their secret to their graves. They feared the community’s reaction should they ever learn what they had done.

After the school closed in 1989, neighbors continued to report strange noises coming from the school. The new school officials leased the property to a local university who used it for offices, but employees refused to go into the school alone due to the strange sightings of ghostly figures and the constant sounds of children both laughing and screaming. 

So, Chittyville School sat empty for many, many years…until an unwitting couple purchased the school in December of 2004.

Who will be the next to disappear…will it be you?”

Cue the “Twilight Zone” music.

Of course, I thought, “Well, that’s cool. But is it real?”

And that’s where this gets interesting.

In an October 2005 article in The Southern Illinoisan, writer Marleen Shepherd asked that very question. Haunted for real?

This is from her article:

“HERRIN – Ghostly apparitions terrified the children and teachers at Chittyville School. With each year Chittyville operated, mysterious deaths and disappearances mounted. Built on a forgotten settler cemetery in 1934, the school still houses spirits that were summoned from the grave to reclaim their final resting place and the tormented souls of their victims.

At least this is the ad gimmick airing all over Southern Illinois to promote “The Haunting of Chittyville School,” a Halloween event at the old brick school building north of Herrin.

“I fabricated it,” Vickie King said of the story advertised by local media and Chittyville.com. “All the information on the website is completely made up.”

That’s why Vickie and her husband, Frank King, Chittyville’s current owners, were surprised to get a call from a real ghost hunter asking to investigate stories he picked up before the Halloween promotions began.

Timothy Harte, a Fairfield resident and paranormal researcher, heard tales from his co-workers at Franklin-Williamson County Human Services and other locals. According to folklore, the most well-known Chittyville ghost is that of a 6-year-old boy who continued to play on the school’s swing set long after his roadside death.

“I also heard the school was built on a burial ground,” Harte said.

“That’s the part that really surprised me,” King said. “I thought I was making it up. We didn’t know the history.”

That history might explain the strange noises frequently heard by the Kings, who purchased the school in December 2004, after it sat vacant for 32 years.

“We’ve heard some footsteps.” King also noticed that the family dogs refuse to go into the building.

Harte, who wrote his clinical psychology master’s thesis on paranormal activity at the University of Illinois Springfield, recently put the rumors to the test.

Harte developed a computer system that measures physical energies in places where people experience these phenomena. The system is called MESA, which stands for multi-energy sensor array (www.mesaproject.com). Harte theorizes that changes in the electromagnetic spectrum are a culprit in some hauntings. At the school, Harte set up his equipment, which includes an infrared camera and a laptop with various sensors that measure such changes.

“We definitely got some strange magnetic fields,” Harte said of his first field test of the area. A couple of team members claim to have heard strange noises, and orbs showed up on video at the site.

“If we do indeed have visitors in our school, they were here first,” King said of the ghost hunters’ findings. She invites the community to come to the Halloween production to test the school themselves.”

Were they? Were they really? Or did the presence of so many people expecting ghosts actually draw them to the old school?

You decide.

Happy Friday!