I Quit Teaching Because Of This Terrifying Incident. I’ve Never Told Anyone About It Until Now.

Friday afternoon rolled in and I was stuck at my desk marking papers for an hour. Parent-teacher meetings were being held at the end of the following week and I was well behind in my grading as usual. That’s when I heard Manny sweeping the hallway. I stuck my head out of my room to ask how the repairs were going. He was a stocky Filipino man in his 40s with a strong accent, so I didn’t always pick up on every detail of the stories he shared. He relayed events with so much gusto that I was reluctant to interrupt him. It was the joy of the telling that was important, I thought.

He began telling me of all the damage he had seen in the basement — and the smells. “Like something died, rolled around in poo, then died again,” he said. There were several spots where two inches of brown water had pooled so that probably had something to do with it. When they pumped the water out, it revealed a crack that nearly extended the whole length of the boiler room. It was one-inch wide in some places, and quite deep. I only inferred this because of what Manny told me next.

They found a small metal box in one of the deeper cracks. It looked to have been encased in the concrete itself and then loosened by the earthquake. When they opened it, they found two things: a bible and a long lock of black hair tied by a small red ribbon.

I asked Manny if he had seen it himself. He hadn’t, but he had heard it from his friends who were in the boiler room at the time of the discovery. He said they washed off the bible and found the lock of hair in its pages, as if it had been used as a book marker. I remember getting the shivers and laughing because it was a hell of a creepy story. Manny laughed, too, and then did the sign of the cross over his chest before returning to his work.

On my way into work the following Tuesday, I saw that workers from the district had condoned off the area around the boiler room entrance to start their repairs. At the end of the day, I found myself again stuck in my room marking papers. And like clockwork, Manny’s sweeping could be heard in the hallway an hour after the last bell.

I poked my head out to ask how everything was going. And for the first time since I had known him, he didn’t look happy. I don’t recall the particulars of this conversation but he was evasive. It was very much unlike his character — or rather, it was a stark contrast from the persona I usually saw.