Halloween is just around the corner which means spooky activities have officially started. Halloween activities can include watching scary movies, decorating the house, and handing out candy, but the best out of all of them is telling scary stories and myths to keep you up at night.
Social Studies teacher Anita Penner said her favorite scary story was a paranormal activity that she experienced when she was in high school.
“When I was in high school I was sent over to the theater storage area to grab some things that we needed for practice. I was with my sister and two other kids in the drama department. We got the keys from our director and went to unlock the doors. While in the storage area, we heard a stack of wood fall and a loud whisper from the other side of the garage. We went over to turn on the lights to investigate and there was nothing to be seen except the knocked over wood pile,” said Penner. “Then the room got extremely cold, and the four of us kinda just stood there frozen as we heard loud footsteps on the side of the garage. We searched the whole place and there was no one else there.”
Sophomore Nico Kruse said his favorite scary story is the story of La Llorona.
“La Llorona was once a beautiful woman named Maria. In many variations of the tale, Maria’s husband was an unfaithful or abusive man who treated their two sons more affectionately than he did his wife. Other retellings say that her husband may have left her for a wealthier or lighter-skinned woman. Out of jealousy, rage, or despair, she is said to have lured her sons to a nearby river and drowned them before drowning herself after realizing what she had done,” said Kruse. “In another version, Maria’s neglected sons drowned accidentally while she was cavorting with gentlemen callers. Maria’s ghost, now La Llorona, is forced to wander the earth searching for her sons. She can be identified by her loud, wailing cries: ‘Mis hijos! Mis hijos! Dónde están mis hijos?”
Junior Kai Collier, an Echoes reporter, says her favorite story is the story of the Deer women.
“My aunts usually scared me into behaving by saying that the deer woman would be after me,” said Collier. “The deer woman is from a Native American folklore. The story is about a woman who was left to die, only to be granted a wish for justice by spiritual powers. The deer woman was known to lure her tormentors into their doom. The story is usually made to scare kids and make them behave.”
Junior Connor Knowlton said his favorite scary stories are the stories from the Squirrel Cage Jail.
“This story consists of a prisoner in the jail who had his arm broken because it got stuck in the rotation of jail cells,” said Knowlton.
Science teacher Jodie Houchin said her all time favorite scary story was from growing up.
“When I was in about 4th or 5th grade my family lived on a farm and we were watching a lunar eclipse in the late 1980s at night so all of us were outside and looking up at the sky. One of our many coyote dogs was raising a cane, and all of a sudden we heard a man’s voice yell at it, “ said Houchin. “My mom freaked out and told my dad to get the three kids in the house now. To this day we still don’t know who it was, but the scary fact is that sometimes people escaped the Clarinda Prison and would head to the middle of nowhere like where we lived and hide in the corn fields. It still scares me to this day.”
Sophomore Madalyn Bothe says her favorite scary story is the myth of the black cat.
“I saw a black cat when me and my mom were walking, then she said ‘You know what they say about black cats?’ and I said ‘No?’ and she begins to tell me that black cats are made up of magic and that they are haunted and if you pet them they’ll haunt you!”
