Ghost stories of the old gym

Students at Carson Valley Middle School will tell you that the Old Gym Play House they sometimes use for physical education and drama is haunted.

"I heard a janitor haunts the basement beneath it," said ninth-grader Morgan Richard. "There's a spot of blood on the floor down there."

Eighth-grader Charla Shires heard a different story.

"Someone hung themselves down there, and that's why it stinks like rotten bodies," she said.

Ninth-grader Jaymie Capalbo said she's heard strange voices in the building and seen lights flicker off and on.

"It's really creepy," she said.

The history of the building is mysterious. Located in downtown Gardnerville next to the Carson Valley Museum & Cultural Center, the gym was once used by students of the old high school.

Phil McKinnon, who was a teacher and principal for Douglas County from 1960 to 1991, said he thought the gym was built in the 1930s.

"I think it was a (Works Progress Administration) project," he said. "Herb Dressler was the contractor, but he's gone now."

The new high school was built in 1975, and the gym became a historical monument, used intermittently by students of what became Carson Valley Middle School directly behind it.

"The story was that two former students hung themselves in the basement, in the old locker room," said Marty Swisher, who was principal of Carson Valley Middle School from 2002 to 2005 and taught at the school for six years before that. "Students say that's why the building smells so bad."

Swisher said he didn't know where the stories originated but that the building was indeed spooky.

"The floor creaks, and weird sounds come from the basement," he said.

On Oct. 24, Theresa Myers, who's been a custodian at Carson Valley Middle School for 10 years, helped RC-photographer Shannon Litz, who attended the middle school, and I checked out the building. The wooden floor creaked and groaned as we entered. Pale sunlight streamed through rows of tall, narrow windows, barred in black iron. Near the front of the gym, we found doors leading to strange and musty passageways where over the years chairs and desks had been stacked up to the rafters.

The old stage loomed in the rear of the gym, a dark hollow clothed in dusty curtains and adorned with miscellaneous items of the middle school's drama classes. On both sides of the stage, stairwells descended to bolted doors, behind which were two separate basement quarters. Myers found the key for the door on the eastern side of the stage, and down we went into the building's bowels.

Costumes from the drama department littered the small space, what used to be a locker room. The floor was peeling, and paint lay smeared across the walls. Students from decades ago had drawn out their initials in random colors. In one corner, there were scribbles the color of blood, the message inscrutable. Black pipes hung from the ceiling, leading to showers in the back of the room, some of the shower heads ripped out, but some still sticking out from a wall of crumbling, sky-blue plaster. I told Shannon that someone could hang themselves from the pipes if they wanted to, and she grinned.

A little disappointed by the current use of the room, we had Myers take us to the other side of the gym where an identical staircase led to an identical door heavy with bolt and lock. But there was one problem: none of the keys Myers had worked in the lock.

"I don't know who has the key. Maybe the night janitor," she said.

Someone had drilled a small hole into the inner wall of the stairwell. I peeked through and caught a glimpse of lead-black pipes running into darkness. There was little light, and the air coming through the hole was warm and nasty-smelling.

"We can try to find the key," Myers said.

"That's all right," I said.

Whatever lurked behind the door would remain a secret.