Three years ago, I received a tip about an abandoned school tucked away in South Carolina. Curiosity got the better of me, so we made a day trip out of it—driving the back roads from Raleigh, soaking in the scenery before reaching our destination.
Locals whispered that the school was haunted, and stepping onto the property, I could see why. The air was heavy, the silence unsettling. Peering through the front door, I saw that the entire middle section of the building had caved in, crashing down into the basement below.
But it was the back section—the area over the basement—that truly raised the hair on my neck. It was pitch black, the kind of darkness that swallows light, broken only by the brief flashes from our cameras. Each time the light flickered, I half-expected to see a ghostly figure—a long-haired girl, like the one from The Ring—charging toward me.
Construction on the Robert Fletcher School began in 1918 and finished in 1920, using bricks imported from Europe. It was a grand and impressive structure for its time. The school was named in honor of Robert Fletcher, who tragically died from mustard gas poisoning during World War I on October 7, 1918. His body was returned from Europe and laid to rest in the nearby Fletcher Family Cemetery.
The Fletcher family, prosperous farmers, owned 1,800 acres in South Carolina and another 2,100 acres in North Carolina during the 19th and 20th centuries. They built the school as a tribute to Robert’s memory. In 1924, they even proposed converting it into a college, but the state legislature rejected the idea.
Today, the Robert Fletcher School stands in eerie silence—a haunting memorial to both a fallen soldier and a bygone era.
