Cypress Grove High School

 Cypress Grove High School

Garden District, New Orleans

Cypress Grove High is a sprawling, timeworn public school nestled in the overgrown heart of New Orleans’ Garden District. The campus is a Frankenstein’s monster of architecture—graceful in places, decaying in others, and altogether uncanny.

At its core stands the original redbrick main hall, erected in 1907, a structure that evokes both southern charm and Gothic unease. Its tall arched windows are streaked with decades of grime, and the wrought-iron balconies—now rusted and unused—creak when the wind rolls in from the Mississippi.

Over the past century, the school has expanded haphazardly. New wings were added in the 1950s, 70s, and 90s, with portable trailers peppering the edges of the courtyard to accommodate surging class sizes.  First-years joke that you need a map to survive your first week—but even the maps posted in the main office contradict one another.

Water stains bloom across the ceiling tiles in certain corridors, whispering of long-forgotten leaks and untraceable plumbing. The old gym, a towering brick structure near the back of the grounds, has been sealed off for decades. Officially it’s “pending renovation,” but everyone knows better. The double doors are chained shut, the windows painted black from the inside. No one admits to investigating.

The cafeteria murals, once vibrant depictions of multicultural cheer and mid-century optimism, have faded into a surreal palette of ghostly smiles and off-color skin tones. The students in them seem too perfect, too symmetrical, too unfamiliar.

By daylight, Cypress Grove wears the mask of a typical underfunded public high school:

Lockers overflow with dog-eared textbooks, moldy gym clothes, and forgotten science projects.

Hallway posters flap in the breeze of malfunctioning air vents—half-hearted spirit week announcements, tattered anti-drug campaigns, and yearbook order forms from three years ago.

Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, some flickering, some dead. A row of vending machines near the cafeteria hums unevenly, dispensing stale chips and soda that tastes faintly metallic.

But once the sun dips behind the cypress trees, the building shifts.

The air grows colder. Denser.

Footsteps echo too long in the halls, even when you know you're alone.

Door handles feel warm, or worse—wet.

The janitorial staff avoids certain wings after dark, and security guards clock out early, choosing to patrol from the safety of their parked cars, windows rolled up and engines idling.

And then there are the rumors.

That the school was built atop a Civil War battlefield—or maybe a buried cemetery.

That in 1983, an entire sophomore homeroom vanished between second and third period.

That if you enter the old gym at midnight, you'll never find the door again.

That some teachers are not what they seem.

Most faculty dismiss these stories as typical teenage melodrama.

But ask any student—any student—and they’ll have one story they swear is true:

A whisper in an empty classroom.

A face in the mirror that wasn’t theirs.

A shadow crossing the hall when no one was there.

Or a dream... of Cypress Grove, but wrong. Empty. Rotting. And waiting.

No one talks about these things too loudly.

But everyone knows:

Cypress Grove High is haunted.