I was raised in a crazy town called
Riverton. While attending high school there, I was told of the legend of the
old Riverton Elementary School.
The old Riverton Elementary School
was one of the first schoolhouses built in the valley. It burned
down on July 30th 1926. They rebuilt the school not long after that.
In 1996 the City purchased the old Riverton Elementary
School and its surrounding 9 acres of land from the Jordan School District for
$225,000. By 2005-2006, the city had successfully
renovated the old elementary school into a new community center and City Hall,
which now houses all of the city’s administrative offices. I participated in
some musical productions in this building with the local community theater.
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| The renovated Riverton Community Center |
An old haunted legend of that building tells that the
fire ended the lives of a few students. Some of the older kids would say that
they knew a friend of a friend, who, on a dare, spent the night in that old
building. The mysterious tenant claimed that late at night he could hear children’s voices. He constantly heard footsteps behind him. And
in the boiler room, he could hear a little girl crying because she fell down a
shoot, or so the ghost of the girl apparently told him.
For my Technology 2000 (Digital
Media) class, I got to do an assignment using video editing with
Adobe Premier. My friend Tommy and I were taking that class together and we
were partners on that particular project. Neither one of us had a clue how to
use the program and ended up filming an amateur video outside of class. We had
a friend and a correspondent who worked for the community of Riverton and had
all the keys to all government-owned buildings in the area.
We convinced him to let us in the
old elementary school at midnight so we could film our own ghost movie in
there. We ended up shooting a whole bunch of footage that made no sense
chronologically to a plot and filmed me mostly walking around in the dark and
being chased by other people involved in the film. I brought some fishing line,
to make objects appear to be floating in mid air, and frantically turned lights
on and off and threw furniture around the room. It ended up being similar to
the Blair Witch Project. I believe we even had a shot of my face close to the
camera wearing a beanie like one of the kids do in that movie.
The next day at school we showed our
footage to a whole bunch of classmates. Some were frightened by what they saw,
some were excited and the legend of that building escalated. I had an emo
friend who was a big skeptic about the film and didn’t buy into any of our cheap
effects, except he pointed out the strange orbs of light that seemed to circle
around me and dart in and out of the picture. He described those orbs as being
spirits in the film. I thought that was interesting since we couldn’t explain
where those orbs of light were coming from. We definitely didn’t create them.
When I was asked how I felt in that building that night I said 'normal,' maybe
because I was hyped on hormones and excited about being rebellious.
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| Orbs of light apparently spirits |
I don’t think Tommy and I got an A
for that assignment. The anti-climatic part of this story is that not long after we
shot that film Tommy lost the film containing me and the orbs of light. He lost
everything and has no idea what happened to it. The only
proof we have of that evening now is the testimonies of everyone present.
