Few students or staff members have ventured into the school’s basement, and due to decades-long myths concerning it, many are afraid of what they might find there.
“I’ve heard it’s haunted,” said Kari Rayfield, a safety officer.
The most infamous of the myths being an unused, cobweb-ridden bowling alley. To debunk these conspiracies, John Crawford, Director of Operations and Sustainability, who has worked for ETHS for 25 years, showed off the ins and outs of the basement. Crawford explained that there once was a bowling alley, but it was torn down, and only the blueprints are left. Still, there was something else left in the basement, something that concerned few of the myths: a riflery range.
It was darker and immediately dustier as Crawford led down to the lowest floor of ETHS. After opening the door under the West Wing stairwell, we carefully walked down a ramp. Pulling out big flashlights we had brought in jest, we turned them on out of necessity, illuminating the low-ceilinged, cavernous underground.
“People call this ramp the ‘bike ramp’ because the students would actually bring their bicycles down here and park them,” explained Crawford, leading the way.
As we stepped over rusty pipes and maneuvered around stray pieces of wood and metal, Crawford led us to an ancient rustic door that swung wide open. Through the doorway, we entered into a vast, unfinished basement. Divided into three sections, the room housed a couple of shooting lanes in each. In disbelief as we peeked around corners at the long ranges used for target practice and the empty rifle cubbies lining the walls, Crawford clarified what we were looking at. Pointing at the shooting targets at the end of each range that had “ROTC” [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps] written on them, he said, “In the forties there was an ROTC program here – it was like a shooting club.”
Crawford was right. In 1929, a class of 30 freshmen began their four-year-long training to become military officers. In the newly-built riflery range, the underclassmen learned how to handle rifles and grasped the basics of military drill. In their four years in the Military Training Corps class, the students advanced from recruits to corporals to sergeants, graduating as officers. Examining the bullet holes on the walls and the pulley systems for the shooting targets was like entering the 1930s. Military Training Corps students used pulleys to wheel the small target on a string over to the other side of the room. Then, students would shoot their rifles and wheel the target back over to check if they hit their shot.
“I think there’s an awesome place to do archery down there,” said history teacher Michael Pond of the basement. Pond echoes a common theory – that the riflery range has been used for archery since ETHS ended the military training program. And while Crawford did not allude to anything but target practice happening in the riflery corridor, the basement remains shrouded in mystery. The shooting range was just a fraction of the area.
“Once you are in the basement of the school, all the basements connect,” described Crawford. “We could go anywhere in the building right now.” senior Robi Iliev confirms this. Taking a tour of the entirety of the ETHS Theatre in his 1 Theatre class, Iliev journeyed to a small subsection of the basement underneath a stage. “It was kind of scary,” Iliev remembers. “There were a bunch of old props and furniture.”
Looking around, it was hard not to feel uneasy. The eerie lighting, plaster and rubble and endless passageways created a mysterious atmosphere. Thinking back to age-old stories, it was easy to understand why so many had been afraid to make the trip.
“Some of the engineers have said that they were in the basement, turned around, saw people, and then asked if somebody was working there that night, and the answer was no,” said Crawford, in reference to the myths.
And the tour of unknown places did not end there, scan this QR code to see a video of the old shooting range.
