The spirit at Lake Highlands High School

Scariest neighborhood scaries T neighborhood

One night every year, Michael Myers, the escaped mental patient and serial killer from the Halloween movies, walks the streets of the Highland Hills neighborhood near Mccree and Audelia. You can’t miss him: the theme music begins to play, and children run screaming in his path. When he’s not walking, he’s sharpening his knives in front of his (really nice, late-century modern) house. (the character is actually portrayed by spirited homeowner ed Waters.)

When the lights flicker or the soundboard hums and suddenly shuts off during theaterrehearsalsatLakeHighlandsHigh School, the students blame it on Elizabeth not a current-day prankster, but the restless spirit of a student who in the 1970s purportedly fell to an untimely death.

Theater teacher Beauen Bogner tells how he heard the story, which he admits has probably morphed over the years.

“Therewas a girlintheauditorium several years ago named Elizabeth, around the ’70s, and she was up in the grid over the stage, way high up. She fell from one section of the grid to one beneath, killing her, and thus haunts the auditorium with her spirit.”

Bogner guesses that the Elizabeth mystery might just boil down to an old theater tradition.

In other versions of the story, the student was named Eliza or Betsy, or was a distressed young man who jumped to his death from the rafters or from an upstairs window.

Dr. BobIden,whoattendedLake HighlandsHighSchoolbeforereturningas a teacherandlaterprincipal, recalls the pervasive rumors of death and hauntings, but thinks he would know if such trauma took place during his years.

“I am pretty sure that it is one of those urban myths, unless there was such an occurrence between the time I left in 1985 and returned in 1997, and even then, I am sure that I would have heard about it when I returned as principal,” Iden says.

Wherecouldtherumorshaveoriginated?There are no reports in Dallas MorningNews historicalarchivesthat indicatestudentsuicideoraccidental death at Lake Highlands High School.

BognerguessesthattheElizabeth mystery might just boil down to an old theater tradition.

“Most every theater has a story of a ghost who dwells there,” Bogner says. “For instance, when [I was] at Baylor, our ghost was named ‘Gray Man,’ and every time something inexplicable happened, it was always blamed on Gray Man. The same thing happens with Elizabeth here.”