The Swing Set Ghost of Maple Hollow Elementary

They still talk about it in whispers—how the ghost in the mirror followed her outside.

Back in the late 90s, a girl named Emily was dared to do the Bloody Mary ritual in the girls’ bathroom at Maple Hollow Elementary. Everyone in town knew the story: say her name three times in the dark and you’d see her in the mirror. Some swore they’d only ever seen a flicker; others claimed they saw a pale face pressed against the glass, grinning. Emily wasn’t the type to scare easy, so she agreed—laughing as she locked herself inside and turned out the lights.

Her friends waited in the hallway, ears pressed to the painted cinderblock walls. A minute passed. Then a sudden scrape—like fingernails on glass—and Emily’s muffled gasp. She burst out of the bathroom, breathless, insisting something moved in the mirror after she’d stopped speaking. The girls chalked it up to nerves.

Emily headed for the old playground and sat on one of the rusted haunted swing set seats, rocking back and forth to calm down. That’s when things got wrong. Witnesses said the chains began rattling even though there was no wind. The swing jerked higher and higher until it launched her forward—like invisible hands had yanked it—sending her sprawling across the gravel.

She broke her arm and collarbone in the fall. The school called it a playground accident, but the kids who saw it swore the seat kept swinging after she hit the ground. A teacher grabbed it to make it stop… and it was warm, as if someone had just been sitting there.

The swing set’s still there. The bathroom’s still there, too—though the light in that stall flickers no matter how many times the wiring gets fixed. Locals say if you try the urban legend bathroom mirror dare at Maple Hollow and walk out to the swings, you’ll feel someone pushing from behind.

And if you listen closely over the creak of the chains, you might hear her laugh.