Is Nightingale High School a real place?

No, Nightingale High School and its haunted pool are fictional creations for this true-feel horror case file, inspired by real urban legends of drowned ghosts and abandoned schools.

What is the black water?

The black water is a supernatural substance containing traces of human tears, blood, and a poisonous plant. It fills the pool when the entity manifests and acts as a portal to a non-physical space where victims drown forever.

Can the pool be destroyed?

The pool has been filled with concrete, but the entity's influence persists. The red swim cap acts as an anchor; as long as it exists, the black water can return.

The Pool at Nightingale High

A Paranormal Case File — Incident #2020-1013-NH
Date of Incident: October 13 – October 16, 2020
Location: Nightingale High School (abandoned), Millbrook, New Hampshire
Lead Investigator: Dr. Elaine Voss, Paranormal Research Institute (PRI)
Status: Unexplained. 4 missing persons. Indoor pool sealed permanently. Entity classified as “The Drowned Girl.” Active investigation.

1. Initial Report

On October 14, 2020, the Millbrook Police Department received a 911 call from a hysterical teenager, Emma Tran, 16, who claimed she and three friends had broken into the abandoned Nightingale High School the previous night. They had found the door to the old indoor pool building unlocked, and inside, the pool was full—not with clear water, but with a black, glassy liquid that reflected no light. A single red swim cap floated in the center. One of them, Jake Morrison, 17, had dared to touch the surface. The moment his fingers broke the water, he was pulled under with such force that the others heard his bones snap. They ran.

When police arrived, the pool building was locked from the inside. They forced the door. The pool was empty—completely dry, its cracked tiles coated in dust. No water, no swim cap. But in the deep end, a single pair of wet footprints led from the drain to the ladder, then stopped. The footprints were small, child‑sized, and the water they left behind was black and icy cold. Jake Morrison was not found. His phone was discovered on the pool deck, recording a video of the event. The video shows the black water, Jake reaching down, and then a pale hand shooting up from the surface to seize his wrist. The hand has too many fingers, and its grip leaves a bruise that is still visible on the video.

The three surviving teenagers were treated for shock. Two have not spoken since. Emma Tran told police that she saw a girl in an old‑fashioned swimsuit standing at the bottom of the pool, looking up at them, her face blurred by the dark water but her mouth open in a smile. The girl was holding a red swim cap.

PRI was contacted after the video leaked and a local historian noted that Nightingale High’s pool had been sealed after a student drowned in 1987—a girl named Sarah Oakes, who wore a red swim cap.

(Source: Millbrook PD Incident Report #2020-1014-NHS-332, Officer L. Henderson; recovered phone video, PRI Appendix A.)

2. The Missing

PRI reconstructed the events of October 13 and the subsequent investigations.

October 13, 11:20 p.m.: Four teenagers—Jake Morrison, 17; Emma Tran, 16; Ryan Cole, 17; and Mia Novak, 16—enter the abandoned school through a broken window. They explore the gym, the classrooms, and finally the pool building, which they find unlocked. The pool is full of black water. Jake touches it and is pulled under. The others flee.
October 14, 3:00 a.m.: Ryan Cole returns alone with a flashlight, hoping to find Jake. He is never seen again. His flashlight is later found floating in the empty pool, its lens cracked, the batteries corroded as if submerged for years.
October 15, 1:17 a.m.: A security guard hired to watch the property, Harold Vane, 58, reports hearing a girl singing from inside the pool building. He enters. His body is found the next morning on the pool deck, his face frozen in an expression of bliss, his lungs filled with black water. The medical examiner notes that the water contains high levels of chlorine and a type of algae not found in New Hampshire.
October 16: PRI arrives. The pool is dry. But the air is thick with the smell of chlorine and something else—wet hair, old sweat, and a faint sweetness like rotting flowers. In the locker room, they find a red swim cap, wet, hanging on a hook. Inside the cap is a single strand of long, black hair. DNA analysis matches Sarah Oakes, the girl who drowned in 1987.

(Source: Millbrook PD missing persons files; Medical examiner’s report, Harold Vane; PRI field log, October 16, 2020, Appendix B.)

3. The Evidence

Jake Morrison’s Phone Video (Recovered): 3 minutes 47 seconds. The video begins with the four teens approaching the pool. The water is black and still, reflecting no light. The video shows Jake crouching at the edge and touching the surface. At 1:12, a pale hand—long, with six fingers—erupts from the water and grabs Jake’s wrist. The hand pulls him forward with inhuman strength. The video shakes, then goes dark as the phone drops. Audio captures a wet, cracking sound and a high‑pitched giggle, then a splash. Dr. Samir Patel confirms no digital manipulation. The hand’s anatomy is not human; the fingers bend at extra joints.
The Red Swim Cap: Recovered from the locker room on October 16. It is a 1980s competition cap, the rubber dry and cracked, but the inside is wet. The hair strand inside is black, 34 cm long, with a follicle that yields a full DNA profile. The DNA matches a sample taken from Sarah Oakes’s hairbrush, held by her mother. The cap is cold to the touch, and when placed in a sealed plastic bag, it slowly leaks black water.
Audio Recording (from the pool building, captured by PRI on October 17): A portable recorder placed on the empty pool deck captured 18 seconds of a girl’s voice, singing a popular 1987 song, “The Way You Make Me Feel,” in a slow, echoing tone. The recording also captures the sound of water lapping against tiles, though the pool is dry. Dr. Hannah Lim’s analysis shows the voice is produced at a temperature of 4°C, as if coming from underwater, and is accompanied by a sub‑audible frequency of 13 Hz, inducing a sense of dread and pressure in the chest.
Water Sample (from Jake’s phone, which was still wet when found): The black water is not water at all but a suspension of fine, carbon‑like particles in a saline solution, with traces of human tears, blood, and a chemical compound known as “water hemlock”—a poison that causes paralysis and a smile‑like rictus in its final stages.

All evidence is stored at PRI’s New England containment facility.

4. Historical Research

Dr. Peter Chand investigated the 1987 drowning and the school’s closure.

Nightingale High School opened in 1962. Its indoor pool was a point of pride, home to a competitive swim team. On May 17, 1987, during a regional swim meet, a 15‑year‑old sophomore named Sarah Oakes was scheduled to swim the 100‑meter freestyle. Witnesses said she was seen standing at the edge of the pool, staring at the water with a vacant smile. When the starter gun fired, she did not dive. Instead, she walked down the steps into the deep end, still smiling, and simply sank. She did not struggle. She did not surface. The pool was drained, and her body was found at the bottom, seated cross‑legged, her eyes open, her mouth stretched into a grin, and her red swim cap clutched in her hands.

The autopsy declared death by drowning, but the water in her lungs was not the pool water; it was a black, fetid liquid that the lab could not identify. Her coach, a man named Victor Hale, disappeared that same night. His car was found at a nearby lake, the driver’s door open, but no body was ever recovered.

The pool was sealed, and the school closed in 1992 due to declining enrollment. It has stood empty ever since. Local teenagers whisper that Sarah still swims in the dark, waiting for someone to join her.

(Source: Millbrook Historical Society, “The Nightingale Drowning: A Community’s Loss,” 1987; Sarah Oakes autopsy report, state archives; Victor Hale missing person file, 1987.)

5. Preliminary Analysis

Dr. Voss’s assessment:

Entity Classification: The Drowned Girl is a Class‑Ω Water‑Bound Revenant—the spirit of Sarah Oakes, transformed by the unknown black liquid that filled her lungs. She is not a simple ghost; she is the water itself, able to manifest and fill the pool at will, and she hungers for living warmth to replace the cold that killed her.
Modus Operandi: The entity lures victims to the pool’s edge, often showing the pool full of black water when it is physically dry. Touch is the trigger; once contact is made, the victim is pulled into a non‑physical space—the “black pool”—where they drown eternally, their consciousness joining Sarah’s in the cold. The missing persons are not dead in the conventional sense but trapped in a perpetual state of drowning, their lungs filled with the same black fluid.
The Red Cap: The cap is a psychometric anchor. It belonged to Sarah, and it now acts as a beacon, allowing her to reach into the physical world. The hair strand and DNA confirm her presence, but the cap’s continued wetness suggests the entity can generate water from nothing.
Risk Assessment: High. The entity is bound to the pool building, but its influence extends to the surrounding area—the security guard who died was outside the pool when he heard her singing. The school is on public land, and despite fencing, trespassers are common. PRI has issued a covert warning to local authorities, and the pool building is now sealed with steel plates and surrounded by motion sensors.
Containment: The red swim cap has been placed in a sealed, water‑filled glass jar, which is kept in a dark, sound‑proof vault. The water in the jar occasionally ripples, as if something is moving inside. The school remains abandoned, and the pool building is considered a permanent hazard.

6. Postscript and Current Status

As of November 2020, four people—Jake Morrison, Ryan Cole, Mia Novak (who vanished while being questioned by police; she was last seen walking into the empty pool building alone), and Harold Vane—are missing. Emma Tran remains in a psychiatric facility, where she has stopped speaking and now only hums the same 1987 song over and over.

The pool building has been filled with concrete by order of the town council, but workers reported that as they poured, the wet concrete swirled and formed a pattern resembling a girl’s face, smiling. The pattern dried into the floor and cannot be removed.

The red cap in PRI’s vault sometimes moves on its own, sliding across the bottom of the jar like a fish. On the anniversary of the drowning, the jar fills with black water overnight, even though it is sealed.

If you find yourself near an abandoned school with a pool, and the air smells of chlorine and flowers, do not enter. Do not look at the water. And if you hear a girl singing from the deep end, run. She wants you to join her.

This story deals with themes of drowning, peer pressure, and the horror of being trapped. If you experience anxiety near water or fear of suffocation, please be gentle with yourself. Such fears are valid, and talking to a professional can help you stay afloat.