public

Heavily Investigated

The hallways of Farrar Schoolhouse don't feel empty — they feel patient. Visitors report phantom footsteps padding the stairwells long after the last student left, doors slamming in airless rooms, and shadowy figures appearing at the far end of a corridor before stepping back into nothing. The basement, they say, is another matter entirely. People who've spent the night describe a building that seems aware of them — and some swear the children's laughter drifting through the dark had no living source at all.

Farrar Elementary was dedicated on April 1, 1922 — a date that, in retrospect, feels almost too fitting. Built on six acres donated by farmer C.G. Geddes, the $100,000 consolidated schoolhouse outraged a portion of the community who called it a monument to arrogance; the rest came anyway for the orchestra and the banquet. It served rural Iowa for eight decades before closing May 3, 2002. Jim and Nancy Oliver purchased it in 2006, moved in, and discovered fairly quickly that the decades of students had apparently never fully graduated.