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Photos taken by Sean Nootbaar.
Sean Nootbaar sent me the following information about this abandoned high school:
I'm sending you two pictures I took about 4 years ago of an old abandoned high school in Fifield, Wisconsin.
To my knowledge the school was built somewhere in the 1930's, maybe 1936, and caught fire about two years later. The fire broke out in one of the rooms on the top floor, and the damage was so extensive that it was shut down and never re-opened. Students of the high school were later moved to another school, where I'm not sure.
The school has finally been torn down now from what I've been told, and that took place not too long ago. But before it was torn down I was able to go inside and have a look around. I sort of wandered on in one day years ago with some friends, which I really should not have done. I was lucky enough to have the caretaker of the buliding come by, and instead of
calling the cops on me and my friends, he took it upon himself to show us around inside where he could. He told us about the fire and how at the time everything inside was state of the art. We were not able to go to the top while he was showing us around due to the floors having huge holes in them, and one room had no floor at all, it had fallen through. Little did the caretaker know we had actually made our way to the top anyway, before he showed up and tried to see what we
could. Needless to say it was a dumb thing to do, seeing as we could have crashed right through to the bottom. Anyway, we were able to get a tour of the basement, which is where the gym was located. It was covered in broken glass from vandals having smashed all the lights and windows at the top. There were still basketball hoops set up in 4 different spots but
none of the nets remained from what I remember. The caretaker sounded very upset when he told us what the vandals had done, and the damage was not just limited to the gym, but all the outside windows had been smashed with rocks as well. Local kids had apparently broken into the school one night to use the gym and decided it would be a good idea to destroy everything they could. Very stupid. The tour was pretty much over after the gym, we sort of walked around to a few of
the classrooms which wasn't much of anything, just small room filled with debris. We were all very apprciative of the man who showed us around and I have never forgotton about it, I thought it was a pretty cool thing for him to do for us.
At the time this all happened there were plans to turn the school into a daycare, which was the reason the caretaker came by; he was actually clearing things out of the bottom floor.
While the school was still standing, it was rumored to be haunted. There were a couple different stories of why it was haunted. The one I know best was that for no reason at all the school was abandoned and no one knew why. After it was abandoned people reported seeing the spirits of kids in the windows and you could hear voices and screaming coming from within. The screaming was actually a weathervane on top of the school and it would make a high pitched shriek when the wind would blow, and it didn't even have to blow hard. I was able to hear this several times after hearing my sister tell me she heard it and I decided to check it out for myself. I never saw any kids in the windows and obviously the school was NOT abandoned for no reason and to my knowledge no kids ever died there. It wouldn't make much sense for a brand new
school to be haunted if there were no tragedies or deaths.
In October 2008, I received the following e-mail from Bruno Wilimek:
I enjoy looking at the abandoned buildings on your website, but feel I must correct incorrect information submitted with these photos by Sean Nootbar. Go to http://theseverts.net/FIFIELDschhistlong.doc to find out the correct history of the school. There are pictures on the site that verify it's the same school. It was built in 1923, and was state of the art, but not abandoned until 1979 and torn down in 2005. I have never been to Fifield, but was curious that a building that looked so recently used could have sat empty for around 80 years. I have been in a lot of abandoned buildings in my time, and know how quickly they deteriorate. It just didn't make sense to me, so I googled it and this is what I found. I found another website with ghost sightings in the Fifield area and the school was not on it, so find it a good story, but untrue. That is my two cents worth, anyhow.
I also received an e-mail from E.A. Gilmore in October 2008, with an observation regarding one of Sean's photos:
There appears to be a misty, green shape in the upper left-hand window of the school.
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