Bullion Plaza School Haunts
The history of the Bullion Plaza School is dark, disturbing, and downright heartbreaking. Located in Miami, Arizona, the school was a segregated learning environment that caused the suffering of its Native American and Mexican students. Horrendous child abuse occurred within the school’s walls, and that malevolent, heavy energy has been leaking into the present.
Now a museum and historical center, the remains of the school still exist in the form of empty classrooms that have been lost to time. Some of the spaces at the school look just as they did in the past.
A Bit of History
Miami, Arizona, where the school is located, was once just a tiny mining town. Silver mining began in the 1870s in surrounding areas, but it was not until the early 1880s, when the price of copper began to rise, that prospectors started to take an interest in the copper deposits that had been found previously in Miami.
In 1906, the Miami Copper Company began to work the claims in the area, and the demand for manpower increased. Most of the men working the mines traveled to work by foot, and few miners could afford to keep their horses. These factors led to the development of new large-scale copper mines, and the need to provide the miners with housing, shopping, and places of entertainment led to the founding of Miami, Arizona.
Miami was founded in 1907 when it was first developed by the Miami Land and Improvement Company. In 1908, Cleve Van Dyke purchased the tract from the company and adjacent plots of land.
It was not until two days after the first train arrived on the new railroad that the sale and renting of lots began.
At this point in history, the town was not much more than an idea on paper. Only rough streets had been graded, and no utilities of any kind were available to residents. According to reports, 800 people lived in the town at the beginning of 1910 — an impressive number for a dusty old town that was only three months old.
By the time a census taker arrived in the town, there were 1,390 residents.
The Bullion Plaza School is Born
Obviously, with the rise in residents came the need for a school for their children. Thus, the Bullion Plaza School was born. The Bullion Plaza School was designed by architects Trost & Trost in a classical revival style. It was finished in 1923 and served the area as a school from 1923 until 1994.
The school was built as a learning institution for Mexican, Native American (specifically Apache), and African American students.
During its tenure as a learning institution, the Bullion Plaza School was guilty of segregating students and abusing its Mexican and Native American student population. If students were to speak in their native tongue, they would be harshly punished, even beaten. There are rumors that children were taken down to the basement for punishment and stories that some of them never returned.
This wasn’t far-fetched for the time, as it was common for Native American students to deal with the repercussions of assimilation in the classroom. Their heritage was beaten out of them, their ancestral lineage nothing but a memory to them — it’s heartbreaking.
Haunts of the Bullion Plaza School
These days, reports of hauntings are aplenty at the school. The school has been host to countless ghost investigation teams and visitors looking to communicate with the dead.
One commonly reported entity is a man who fell down the stairs at the school and died. It’s unknown exactly when this happened, but he is said to make contact with the living by touching them and making himself heard as a disembodied voice.
Other reports include strange energy surrounding a particular closet in the school — many visitors believe that this closet was used to punish some of the children who attended Bullion Plaza.
Others have reported seeing tall shadow figures moving throughout the hallways; some have even felt like something was keeping them from going into the basement or up the stairwell.
It’s said that dark entities remain at the school, preventing visitors from going into certain hallways.
Other haunts include objects flying through the air and unexplained cold spots throughout the building.
Could these be the spirits of kids who were abused at the school? Perhaps they could never move on due to what they experienced while enrolled here. Or, maybe there are ghosts of miners from the town of Miami who met their end deep beneath the ground below the school. Regardless, Bullion Plaza is considered one of the most active haunts in the Arizona desert — and we’d have to agree.
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Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullion_Plaza_School
https://www.reddit.com/r/GhostAdventures/comments/xljpld/ghost_adventures_old_bullion_plaza_school_episode/
