Workers discover haunting 100-year-old chalkboard drawings

A high school in Oklahoma City went under renovation, but instead of getting something new, they got something very, very old.

When contractors went to remove the old chalkboards from Emerson High School, they made a shocking discovery: underneath them laid another set of chalkboards – perfectly preserved and untouched in almost 100 years.

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“We find a lot of hidden things, but rarely do we find kid’s work and teacher’s work and text like this on blackboards,” MAPS program coordinator, David Todd, told The Oklahoman. “We usually find broken pipes and wires and things that we have to work around.”

The markings on the chalkboard, which date back to 1917, range from handwriting lessons to a lesson about Pilgrims.

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“The penmanship blows me away,” Principal Sherry Kishore told The Oklahoman. “You don’t see a lot of that anymore, and we have kids that come that prefer to print because they don’t know how to do cursive.”

A wheel drawn out on the board that was apparently used to teach multiplication left Kishore stunned because she has “never seen that technique in [her] life.”

And eerily, many of the students’ names from that 1917 class were written on the board. “I don’t know whether they were students in charge that day that got to do the special chores if they were the ones that had a little extra to do because they were acting up,” said Kishore.

“It’s all kinds of different feelings when you look at this.”

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The contractors were called in so that they could install new whiteboards, according to the school district.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” remarked Todd.

“We need to do some kind of preservation effort. We’re working with the school district now to try to come up with what that plan will be.”