Every high school is known for some infamous incident that becomes ingrained in its history. The story is passed down by the students through the generations and its memory lives forever. From outrageous pranks to unexpected reveals, here are some of the most insane events students have witnessed at their high schools:
#1 The Group Photo
When I was in high school, our hick town school had a “gang” called the Cobras who would spray paint “Cobras” on school property, write it on desks, in the bathrooms, basically everywhere. It’s was dumb and many of the students had a good idea who was a part of this “gang,” but the teachers didn’t. Anyway, for the yearbook every year, the principal would use the announcement system to call for individual groups like the sports teams or drama club to have their group pics taken. This happened throughout the year.
One day, they called down the Cobras for a school photo for the yearbook, to try and figure out who they were. They caught almost half the students who were defacing school property because they actually were dumb enough to show up for the “group photo.”
#2 The Fatal Stunt
One of the students ditched his classes one day and rode his dirt bike really fast in front of the school, popping a wheely while the school was still in session. He wiped out and slid, then later hit his head on a light pole. He lost his life right in front of the school across the street. Really sad and super crazy. This was in Bakersfield California. It's crazy how many other places this has happened. Also, no helmet was involved that I'm aware of. The pole received all kinds of attention after. People wrote notes on it, left flowers and lighters and so on. It was really weird. I wouldn't want to be remembered by what ended me, but I think a lot of students didn't have anywhere else to mourn him.
#3 Something In The Water
A dude popped a wheelie on his motorcycle, just hauling across the parking lot before school one morning when a girl backed her car out. He hit it and was launched a solid 30 yards. He hit another car headfirst and didn't make it in the ambulance. The other high school that opened after I graduated had two kids' lives taken by fellow students in two separate incidents within a year. Must be something in the water on that side of town.
#4 Gotta Love Democracy
The principal found suspicious substances in the boys' bathroom. We got called to an assembly were told we had to vote for who we thought was responsible. I think the principal's son got like 98% of the votes. Suddenly, the voting system wasn't valid. We didn't even coordinate it, everyone had the same idea at once and it was glorious.
#5 Wrong Day To Go Commando
During senior year, we received our yearbooks and to our surprise, the full page action shot for men's soccer showcased our player jumping up and lifting one leg to trap and control the ball. Unfortunately, he forgot to wear underwear that game he had a fully visible mishap out of the bottom of his shorts. Our school had over 4,000 students and we were required to bring our yearbook into security to have the mishap Sharpied over or we would not be able to walk at graduation.
#6 Good Riddance
There had been rumors since my freshman year about the assistant principal taking a "special interest" in a few of the girls. Almost everyone wrote it off as high school kids starting stupid rumors... until my senior year. Four police officers came in after school and walked him out in cuffs in front of a few hundred students watching a basketball game against another school. He was secretly seeing one of the girls in my grade. He got 10 years in prison.
#7 Speak Up Now
Teenagers must be protected from themselves! Three years ago, in my sophomore year, the middle school counselor revealed he was in love with me. In my 17-year-old mind, I thought it was okay. He invited me multiple times to his house to watch movies. I always backed out because something didn't feel quite right. That's when an adult should've protected me. To this day, I never reported him but I wonder if I'm putting other teenagers at risk when he is still a school counselor.
#8 Wrong Information
We were all called to an emergency assembly and was told a student had passed away... Her friends were distraught and even the people who didn't know her went quiet. I think I remember a group of students putting together a type of memorial card. The whole morning was morbid... Until the 'dead girl' arrived at school and didn't know what was going on.
#9 Ghost Sighting
During my sophomore year of high school, I was on spring break with my family and we went out of state to a condo for the week. Great trip, I recommend Virginia to anyone looking for a scenic getaway. When we got back from that vacation and I went to school the next Monday, EVERYONE was staring at me like they saw a ghost. I was an introvert in a public school of about 1,200 kids so it was unnerving.
I had girls and guys running up and hugging me, saying they were so glad I was okay, and many of them I didn't really talk to. I was so confused. I came to find out in the next town over there was a kid who was struck by a car while we were gone on spring break. His name was identical to mine, except for one letter in his last name. So everyone who saw it naturally assumed they spelled the name wrong because that spelling was a very common mistake with my name.
#10 Free Brownie Points
I'm a kid of divorce so I always left town to hang with my pops all summer. One year, I left town a couple of days before the school year ended because of some family reunion trip. I came back at the end of summer to bizarre rumored mythology about me. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, I had spent the summer in jail for a criminal charge, as far as everyone in the school was concerned. I was 14 and weighed maybe 80 lbs but I was the new resident rebel at school somehow. Kids are weird.
#11 An Unfair Fate
We had a teacher who was super nice. She was out for three days and we didn't question it much until she wasn't there again for the next week. It turned out, her husband ended her. It was so quiet the next few months for that class we didn't really know how to process it. He's in prison and kids with the grandparents last I read. Quite sad. No one deserves to undergo a fate like that.
#12 Swept Under The Rug
A guy went into the locker room during gym class and went #2 into another guy's backpack. This happened in a German school in 2014 or 2015. The guy didn't face any consequences, although almost everyone knew who did it. Our principal pretty much was like, "Yeah... let's not talk about this." The story also spread like a wildfire in our town and I had friends from different schools text me about it before I even came home that day.
#13 Against All Odds
During lunch, if you picked up trash and turned it into the yard attendant, you would get a dime per piece. One kid did it religiously, every lunch, and was tormented and bullied the whole time. Kids would knock the trash out of his hands, push him over when he picked it up, call him all sorts of names... they were relentless. Then, in junior year, he bought a '66 Mustang. Not an incident really, but I still have respect for that kid.
#14 On Lockdown
Someone called in a threat to my middle school and elementary school. Instead of evacuating both buildings, we were in lockdown for three hours and they condensed all of us in the middle. We later evacuated to the high school only like 300 feet away and we were stuck there for hours because our parents couldn't get to us. All of our phones were taken because they "didn't want us giving information" so there were like 700 white moms in suburbs simultaneously having a heart attack trying to get to the school.
#15 The Life-Changing Prank
This kid was doing pull-ups on a door frame in our woodshop and some of his friends thought it would be funny to place a pipe bender under him. When he finished his pull-ups and dropped off the frame, you could just imagine what happened next. The kid didn't graduate cause he spent so much time in the ER and now he has to live with a colonoscopy bag.
#16 The Senior Project
At my high school, seniors had to do a senior project. It could be anything really. We just had to plan it out and follow through. A very popular and well-liked senior made an end-of-day announcement that the next morning he'd be in the student parking lot working on it and he needed as many other folks there as possible.
The next day, he drove into the student parking lot and set up a tripod and a camera. A large crowd gathered round, just about 30 mins before the first bell. He hit record, thanked everyone for showing. Then called 911 and confessed to a grave crime. They arrested him in front of everyone. No one knows why. He was a great guy with a bright future. Never know what struggles others are going through. I think about it frequently and take that into consideration to try and be nice to others with random acts of kindness.
#17 Pepper Spray Prank
A couple of the boys who were rougher around the edges decided to bring pepper spray to school. We all had to line up at the doors on either end of the building before school started and then we'd all be let in at once. Well, the kids thought it'd be a great idea to pepper spray everyone lined up at the door. That hurt man. Then, one of them pepper sprayed himself so that he would seem like an innocent bystander—It didn't work out for him.
#18 Free Parham
A football player with the last name "Parham" got punished for some prank and was no longer allowed to walk the stage for graduation. One day, a friend of his pulled up in a truck outside of the cafeteria during lunch, slammed on the brakes, jumped out, and proceeded to sprint inside. He streaked through half the cafeteria with a Spiderman mask on and “Free Parham” painted on his bare bum. The staff tried to grab him and stop him, and despite him literally slipping on a piece of food and falling, he escaped valiantly, as any hero should. Eventually, Parham was once again allowed to walk the stage, although I’m sure the stunt wasn’t the only reason for it.
#19 Fork Frenzy
Someone threw a fork. It hit some 12-year-old girl and got stuck in her head. Luckily for her, scar-wise it was in the back of her head, but it was definitely stuck in there good. And she screamed the place down... I can't blame her, it was a completely random fork. And this happened in the UK so I had metal cutlery in primary school too.
#20 The School Scare
Someone found a dangerous item campus along with three or four posts on social media about a threat to the school. One of them actually caused a lockdown during class because the suspected student was across the street from the school, according to someone who supposedly got on the police radio. They never revealed the whole story to try to reduce rumors from spreading, but that just led to more rumors. It was pretty funny.
#21 A Raunchy Christmas
Some boys in the saxophone section of the marching band made a Christmas card featuring them nude except for Santa hats and their sax covering their parts. They distributed the card to the whole band, which at our school was a pretty large number of people. The school tried to confiscate them for being lewd but of course, they couldn't get them all. Besides, people had camera phones and Facebook.
#22 The Pit
My high school had a decade-themed talent show every year. They would do it in our auditorium which had an orchestra pit underneath part of the stage. Close to the end of the show, a lot of people went out on the stage and started dancing, and the stage collapsed. Only a couple of people were hurt, but one of my friends broke his pelvis and had to be in a wheelchair for a while. It must have been a slow day for the news because it made all the way to the BBC, and Tosh.O did a bit on it.
#23 The Legendary Deuce
Someone took a massive #2 in the boys' bathroom. Like huge. Like so big that there is still a debate about whether or not it was actually human or if it was smuggled in somehow. The incident was so notable that everyone from my Consumer EC class got up individually to go to the bathroom and drop their jaw in awe at the absolute spectacle. Multiple jokes were made about it at school events and to this day no one knows who did it.
#24 Special Pringles
A kid in the year above decided, mid-ICT lesson, that he needed to drop the kids off. The teacher wouldn’t let him go so he decided to move to the back of the classroom and proceeded to go #2 in an empty Pringles can. He then went around offering out “Pringles” to people. One kid stuck his hand in blind and got wrecked. The kid was unsurprisingly ticked off and threw his hands at the kid who had the can. There was a whole fight and the whole room had to be industrially cleaned. Even after that, it still stank in there.
#25 Undercover Sting
We had an undercover cop posing as a student for six months. He busted a variety of students who were dealing. I tried searching for news articles about it and apparently it's a common sting operation they do in SoCal schools around LA, San Diego, and surrounding districts. The police officer they picked for the operation was a really convincing actually.
#26 A Senseless Tragedy
Ours was a sad one. Our boys' basketball team was traveling home from a game in inclement weather. The van caught some slush and lost control into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer. The coach was driving and survived. He lost his wife and seven students. It was a very sad tragedy and every year my school holds a memorial for them.
#27 The Lenient '90s
Someone I knew tried to call in a threat from a payphone during finals week. This was in the '90s and nobody took him seriously. The school found out who it was and suspended him for a couple of days. I'd imagine now the school would go on lockdown, or just close and not let any students in, since he did it early in the morning. The kid would probably end up getting arrested by a SWAT team with a specialist squad nearby. It would cost the city a fortune, he'd get jailed, or at least expelled, and his life would be ruined.
#28 Fire Alarm Bandit
Yeah, we had a rash of fire alarms in my junior year. The principal pleaded for them to stop. One weekend, the school re-did all the alarms with that ink that sprays whoever pulls it. The dude got nailed. He was charged with a serious crime because he foolishly admitted to pulling like 10 alarms. He spent his Christmas at juvenile hall and was charged a crazy amount of money for wasting city resources.
#29 Donut Detour
So this happened yesterday and it was pretty wild for a Canadian school. At the end of the day, there was a police car at the front of the school. Someone said they saw a kid get arrested when they went to the washroom. At the end of the day, a cop and the principal were standing at both back passenger windows talking to someone inside. We all just assumed that someone was getting arrested for dealing or something.
The next day, my homeroom teacher told us between the 3rd and 4th period (the two afternoon periods in Canada) that a former student who was about 20 years old blended in with students and snuck into the school hallways. He wandered through the hallways stealing from unlocked lockers and he actually stole about 10 laptops from teachers' classrooms somehow.
They ended up catching him at the Tim Horton’s down the road. Not sure what’s gonna happen to him but someone said his mom was his getaway vehicle a couple of blocks down the road. He just had to stop at Timmy’s first. Only in Canada do people have to stop for a coffee and a donut mid robbery.
#30 Washroom Catfight
Two girls were fighting over a boy. They were in the bathroom, in the same stall. While they were fighting, one of the girls got poked in the eye. The girl who poked her was expelled and the other girl turned out to be just fine. She went back to school like everything was normal. The creepy part was, my classroom was the closest one to the bathroom and we didn't hear anything. We just saw the cops. It creeps me out to think it happened a couple of feet away from me.
#31 An Unforgettable Field Trip
In my junior year, they took a group of us on a college visit. We had some time to explore the campus on our own. Two girls ended up at the frat house. When it was time to leave, they were nowhere to be found. They finally came to the bus about 45 minutes late, completely tipsy. They apparently got intimate with guys at the frat house and one of them ended up pregnant from it. The family sued the school but settled out of court.
#32 The Suspicious Package
There was a "suspicious package" dropped off at my elementary school the year after I graduated. The entire elementary school (a total of 600 kids) was evacuated and then crammed into the gym of the middle school next door (which I attended). Turns out the package was not a dangerous object, though I don’t think the public ever found out what was really inside. Thankfully, the school took the threat seriously and no one got hurt.
#33 Soccer Practice
The news never found out, but the middle school gym teacher once held soccer practice and separated kids by their races and then made them play each other. A few other students were actually the ones who reported it, and he got into big trouble. But he was never fired, and he’s still there. In fact, he’s trying to become a vice principal right now. The high school next door made national news for having three dangerous objects on campus in the span of two months. Now every high school in the district has metal detectors.
#34 You're Fired
You might’ve seen this one on CNN, as it only happened a few months ago. A special-ed teacher at my middle school dragged a kid down the hallway, causing him to have bruises on his arms and legs. It was insane because I actually know the teacher who did it, and it was very bizarre to watch the news clip because I had been in that hallway dozens of times.
#35 The Bourbon Barrels
At my elementary school (different from any of the ones previously mentioned), the principal’s husband was arrested after stealing several bourbon barrels. It was a massive heist. The principal never got into any trouble, but most parents are pretty sure she likely knew about the four bourbon barrels that were just sitting in her basement.
#36 A Terrifying Moment
My school was placed on heightened alert during my fifth-grade year. Not a full lockdown, but students weren’t allowed to leave the building. Naturally, this happened right at dismissal, so the head principals were rushing everybody back in as quickly as they could. I was at the front door, which made it even more terrifying. Turns out there was a teenager on campus with a dangerous object. After that, my school was placed on heightened alert dozens of times, but it was never super dramatic since they normally didn’t tell the kids.
#37 Moose Mayhem
This happened in grade school but a moose escaped a local zoo and somehow made its way to our schoolyard during our recess. We were all rushed inside and the school was put into a lockdown situation until the moose left the yard. Take one guess at what country I’m from... Anyone who guessed Canada is right, I feel like there’s nothing more Canadian than almost getting mowed down by a moose.
#38 The Cursed Year
The gym cooling system overheated and caught on fire, during the Homecoming Parade. That and state police had to show up two years ago after an increase of freshman fights in the cafeteria. It got to the point to where there were some rumors that school security had to use a taser on one of the kids after a fight to subdue and our football team had to cancel a home game (and concede) over potential threats. It was a cursed junior year.
#39 Unholy Actions
I went to a Catholic high school. The chapel was on the basement level so it was very secluded and always left unlocked so students could go pray (though no one ever did). One day, a couple of students went in there to fool around on the altar. The chapel was locked after that. We had a lot of other incidents but that was the one we can laugh about.
#40 The Clever Play
I went to a private school where you weren't allowed to have your phone on you. One day, the vice-principal burst into a classroom and said in a panic: "Quick, I need to use someone's phone!" 10 kids got detention and their phones were confiscated. Screw you, Mr. Kiefer. Though I have to give it to him, that was pretty freaking clever.
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#41 Three Strikes
It was the last day for the senior class. There were only two significant pranks that day. The principal's office was filled with balloons and glitter, and the main hallway entrance was saran wrapped. About an hour before the day ended, the principal came over the loudspeaker and said that anyone caught participating in a prank would not walk at the graduation ceremony. About a minute after he said this, the fire alarm went off. A guy who was near the principal said that he got angry and said out loud: "Someone's not walking" before storming off. An entire wing of the school was hazy and there was fog pouring out of a classroom. Turns out, the science teacher was doing a laser experiment for his class and created too much fog with a fog machine.
#42 Chill Out, Dude
The science teacher was notorious for putting kids in their place "in a fun way." He would body chuck students in the hallways, dump kids in the garbage cans, and one time, there was a particularly annoying dude in the class who he tied up with an extension cord and locked in the storage closet in the classroom. Pretty sure he is still working at that school but I know he was told to chill out.
#43 The Missing Ring
Jostens (they make rings and yearbooks) were on campus to sell us our class rings. They had a Chicago Bears Super Bowl ring along with other famous rings they made. Somebody stole the Super Bowl ring. We were all called into an assembly to find the ring (the Jostens guy was close to tears). The ring was eventually “found” in the hallway after the assembly was let out.
#44 Just Messed Up
We had a teacher arrested for being tipsy and attacking a student. Someone in the faculty had stolen like 50 thousand dollars from the district. We had a couple of teachers sent to tolerance training for bullying a transgender student ( who was a really cool dude with a hard life). Yeah, my school was all sorts of messed up, honestly.
#45 Three Lives Taken
My grade lost three students. During my sophomore year, a boy was in the passenger side of a truck leaving a party. The truck was T-boned by a tipsy driver and he didn't make it. In junior year, within days of each other, a boy jumped out of the back of the bus in an attempt to skip school and go to the beach. He passed away days later in the hospital. A few guys skipped school to go dirt biking. One of the guys crashed without a helmet and lost his life in his best friend's arms. The entire time I was in high school only three students at our school passed away, and all were in my grade level. I cried watching their parents accept their diplomas at graduation.
#46 High Tension
Back in middle school, someone got taken to court for bringing drinks to school in water bottles and then selling it to other students (seventh grade). There was also the “crazy British kid” who got suspended after saying he’d end the school (also seventh grade). He apparently came back to the school a few months later, but I never met him. On the topic of violence, we also had several anonymous threats left in the Spanish classroom throughout my eighth-grade year.
#47 Fight Club
We had a fight club that made front-page news when someone added a newspaper reporter to the private Facebook group. The police showed up to the next fight, everyone scattered, and a kid got hit by a bus while running across the street. We got a new crossing light installed in the middle of the block the next semester. The kid ended up being fine, but he was enough of a jerk that no one really felt too bad about his two broken legs.
#48 A Yellow Mess
Banana man. Literally, a guy ran across the field during the middle of the homecoming football game in a banana suit. The fallout (and I’m not making a word of this up) was a “zero-tolerance policy” for talking about the event, bananas themselves, and LITERALLY THE FREAKING COLOR YELLOW. It was the most glorious mess I have ever witnessed.
#49 VHS Evidence
One of our history teachers tried to put in a video about economics on to watch. All of a sudden all that showed up was two guys wrestling at our school gym where no one usually records. He isn't even the coach or anything. He then went on to say, "Oh, that's Dr. King's video!" trying to cover up the fact he had a video of two male wrestlers sitting on his desk for no reason. And no, Dr. King was not happy about being falsely accused.
#50 The Pool Incident
There was a special-ed kid who drowned in my swim class. None of the caretakers kept an eye on him and he drifted into the deep end. No one saw him until the lifeguard had to dive in and get him. From what I know, the lifeguard was fired; I can't say if the caretakers were fired too. Having journalists find us outside the school by the park and asking us questions about what happened was worse than seeing the kid being pulled out of the pool.
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