The Screaming Girl of Treem Elementary
Students don’t like going to a particular bathroom at Treem Elementary School in Henderson, NV. It’s not just seeing the white-faced girl, although that’s bad enough. It’s the screaming.
The Facebook page for Harriet A. Treem Elementary is filled with pictures of happy teachers and enthusiastic kids sitting criss-cross-applesauce in brightly colored classrooms. Located between the Whitney Mesa nature preserve and the Las Vegas wash, Treem Elementary is a cheery, inviting place where teachers work hard to help kids learn.
Nevertheless, some students don’t like going to one of the bathrooms there. It has a creepy feeling. It gets to them.
Songs and Shadows
The bathroom is cold. Even in the Las Vegas area where the August temperature sails past 105 degrees every day and it never rains, the bathroom seems cold beyond the power of air conditioning. The students noticed that their voices echoed, and the windows seemed to have reflections in them, reflections that disappeared just as you turned to look.
When Stefani heard singing in the girls’ bathroom, she didn’t think anything of it, at least not at first. She went into the bathroom and looked around. Toilets, the swinging doors of stalls, the silence of dry sinks — that was all.
As Stefani left, she saw a child’s shadow behind her, but when she whipped around, she saw no one. There were only shadows.
Help Me!
They say the little girl waits for the school to be empty. That’s when you see her. White-faced, framed by the window, the little girl seems to glow. Then she screams for help.
She wants you to help her.
Some area residents and students say the little girl died in the third or fourth bathroom stall. She needed help, and now she screams for it from the window or from the hallways. It’s rumored that the janitors see the girl’s ghost all the time, and that some of them have finally given up. They still hear her scream, but when they do, they shake their head and put in earphones. They know it’s too late to help her now.
Ghosts of the Pioneer Past
Most of the time, the little girl is wearing pioneer attire. Treem Elementary was built long after the Paiutes first settled in the valley and the Mormons built a mission there in the late 1800s. Still, as one of Vegas’ haunted places, Treem Elementary’s location near the wetlands is intriguing, The wetlands were the area’s lifeblood in the days when Vegas was one of the territory’s few watering holes on the way to California.
Did the girl die near the water? Did she die in the school bathroom? Could her ghost have been haunting that corner of Las Vegas long ago, a casualty of a pioneer disaster? No one knows, and the little girl who haunts Treem Elementary cannot say.
She can only scream.
