Haunted Gym Haunts Others Too

This is the fifth and last true ghost tale until further freaky things
happen to me.

The Cuba High School gym affected two other coaches as well.
Coach "Stew" was the girls' basketball coach, and I was his
assistant. We came back from a tournament one night in the middle
of a little snowstorm. The bus pulled up in front of the gym lobby.
Coach Stew said he would walk around to the girls' locker room
and come through the gym to unlock the lobby doors and let us
in. This was back in the day when the players dressed up a little
bit for the games. They didn't want to go through the snow.

We gave him a few minutes, then went to wait by the glass lobby
doors for him to unlock the chain. I saw Coach Stew come out
of the gym door. He looked odd, a bit flustered. His eyes were
wide, and his hair kind of looked like it was standing up. I figured
it was the wind when he walked around. We went in. He wasn't
acting like himself, so I asked:

"What's the matter?"

"I'll tell you later. Let these girls get a ride."

Coach Stew paced around the lobby while the girls used the
payphone and left one by one. With only a couple girls left
down the hall by the phone, Coach Stew said:

"Come here." He pulled me off to the side, out of the girls' sight.
"Who did you let follow me through the locker room?"

"No one."

"Come on, I'm not mad. Was it "Shelley?"

"No. No one followed you. Those girls aren't going to walk
through snow in those shoes. We all stood by the doors waiting
for you to let us in. What's going on?"

"Are you sure? I walked out into that gym, and when I got about
halfway across, I heard someone following me. I thought it was
one of the girls trying to scare me. I stopped. They stopped. I
went on, and I heard it again. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I
threw my arm out and said 'Get out of here!' and swatted behind
me. There was no one there! Then I started running until I got to
the bleachers, and walked out here like nothing was going on. I
didn't want to scare the girls."

"I don't want to go through there."

"I don't want to go back through by myself. We've got to lock
this chain again after they leave."

"I'll stay and go with you, but we're going through together. And
I'm holding on to you!"

All the girls got picked up. Stew locked the chain, and we linked
elbows and entered the dark gym. We both kept talking and
walked as fast as we could with our arms linked. We made it
to the locker room, where it was not so creepy.

The next day, we told "Mark", the baseball coach, about the
incident.

"Hey, I've got one too. I come in here every morning to run laps
for an hour. I get here about 6:00, turn on the lights for my half
the gym, and run half-court laps. The other morning I saw "Leland"
(maintenance guy) up in the bleachers. He was going from one
end to the other, sweeping them off. I finished my workout around
7:00. Leland had been gone for about a half-hour. I walked around
a minute to cool down, and I saw him go by out in the hall. I walked
over to the door and yelled 'Hey, Lee, what were you doing here
so early?' And he said, 'Huh? I just got here.'"

That now concludes Hillbilly Mom's tales of the supernatural.