Description of Place: Containing sixty classrooms, a full auditorium, gymnasium and below-ground swimming pool area in the basement, the high school is a large three-story inner-city school teaching a full curriculum of subjects especially in singing, acting, dancing and music. The location is atop a basement of storage rooms, corridors and long tunnels with a first floor main office and faculty lounge. The school cafeteria is located behind the building.

Ghostly Manifestations: “The Gypsy Queen” is a very old, nearly forgotten and also a very haunted play. In the plot, the king leaves the queen to be with his mistress. The Queen takes poison after being spurned, and her ghost returns to take her revenge. Since it was first acted out in 1814 in the London Palladium, odd occurrences have followed wherever it has been depicted on stage. Odd accidents, even odder deaths, strange occurrences and unlikely incidents have followed it. In 1985, a student, Doris Schwartz, at the prestigious School For The Performing Arts found an old dusty script for the play in a forgotten closet and liked it enough that she wanted the star in its production without knowing about its reputation. Right from the start, things started to happen.

“Let’s see,” Schwartz now teaches drama at her old alma mater. “The first thing I recall happening occurred back stage as I was talking to one of my friends. I had tossed my jacket on to a chair to my right, but when I reached for it later, it had been moved to a chair by my left. I don’t even recall seeing it moved. It was just there one minute and then over there the next.”

Doris also recalls standing on stage talking with her teacher Lydia Grant about the play when they both had an over-powering urge to look up to backstage. As they did, they both noticed a strange girl in the shadows watching them. Obscured by the shadows, they could not recall much about her, but as they looked at other, she just suddenly vanished on them without a sound. She was just there one minute and gone the next.

Activity soon flared as Doris continued putting the play together. A stage light flared for a few seconds for several people watching despite being unplugged, odd music was starting to be heard all over the school, not just in the auditorium and started feeling icy hands touch them as they tried to learn lines. One evening as the school was being locked up, several extra chairs backstage were piled together in a corner out of the way, but as school started the next day, they were all discovered scattered in the hall from backstage leading out of the auditorium. As sets were being painted, someone left a pail of open paint out for too long and it ended up poured out over five feet from where it had been left. One girl had a brief scare by a costume on a rack of clothes that sailed out in front of her by itself.

Two students at the time, Danny Amatullo and Bruno Martelli also noticed the strange girl. Standing and talking one day, they noticed her walk past them in the empty hall, but as they looked up again, she was nowhere to be seen.

Another student, Leroy Johnson was told by Mrs. Grant to wait in the auditorium for her to return with scripts she left in a classroom. As he waited, he heard footsteps approaching and lifted his head to see if it was Mrs. Grant returning, but no one ever emerged. As he continued reading, an icy hand from nowhere forced him to jump out of his seat.

Gertrude Berg, one of the office staff, confessed to Mrs. Grant about being a little sensitive to psychic behavior and decided to help her find out what was suddenly going on in the school. With Doris Schwartz with them, they stood on the school stage as she reported feeling an active spirit. Somehow connected to the play, it seemed to be eager to communicate, but Mrs. Berg also reported that there was something Doris could do to help it. For some reason, Doris’s eyes, which had always been brown, turned out to be bright blue, and her face seemed to resemble that of someone else.

“Definitely,” Schwartz adds. “It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. For some reason, I mentioned the name Lisa, and I didn’t even know anyone with that name!”

Sometime later after finishing the play, activity died down, but not completely. On October 13, 1985, two girls, Cleo Hewett and Nicole Chapman, were in the ladies room outside the second floor entrance to the auditorium. There was one girl with them that they did not know just brushing her hair and staring into the mirror as they talked. Hewett and Chapman did what they had come to do as they exited and returned to class. Barely out of the restroom, they suddenly realized the other girl was actually floating above the floor and didn’t have any legs!

Today, the female phantom remains fleeting elusive, but even without her, the school tends to have its own presence. The location creaks at night and some students in the location at night feel an inexplicable swaying feeling as if the structure was reacting to the wind. In the library, some students feel as if they are being watched, while others feel a hand on them as if someone was trying to look over their shoulders.

In 2005, a teacher who prefers to remain anonymous described an experience whose solution continues to elude him. Though he was aware of the stories of the spirit, he didn't believe in it nor was he curious about it, but on this day in question, he was still in the school late one day after classes were over and before the school had locked up for the night. Engrossed in papers and unaware of the time, he was biding his time as the school started getting darker. It had been a bright sunny day in April, but storm clouds had made the school darker and custodians were turning the lights on earlier than usual. There were a few people still in the building, but he was not accompanied by any of them. Once he finished his tasks in the classroom, he commenced with departing. He laid out his papers on his desk in order and sequence, collected his other material in his case and took it with his coat on the way out of the school. He was not feeling rushed nor was he feeling bothered, but as he passed through the teacher's lounge for his messages, the sky opened up and the school was inundated with thousands of pellets of rain. Though it had been sunny that morning, he was now required to get his umbrella in the classroom, but as he returned to the room, he caught sight of a shadow passing over the interior side of the door to his room. He could not make it out through the plated glass, but someone had passed through the diminished light through the windows. He unlocked the door, stepped inside and looked for the errant custodian, but the room turned out to be empty.  

History: The school is rumored to be almost a hundred years old, possibly having been built around 1895 or earlier. New York City Mayor Fiorolla H. LaGuardia founded the current curriculum in 1936 in order to provide a facility where the most gifted and talented public school students of New York City could pursue their talents in art and music while also completing a comprehensive academic program of instruction. Opening for the first time in 1948 in the heart of the theatre district, the school offers intense studio training in instrumental music, drama and dance as a vocational program with a strong academic component. Over the years, it has earned an international reputation for excellence. The accomplishments of the graduates serve as the most vivid proof of the value and worth in specialized programs of instruction. Its alumni have distinguished themselves in virtually every field of endeavor.

Identity of Ghosts: Many believe the ghost is Lisa Danielle, a student who attended the school in 1918 long before it became the school for the performing arts it is today. In fact, many of the students know her legend and like to talk frankly of their encounters with her.

In the winter of 1918, Lisa and her drama club were getting ready to do “The Gypsy Queen.” Lisa had the starring role, but while the play was in rehearsals she became sick and was taken to the hospital with a bad fever. She left the hospital unsupervised on February 11 to head to her rehearsals and was found unconscious in her costume in the school dressing room. She died February 18, 1918.

“I think she died still wanting to the play.” Schwartz remarked in 1987. “She left this world with one thing unfulfilled, and she’s not leaving until she gets the happiness she so wanted in life.”

Comments: Fame (Episode “Lisa’s Song”) - Hauntings based on Manhattan State College in Manhattan, Kansas and assorted cases such as Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and Morton College in Cicero, Illinois. -Architecture and the school history based upon the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in New York City.