CHEYENNE — Olivia Hamilton jokes about the ghost haunting Deming Elementary School had strict rules about what she could listen to while cleaning.
Cussing, sex, drugs, alcohol — anything inappropriate for “tiny ears” — and her phone would pause, she said.
“We joked that he took it very seriously,” Hamilton told Cowboy State Daily. “It was like, ‘Oh man, he’s not OK with cuss words. He’s not OK with scary stuff.’”
Hamilton was a custodian from 2020 to 2025 at the now-shuttered school at 715 W. Fifth Ave. in Cheyenne. She said the phone interruptions happened nowhere else and even grew worse after she replaced her phone.
Hamilton first learned the school might be haunted during her first year as a custodian, after overhearing the principal complain about all the paranormal investigators calling the school.
“She was irritated, like ‘God, they keep calling,’” Hamilton recalled. “And I was like, ‘Who are you talking about?’ She’s like, ‘Paranormal investigators from Louisiana and Colorado.’”
That sent Hamilton online to learn more.
She found stories claiming a man, possibly the janitor, had died in the school’s boiler room within a few years of the school’s construction in 1945. She could not find the man’s name or an explanation of how he died.
According to local legend, people peering into the school’s windows late at night might see more than just their own reflection. They might also see the ghostly shadow of the janitor who allegedly was killed at the school, standing right beside them.
“People said if you tapped the window he would tap back,” Hamilton said. “I would avoid looking out the windows because I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to see anybody.’”
Heavy Steps, Empty Stage
Hamilton was often the first person in the building and the last one out at night.
One thing she noticed from the start was how creepy the building felt once the sun started setting.
It didn’t help that at night she could sometimes hear a sound like a basketball bouncing in the boys bathroom.
Hamilton figured that was probably just the loud boilers clicking away.
But during a summer boiler replacement and asbestos-abatement project, something else happened that was much harder for her to explain away.
She arrived at about 6 a.m. to move cleaning equipment out of the construction crew’s way. As she shifted the equipment into the gym, she heard what sounded like heavy boots landing on the stage.
“It’s one of those old stages where you can hear like ‘thunk,’ because it’s hollow underneath,” she said. “So I could hear like footsteps on the stage.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw a man wearing a flannel shirt and jeans.
“I saw him from the back and I could just tell that he was starting to bald on the top and he had brown hair around the sides,” she said.
She turned to greet what she thought was a construction worker.
“I’m like ‘Hey, I was just getting some of the stuff out of your guys’ way …’” she recalled.
But as she faced the stage, she realized no one was actually there.
“I’m like looking around and there’s nobody at all in the building,” she said.
Hamilton finished moving the equipment as fast as she could, then left to find work in a different building.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m spending the day somewhere else,’” she said.
A Strange Shape In The Water
The boiler room at Deming grew less creepy once the original boiler was replaced, Hamilton said.
“It was like the original boiler from whenever the school was built,” Hamilton said.
Before its replacement, Hamilton photographed a leak she found particularly strange.
Water had run from the back of the boiler around to the front, forming what looked to her like the outline of a man’s head and shoulders.
“I had just gone downstairs and was like, ‘Why is it so humid in here?’” she said. “And then I turn and look and I was like, ‘That’s a lot of water. And that’s a weird shape.’”
What puzzled her was the route the water had taken to reach the drain.
“The drain was literally a straight shot,” she said. “There’s no reason it should have had that movement.”
Miller’s Little Ghost Girl
Hamilton also described an encounter at nearby Miller School, which shared staff with Deming. She sometimes filled in there when its custodian was away.
It was the beginning of a school year and Hamilton was standing in the library talking to friends. From the corner of her eye, she saw a girl with pigtails and bangs zip between them into the library.
“Oh my God, did you see that kid?!” she asked one of her friends.
“And they’re like, ‘What kid?’ But one of my other friends, Madori (Presley), was there and she was like, ‘Yep, I seen her.’”
Hamilton said she and Presley didn’t even look down at the time because they already knew no child was actually there.
“It was really weird,” she said. “It was kind of just her hair. Like I saw her hair and the motion and I could tell it was a little girl.”
A Guardian Spirit
Presley told Cowboy State Daily she has always sensed a presence at Deming, one that led to the boiler room.
“I could always tell it was an older man, like in his 40s or 50s,” she said. “It felt like maybe he died unexpectedly like from a heart attack or something.”
To Presley, the spirit feels like a guardian.
“He definitely watches over the building,” she said. “He doesn’t always like when the kids are super loud, but he did like having kids there. And you could tell that he just watched over, to make sure the adults were doing what they were supposed to.”
Some of the students asked questions about the building and seemed to understand it might be haunted, Presley added.
“As teachers, we always had to play it off, you know, ‘No, that’s not true. That’s just stuff people are saying,’” she said. “We never played into it. But there was just a definite energy and a shift when you’d go to that side of the building.”
Presley wonders what’s happening now that Deming has been closed, and there are no more children or teachers roaming the halls.
“Is there more energy?” she said. “Are there more things that he’s doing or not doing?”
Last Set Of Footsteps
A kindergarten teacher Hamilton worked with also reported strange experiences at Deming, she said.
“The kindergarten room has its own little bathroom,” Hamilton said. “And she said there were a couple of times when she was there at night where the water in the sink in the bathroom just turned itself on.”
The faucet had a lever that had to be lifted to turn on the water.
“She went in there, thinking it was leaking,” Hamilton said. “It wasn’t leaking. It was turned on.”
On one of her last days at Deming, Hamilton was standing near the office where the entrance hallway met the corridor.
She heard, “Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk…”
“As I turned, I felt the wind, like someone going past me, but there was nobody around me,” she said.
There were people in the office, Hamilton said, but no maintenance workers in the hallway.
She looked for someone wearing work boots or anything that might explain what she was hearing.
No one was there.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
