What scary shit can I throw at my players who will be exploring a school?

What scary shit can I throw at my players who will be exploring a school?

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The guys that bullied them back then.

Make them run into girls who were bullied becasue they looked ugly butsaid girls all looks deformed and have badly stitched together faces whenever they meet a player they will say "DO I LOOK PRETTY PLEASE TELL ME I LOOK PRETTY" and if one of your players say she isant the bitch goes crazy with "WHAT ARE TALKING ABOUT YOUR THE UGLY ONE"

A skeleton
or
A 4'2" plastic skeleton from the biology classroom

Two +60 years old faculty members having sex.

Make them relive their worst moments in highschool

plastic skeletons are weak, fuck those models with their spines cut out

It's empty. Deserted. Like everyone disappeared mid-step. Clothes and backpacks still at desks in little piles and in the hallways. They occasionally hear kids around corners or singing in the classrooms. Then one of the player characters manages to trap a kid in the hallway. The kid turns around and she has no facial features, and begins screaming. The hallways and classrooms now reveal details. Where clothes and backpacks were are now evidence of mass slaughter and scrabbling noises can be heard coming closer and closer. Monsters start patrolling the hallway with distended hanging mouths. The doers refuse to open and looking out the windows only reveals blackness with shadows you swear move.
A.K.A. Ramp it up slowly. Like a thousand child souls are trapped there along with the faculty and they make a game of playing with visitors

Isn't Corpse Party about escaping from a haunted school?

Lockers filled with something unusual. Blood, bugs, guts, dolls-eyes, etc.

A trophy case where, if they check the actual plaques and trophies, feature trophies for horrific events. 'Grandchampion of the Cannibal Eating Contest, 1956.'

Anything that doesn't stay static. Have them encounter the janitor a couple times. His office is never in the same place. If they run into a teacher or security guard, they swear up and down there is no janitor.

Computers that flicker and show messages in the scrolling text screensavers - 'LET US OUT' 'HE'S KEEPING US IN THE BASEMENT' etc.

A shadow that flickers across the bottom of the pool.

Send them to the principal's office at one point. There's a line of kids waiting outside. They wait for their appointment, witness kids going in. No kids leave. Their time comes up, they're ushered in, and no kids are in evidence in the office, there are no other exits.

Alternatively, shit. Just shit everywhere.

Smears that look like blood but are actually found to be shit upon further inspection make for a great aesthetic.

Use these kinds of lamp posts in your descriptions.

A mix of orange, yellow, brown, and small amounts of red are a good color scheme.

Spots in the grass where the light doesn't shine are sometimes bottomless holes.

Paedophile teachers.

Haha, I've been running a horror campaign in a school, the afterschool activities homebrew. For me, I'm having hem see freaky shit on chalkboards, have kids painted on the walls by an older art class suddenly become mutiliated while staring at them, and had lockers rattle wildly while they were nearby. Eventually I'm going to use the PA system to broadcast spooky songs (relevant, yes) and have them see even freakier shit while their wakefulness is low.

If your in to background music then start the session with some smooth jams before shit gets creepy. Adjust as fuckery begins.

youtu.be/RCJ8qeMiQac

Parts of the campus are in different times of day.

The night parts seem orderly but with the usual ghost-like horror.

The day part is tinted like a faded photo and everything is trashed without explanation. Things are hard to focus on, almost like everything is blurry, or at least some of the time.

Either have sections stuck in their time permanently, or have each room have two "forms." Each time they enter an area, decide whether they're walking into the "day" or "night" phase of that room.

Imagine a prison you're forced to go into. Not doing so will risk your family and society and large becoming dissasociated from you. They'll want nothing to do with you.

So you go. You don't know what hideous crime you committed to get sent to this place, and even if you do know there's nothing you could have done to prevent it, as "being a kid" is apparently reason enough to send you to that hell.

You arrive. The smell and the noise are physical forces that assault you from all directions. Beneath the artificial cheer the place and it's unfortunate inhabitants exude there's still the very real haunting dread, fear and hopelessness. You start to echo these feelings internally.

Your father, mother or other figure of authority you respected and trusted with protecting you from harm left you there. Alone. In an environment designed to break you. To DESTROY you. What kind of people would do that? To THEIR OWN BLOOD?

Class starts. This adult figure drones on and on in a tired voice about things s/he says "will be useful in your adult life", yet have never seen your own parents doing at any point of your life. "Drones" is the correct word, as his/her eyes show no signs of life. Some of the older students you see sport the same look. You wonder if you too will, in time.

Class ends. You're free! Except you aren't, as this is called a "recess". The inmates run the asylum now, and it's survival of the fittest in a free for all. You quickly realize the school has only its own best interests in mind, and you are a distant concern. Class starts again. The cycle continues for hours.

Class ends, for real this time. Day 1 out of thousands. Good luck.

Vicious packs of feral children with a penchant for bullying

...

...

...

Is this supposed to freak me out? It's clearly too pink to be blood.

Fake perception rolls.

human parts being served at cafeteria

Came here to say that

Actual school work.

In one of the lockers, they find a detached arm, starting from the shoulder, slumped between two books, if the books or arm move or are dropped, the arm will land straight up, looking like the raised hand of a student.

A quiz.

Calculus. So basically literally hit them with GURPS books.

this

Put the focus on how shitty the school was BEFORE it was a ruined fuck-hole. Like, stress how the "post-Columbine" designs on the doors and the narrow window slits were designed to counteract all those many, many school shootings...

Homework.

Put on creepy hallway music, like water dripping in an abandoned school, with the occasional "almost sound." Then occasionally have one particular player roll a listen check. They hear nothing. Then, every few hours, that same presence becomes more present, more frequent. You really have to be subtle about it. Then during another encounter, have them roll listen checks. That half sound they thought they heard? Well it's there now. And it's getting closer. Ideally, your players will feel rushed to finish their encounter to get away. Just keep them running, and don't have them face the threat. Make it CLEAR that they CAN'T WIN IF THEY FIGHT IT. But don't ever let them see it. They can know it's there, but trust me, their imagination is far more terrifying than anything you could come up with.

Also, throughout the night talk about the strange smells players pick up. Maybe consider lighting some incense whenever the creature is close, but don't tell your players it's close. The smart players will pick up on the pattern. And when you quietly light incense while the party is figuring out what to do, those smart players might get anxious. That anxiety might spread to the others.

And be ABSOLUTELY SURE to keep that ambient noise on in the background the whole time.

Classroom pet cages empty if they pass them a second time - some with a shrill screeching and blood or eviscerated remains, others with the wrenching sound and bars bent outward.

My own school had a number of pickled cats in vacuum-sealed bags in a trash can ready for dissection in our Anatomy class. Put that in there, but have them yowling and struggling to get out while gasping for breath.

Oooo this is a good one

>have to go to a bathroom
>to do so you need the bathroom key
>which is locked behind half-a-dozen nonsensical puzzles that require you to do stuff like cutting open an taxidermed cat to get a ceremonial coin needed to complete the coin collection in principle's office so that you can unlock the secret compartment that holds tinned bull testicles needed to unlock the the bathroom key's holding cells door

this

Their first crush.

But she's in love with math itself.

the most terrifying thing of all time, THE MODERN EDUCATION SYSTEM ~OoOoOoOoOo~

...

>you see a common core math book
>50d100 SAN dmg

Ok, so tension is one way to really work with horror, but another is mechanics.

What you need to do is to fuck with your players mechanically in order to create tension. This is easier for really getting under your players skin, but much harder to execute effectively without actively angering them.

System dependent of course, but most commonly, what you want to do is fuck with their resources. You don't want to destroy theim, but you do want to fuck with them.

My old go to for D&D was what I called healing spiders. The basic gist was that they were spiders that fed off positive energy in addition to blood, and most commonly obtained it by burrowing into the skin of adventurers.

I'd have the characters get infected with one by sleeping, or just getting bit, or something random, basically unnoticeable.

Then, the next time the characters finished a fight and the cleric was healing them, the spiders would feed. They wouldn't suck up all the energy, just a bit of it, basically 1 hit, just a little bit. Then you follow it up with a description of their skin withering, something to really fuck with them.

Now you're hitting players right where it hurts. You're fucking with their main resource(healing), which always get a reaction. You don't want to cripple them though, because that's going to destroy their immersion. And some good description should seal the deal, really get them jittery about what could happen next, what else you have planned.

The balance is the same as a good horror game: you want the players to fear death constantly, but you never want to actually inflict that death on them.

A secret abandoned indoor pool, blocked off by a book shelf.

Children

Spread some rumors about a haunted multimidia room or some shit.

When the players get in there, have them try to watch some old tapes on the cassette for plot reasons.

The video seems to be of an oddly familiar hallway - yes, the hallway just outside of the multimidia room! And it looks exactly the same. They can even see the light of the TV from outside.

Whatever is carrying the camera seems to be taking its time walking towards the room.

They can hear the footsteps outside.

>implying school is a bad thing
sure most education systems are not good enough but the basic idea is sound

Standardized testing

Pop quizzes

Just play Corpse Party dude. It's pretty generic anime, but i don't think there's many other series that do a spooky school trope better

It's not a bad thing in the same way death is not a bad thing.
Being subjected to either, however...

That's not school, that's SS13.

The system was just as crappy when I went to it. Even though my high school prided itself on its high criteria, as long as you were physically present to re-do the same F a million times, it was impossible to fail.

Realize that your players will turn it into a black comedy

Sauce?

Nightmare on Elm Street, don't remember which part exactly but you will get it by searching for title + school scene

After Columbine the establishment jumped at the chance to make school more like prison. You can't leave, you can't move about as you like, there are armed cops on the premises, metal detectors, and general air of mistrust. If someone attacks you you get in trouble for fighting back, just like in prison. Get us all used to it, make it not only familiar but nostalgic, so we're better behaved when they feed us into the prison-industrial complex.

NOOOOOOO

That's genius

You can adapt it to whatever system but at its core its a delightful way to fuck with players.

A surprise math test

Common core math

The broken state of the education system

More like a multidimensional nightmare but yes.

underrated post

10/10

Create a villain that works on sounds or smell. Make sure the party knows. Then every now and then either tell them or make them check for that.
I've seen this in the video-game Dreadout where you are trapped in a school for a long time. There is a villain that is somehow connected to scissors, with no explanation at first. On the encounter they created a music made out of scissors noises. Very unsettling.

It's the first one,

surprise test

this tho, defiantly this
>it's normal,
>it's normal,
>that's a bit odd?
>oh shit what have we walked into

Common core math.

While exploring the school the party realizes things have gotten eerily quiet as they approach a rather imposing looking door. Upon opening the door the party is confronted with: An exam, and they don't have pencils, and they are late, and they haven't studied, and they are in their underwear.

Not sure how much those would faze me. Granted I've been through college now, where most of those applied to pretty much every exam.

High school me would have been more bothered by it.

Kind and of fucked up how this was just thought of as acceptable

Sex Ed.

Just do a silent hill reference. Its haunted by a girl who manifests twisted monsters as personifications of her fears. Horrible grey children with shanks and switchblades. A terrible monster in the basement that makes the same noise as the school boiler. The school slowly looks more and more like a torturous prison as they explore, to the point where exploring places theyve already been reveals completely changed surroundings.

>but the basic idea is sound
oh you!

Assignments where they are forced to work in groups of strangers.

>Lockers filled with something unusual. Blood, bugs, guts, dolls-eyes, etc.
>A trophy case where, if they check the actual plaques and trophies, feature trophies for horrific events. 'Grandchampion of the Cannibal Eating Contest, 1956.'
>Anything that doesn't stay static. Have them encounter the janitor a couple times. His office is never in the same place. If they run into a teacher or security guard, they swear up and down there is no janitor.
that sounds pretty good

Yes.