The Story of Hareera from Aminiya School

They say that if you studied at Aminiya School in the 1990s, you knew Hareera. No one agreed on who she really was, or whether she was a person at all.

Some said she was a janitor who had been bullied and hanged herself in the girls' toilet. Others said she was never human, and had only borrowed the shape of one.

She appears near the mango tree, always at dusk: a girl in red, her face hidden, her feet never touching the ground. In the bathrooms she is a shadow, dense, too solid to be smoke. There is one stall on the ground floor where the lights always flicker.

Girls used to go in pairs. If you went alone, they said, you might hear her humming behind the door, or see her reflection in the mirror, standing right behind you.

One girl laughed at the story once and called it stupid. An hour later they found her with her face pale blue, her eyes wide and her lips sealed tight. She never spoke again. She only drew a woman in red, barefoot and smiling, who was always watching.

They say Hareera belongs to the land the school was built on. She was there before the classrooms, before the mango tree.

Girls still say the lights flicker when no one else is in the bathroom. Some say they feel someone watching from the last stall, even when it is empty. And they say the youngest students still draw her without ever being told who she is.