Odessa High School is Haunted

Bored on a Friday night out in Odessa, Texas? Head over to the high school, face the building, then honk and flash your lights three times. If you’re (un)lucky, you just might see the ghost of Betty Williams, a girl that wanted to be a star, in one of the windows there.

Now I know what you’re thinking. This is just another haunted high school story where there’s not a shred of evidence that anyone ever died there. What if I told you not only was Betty real, she committed suicide by way of an ex-boyfriend. Or was it murder? This is a weird, and more than a little creepy, but nonetheless, true event that happened in Texas in 1961.

Betty wasn’t popular. She both reveled in and resented that fact. But her senior year she caught the eye of Mack Herring one of the football players. They dated, though he would never take her to the parties where his friends would see them. And it was to him that she supposedly pinned her hopes.

Devastated was exactly the word used to describe Betty when he broke up with her. She wrote in her diary about how she was in love with Mack and would do anything to get him back. Anything. It was about this time that Betty reportedly decided that she wanted to die. Not kill herself, because she said she didn’t have the nerve, but instead wanted someone to kill her. Maybe it wasn’t just someone. It was Mack Herring.

She wrote a letter exonerating Mack explaining that it was something she wanted. Friends of hers say that it was just a ploy to get Mack to realize he loved her and didn’t want her dead. But that’s not how it worked out.

Mack shot Betty in the head and then weighted her body down, leaving her to rot in a nearby stock tank. He was tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity.

So if that’s the way it played out, why is Betty haunting the high school? Well if you see her, ask her for me.

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