We had just read the children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, and one morning our Principal, Mr. V, walked into our classroom. He asked if there was anyone brave enough to come and see a bear they had trapped. I can’t remember if I was selected randomly or if I volunteered (it doesn’t seem like something I’d have volunteered for but I was a little kid, less reserved back then), but a few minutes later I and another classmate or two, I can’t remember who, were being led through the halls to somewhere where a bear was apparently kept in our three floor elementary school.
The school was essentially two buildings—one larger building for grades 1-5 that was connected to a smaller, newer building for the Kindergarten students. Our classroom was on the first floor, a short walk from that newer building.
Mr. V led us to the connecting passage between the two buildings. There was a small room I’d never noticed before, to the side of a staircase. The room was dark, like a medium-sized walk-in closet, but the atmosphere of an old garden shed.
We were ushered into the room from behind by Mr. V, towards these two extremely bright lights shining directly at us, like eyes. Then a growling noise started. In my memory it’s clearly an adult man imitating a bear, which really just sounds like a man. So while the bright eyes in the dark room were a new and weird experience for me, it was obviously not a bear and this was some kind of ruse.
I may have been checking for an exit path, but I turned just as I’d passed through the doorway of the closet and directly to my right, up against the wall adjacent to the door was my gym teacher, Mr. Bagley, spotlighted by the bear’s eyes but clearly trying to stay out of view from the children who’d be entering. I was the only kid to notice him, which he himself noticed and he smiled and put a finger to his lips, miming “Shhhhh.”
That’s as far as the memory goes, for the most part. I’m not sure what the actual goal for this experience was for the adults involved, but there was no crying, screaming or tears. No panic. I have a slight recollection of a dim closet light being turned on to reveal the eyes to be some sort of projector, but it was no contraption that I’d seen before, so my brain probably didn’t know how to log/identify it at the time. Mr. V had led us to the room, Mr. Bagley was seemingly the supervisor, maybe the person who’d turn on the lights, so there must have been some other person that acted as the sound source behind or near the projector. I can’t remember who the third adult in the situation was, the one who would’ve been making the growling noises.
We were returned to our classroom and I’m pretty sure that while I and the other student were the first ones to see the bear from our class, they funneled a bunch of other students down to that closet.
Such a bizarre experience. A prank? Adult men trying to frighten children by luring them to a dark room? The ‘90s were a real weird time.