By Linda Seida, Staff Writer
LAMBERTVILLE — Ghost stories about the ruins of the old Lambertville High School are plentiful, but until now they were spread mainly by word of mouth and a magazine devoted to the paranormal.
Friday night, the abandoned building and its ghostly legend will come alive on the screen when a new independent film, “Only Go There at Night,” makes its premiere in Boonton at the Darress Theater.
Writer and filmmaker David Swan, 26, of Sayreville said he was intrigued by the building and the rumors of its haunting after reading about them in Weird N.J. magazine, a publication that focuses on the paranormal phenomena around the state.
In one article, Mr. Swan read about the haunting faces of children etched into a 25-foot blackboard on the school’s second floor. Other legends about the old school revolve around the death of a local high school football player. Still others claim the laughter of long-dead children can be heard, and some claim the children died in a fire.
Mr. Swan came to Lambertville and checked out the school years ago when visitors still could see the etched faces on the blackboard. The drawings are no longer there, perhaps taken by a souvenir hunter.
But Mr. Swan remembers seeing them, and the visit stayed with him, prodding him to write his script.
”Only Go There at Night” centers on a group of friends from Sayreville who set out to investigate the haunting at Lambertville High School much as Mr. Swan did that long ago night when he discovered the eerie children’s likenesses on the second floor.
As in all good horror movies, one of the teenagers dies, and the others are left to battle for their lives.
Mr. Swan was not permitted to film at the Lambertville High School. Instead, he used a stand-in, a wrestling school in Lake Hiawatha.
”We hoped to film the movie on the premises and use the actual building,” he said. “Unfortunately, the building is in such bad shape, it was a liability.”
Lambertville Police Director Bruce Cocuzza said teens from Hunterdon, Mercer and Bucks counties still try to sneak into the building. Trespassers have come from as far away as Connecticut and New York to try to catch a ghost sighting.
Lambertville police strongly discourage the visits.
”The fact is, it’s very dangerous,” Mr. Cocuzza said. “It’s dilapidated. It’s totally overgrown. It’s very, very dangerous.”
The school was built in 1854. It burned twice; the first time in 1955, the second time in 1992.
Even though the film was not shot in the building that inspired it, it will still have a ghostly tie-in. The theater hosting the premiere is rumored to be haunted.
The Darress Theater on Main Street in Boonton was built in 1910. There have been reports of footsteps and singing when no one is there.
The low-budget film — Mr. Swan estimated the budget at about $10,000, much of it self-financed — runs about 75 minutes.
”A lot of people are excited about it because the film references so much of the state and local mythology and the history of it,” Mr. Swan said.

