Horror Stories and Urban Legends

English Teacher

The Summer holidays had ended and it was the beginning of a new school year in the Czech Republic. There was a young girl in Prague who did not want to go to school. Her name was Barborka, but her friends called her Bara for short. Although she wasn't the best student in her class, she still managed to get good grades and actually enjoyed learning new things. It wasn't the schoolwork that she disliked, it was the teachers.

No matter how hard she had tried to behave herself, the year before, she always seemed to get into trouble with the teachers in her school. Every week, something had happened that caused her to be the object of her teachers' anger and frustration. They would often make her stand at the front of the classroom, give her hundreds of lines to write or punish her with extra work. It made Bara dread the thought of going to school and she was worried that this year would be worse than the last.

When she arrived at school, on the first day, she was surprised to find that there was a new teacher in her English class. The English teacher was a woman in her 30s, with a sour, humorless face. Her light brown hair was done up into a bun and she had a mole on her upper lip. Bara hoped that this teacher would be different from the rest.

After lunch on Friday, as she was going back to class, Bara dropped her books in the hallway. When she bent down to pick them up, she noticed that the school janitor was staring at her legs and licking his lips. She gave him a disapproving look and pulled her skirt down over her knees.

Creepy old man," she muttered under her breath.

Later that day, Bara was sitting in class, listening to the English teacher ramble on about grammar and punctuation, when a girl named Verunka raised her hand. The teacher stopped in mid-sentence and pointed to the young girl.

"Verunka, do you have a question?" she asked.

"Yes Miss," said Verunka. "Why do your moles keep changing?"

The teacher appeared suddenly confused and flustered.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"The moles on your face," said Verunka. "They keep changing. On Monday, you had one mole, but on Tuesday and Wednesday you had three. Now it's back to one again."

All of the kids in the class began laughing. It was such a bizarre and random question.

"Your eyes must be deceiving you," replied the teacher, angrily. "As you can plainly see, I have one mole on my face. Now, if you have nothing relevant to say, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from disrupting my classroom and keep your foolish mouth shut."

Throughout the rest of the day, Bara noticed that the English teacher kept staring at Verunka. It seemed as if she was seething with rage and there was hatred in her eyes. At the end of class, as the other kids were leaving, the teacher called Verunka over and told her she wanted to have a word with her. Bara was just relieved that, this time, she was not the one getting in trouble.

On Monday morning, when Bara got to school, she noticed that there was one empty desk in the classroom. Verunka was absent. In fact, she didn't turn up for school the next day, or the day after that. Bara began to wonder what had happened to her, but when she asked around, nobody seemed to know.

There was something else that was bothering Bara. She had begun paying more attention to her English teacher's appearance, making detailed notes in the back of her book every day, and had noticed something very strange.

The teacher's moles actually were changing.

There was no doubt about it. On Monday, she had one mole, but on Tuesday, she had two. By Wednesday, it had gone back to one mole. But that was not all. When Bara consulted her notes, she found that, on Monday, the teacher had been wearing a band-aid on her little finger. On Tuesday, the band-aid was gone, but by Wednesday, it had returned.