School Spirits plays out very much like a lesser version of The Rising with a murdered girl finding herself as a ghost searching for answers about how she died with more of the goofiness of CBS’ Ghosts mixed in. Lacking the same raw emotion, School Spirits feels more like a teen mystery where our Nancy Drew-ish detective just happens to be a ghost. Only once in the first two episodes of the series, in the breakdown of her best friend (Kristian Ventura) does the show really tap into the the loss by Maddie Nears’ (Peyton List) disappearance.
The mystery of Maddie’s death unfortunately doesn’t prove to be that interesting. Although we get an obvious suspect early on we never see a motive for Maddie’s boyfriend to actually have committed the crime. More interesting is Maddie’s life as a ghost, stuck in the school where, in a similar manner to The Rising, she can affect ghostly versions of objects (basically a copy) but the original remains unmoved. Here she finds a support group of ghosts, all of whom have died at the school. The ghosts are limited to the grounds of the school which limits how far Maddie can go as well as avenues open for the show to explore.