In field-based research, masking practices, as well as the general practice of relegating historical context to abstracted 'site descriptions' in a paper's methodology section, can produce a tacit inattention to historical specificity. By juxtaposing two case studies of schools, this article examines the ways school sites are haunted by histories--that is, how the past is revived and revised in the present, and in turn what this means for field-based qualitative inquiry. Pairing archival and field-based methods, we trace how the haunting of history animated the present-day practices of stakeholders in two schools. In doing so, we show how history itself became an actor in these sites--as something administrators and teachers put to work in their approaches to schooling--and suggest expanding views of unmasking within qualitative inquiry that allow for these ghosts of the past to announce themselves more openly.