When All the Girls Are Sleeping

by Emily Arsenault

  “Yeah, I saw that,” I said. “The ghost who does wardrobe changes.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking about.” Star knelt on the floor and scattered the contents of one of the folders across the rug, plucking out the Dearborn group photo we’d been looking at a few days ago.

  “Sarah in Black,” she said, looking from me to the photo. “Sarah in Black? Or Sarah Black?”

  “Both, I guess. Like it says.”

  “I’m thinking they meant Sarah Black. That that came first, and then it turned into Sarah in Black, or a Sarah wearing black, or whatever. I’m thinking that’s the one to pay attention to. A name that got adjusted or misunderstood over the years. Sarah Black.”

  “There’s no Sarah Black in that picture,” I pointed out—as I would have remembered. “Even if you’re right.”

  “But there was a Leonora Black, remember?” Star jabbed her finger at the photocopied picture. “Caroline Bromley’s friend? The one I don’t know as much about?”

  “Leonora is a pretty different name from Sarah,” I said.

  “I wasn’t thinking Leonora is the ghost. I don’t know much about her, but I think she lived to around the 1940s, just like Caroline Bromley. But that’s not the point. There’s a letter…actually, two letters…”

  Star opened the other folder and started flipping through pages.

  “Now, I don’t have all of Abigail Ashton’s letters photocopied, but I thought I had all of the ones that said anything related to Caroline. And there were two that mentioned someone named Sally. I hadn’t known exactly what she was talking about, but—oh. I think this is it. Or this is one of them.”

  Star lifted a sheet up to her face and read, “ ‘Leonora is still distressed and missing Sally. Her latest letter from home reports that she is doing better, content to be back home, baking and keeping house with her aunt.’ ”

  “Wait,” I said. “Back up. This is a letter from Abigail Ashton, Caroline Bromley’s friend? The one from the picture you showed me?”

  “Yes. I had wondered who Sally was, and I had seen another letter that made me think it was Leonora’s sister. I’ll have to find it. I hadn’t pursued it, of course, because it wasn’t all that relevant to my project about Caroline. Just a curiosity, since I’d wondered about Caroline’s friends.”

  “You think her friend Leonora had a sister Sally.”

  “Yeah. Remember, she was mentioned in the letter about Halloween? She was too shy to dress up as Alice?”

  “Yeah. But her name was Sally Black.”

  “Sally was a nickname for Sarah. Back then. I mean, it still can be. But now it’s usually a separate name. But anyway, if there was a Sally Black, she might have also been Sarah Black.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And doesn’t it sound to you like this Sally was maybe a student with them here at the school, but went home?” Star handed me the photocopied letter.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, skimming the slanted script of the letter. “Probably.”

  On the photocopy, Star had at some point highlighted a line of the letter. It said, Caroline has been trying to cheer Leonora—gathering her flowers and leaving small gifts. I don’t think it is having much effect, sadly.

  “Do you highlight stuff that mentions Caroline?” I asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  I nodded, hoping I’d someday have the same amount of passion for something—anything—that Star did for Caroline Bromley.

  I read the rest of the letter, which was mostly about weather and a difficult French class.

  “This isn’t the only letter of Abigail’s in which Sally is mentioned,” Star said. “But I don’t have copies of all of her letters, of course. I only copied things directly relevant to Caroline Bromley, but I could go back and try to find the ones where I saw Sally come up.”

  “If you think a Sally…or Sarah…Black was a student here during Caroline’s time, how do you confirm that?”

  “It might not be all that hard. Aside from Abigail’s letters—the archives has student rosters for almost every year.”

  “Even that long ago?”

  Star nodded. “They’re just lists of names, mostly. But they’re better than nothing. The archives are open on Monday. Oh my gosh, my heart is pounding. I can’t wait.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “But what do we do now, then?”

  Star took a deep breath. “Maybe we Twizzle? And try to forget about it until we can get into the archives?”

  “I guess.”

  Star took her king-size Twizzlers bag out of her desk drawer. Watching her, I said, “How’s Jocelyn? Are you guys still in touch?”

  Star hesitated, then extended a Twizzler to me. “Yeah. Not a real lot, but yeah.”

  “You just haven’t mentioned her all year,” I said softly.

  Our eyes met as I reached for the candy.

  “You haven’t asked,” she said in a low voice, hesitating before she let go of the Twizzler. “But she’s okay. Not great.”

  “Is she at another boarding school or…?” I peered casually out the blinds. There was a gentle flurry coming down, pretty in the lamplight.

  “No. She’s at a public school in her hometown.”

  “Which is where?” I turned from the window to look at Star.

  “Connecticut,” she answered.

  “Oh.” I nodded and nibbled the end of the Twizzler.

  “Apparently it’s a good school. It’s just not where she expected to be this year, you know?”

  “She could have stayed here.”

  I pictured Jocelyn—raven-haired, petite, perfect in the Abigail role in The Crucible. Becoming the character so convincingly that you forgot that she wore ill-fitting pastel baby doll dresses, that she made humming noises when she chewed food, that she followed Mr. Packer around like a puppy dog sometimes.

  “She didn’t feel she could.” Star paused. “And it would’ve been pretty hard, I think. Did you see the video last year?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted, though a little stunned by the bluntness of the question. “Uh…did you?”

  Star shook her head. “I heard about it before it got to me. Once I knew who and what it was, of course I wasn’t going to watch it.”

  I shouldn’t have brought up Jocelyn if I didn’t want to talk about the video. But I had wanted to ask for a long time. I had wanted to hear she was doing okay.

  “What colleges is she applying to?” I asked.

  “Art and design places, mostly. Like there’s an art college in New York she wants to go to. She’s afraid of how the school switch will look on applications, though. She has some new guidance counselor who had to write a letter explaining that it had nothing to do with academics. She’s worried that will draw even more attention to it.”

  “That does sound kinda…tough,” I said. “Tough to decide.”

  “I don’t know what she decided to do, in the end. I didn’t ask. I think she found even the dilemma kind of horrifying. Anyway, one way or the other, it seems she doesn’t like to talk to me much anymore. Like, nothing personal. It’s just that everything Windham is kind of shitty for her to think about.”

  I was quiet for a minute. Star and Jocelyn had been such good friends last year—this all seemed hard to believe. They ate together, walked to class together—always hunched close together conspiratorially, giggling at something or other.

  “She’ll feel so much better when she gets into that school,” I said. “I bet she gets in wherever she applies.”

  “Yeah, well. I hope so. I’ll be happy for her when she figures out where she’s going, when she can feel relieved that no one cares she switched schools. Then she’ll really be able to say she’s put it behind her, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and tied my Twizzler into a knot.

 
“Can we turn the light out now?”

  Star sounded tired. I nodded, flipped off the light, and felt my way back to bed in the dark.

  29

  Star was gone by the time I woke up. It was past Sunday breakfast time, and I wondered if she was off somewhere stroking Mark Byrne’s sideburns. Wherever she was, I hoped she was indoors. My old boyfriend, Jake, and I used to only ever make out outside—because it was really the only place you could avoid getting caught. I got used to rolling around in wet, nearly frozen leaves, and having numb hands and face at the end of an evening.

  I couldn’t remember now if I ever really liked Jake that much. I pulled myself up in bed, hugged my knees, and watched the late-morning sleet through the window. I kind of enjoyed the sound of it pattering on the glass. It was one of those weekend mornings when Dearborn never seemed to get warm enough, and the minutes didn’t seem to want to pass. Wrapping myself in the fleece blanket my mother had bought me, I considered calling her. I missed her, but everything I said to her was always just code for I’m okay now. Don’t worry. I’m okay now. Sometimes I got tired of talking in that code. And sometimes—like now—it felt like lying.

  Since I’d missed breakfast, I found a protein bar and nibbled it while I reached for my laptop. I opened up the Darkins file and scrolled up and down, trying to find the parts I hadn’t read yet.

  SUMMARY/CONCLUSIONS

  As always, I am hesitant to draw any conclusions in matters of the paranormal. In this case, I am doubly so.

  Dearborn Hall appears to be a place with multiple afflictions—a ghost, an intermittent poltergeist, confused adolescent psychic tensions, with possible telekinetic results—or none, in which case the student population has a peculiar talent for storytelling and imaginative self-deception. Either way, it is a place of convergence of much tension and conflicted psychic energy—that much is clear. The unique problem of this setting is that so many of these usually isolated phenomena appear to be occurring in one place—intertwining with each other, almost competing with each other.

  What is most stunning to me is the possibility of a unique form of group delusion that appears to span over more than a century. The unusual persistence of the Dearborn ghost stories appears to have brought about consistent—almost yearly—experience of the paranormal within the student population in this dormitory. Whether that ghost story tradition makes some individual students more sensitive to actual paranormal activity, more apt to interpret uncomfortable or unusual experiences as paranormal, or more susceptible to mild to moderate delusions of ghostly experiences is undetermined.

  In drawing tentative conclusions, one cannot ignore the curious factor of the portrait of Sarah Dearborn that hung on the wall for several decades, and which appears to have resulted in the ghost stories about a young woman in a black dress—Sarah in Black—until years after its removal. It is indeed a severe and arresting portrait—Kathleen and I viewed a photograph of it. Interestingly, in the years after its removal (due to water damage), stories about “Sarah” appear to more often feature a girl in a white nightgown. This suggests that the student population’s stories—and their experience of the ghost—were influenced by the portrait. This indicates that over the years, the ghost has changed along with student lore.

  I paused here. I’d heard of this portrait, which had hung in the front hall of the dorm for so many decades. What had become of it? “Water damage,” obviously. But when it had been damaged, was it simply tossed in a dumpster? Maybe there was a photo of it somewhere.

  I kept reading:

  I am not arguing here that all of the paranormal “Sarah” sightings and experiences have been solely imagined ones—although evidence indicates that some are fabricated—but that this setting might contain an unusual collective psychic energy that influences and intensifies student experiences of a ghostly embodiment. This possibility is fascinating and worthy of further study.

  It is undeniable that each year or two or three, an individual student has an intense personal experience of the paranormal—ghost, poltergeist, or some pairing of the two.

  As in my writings about Tina Resch—which Mrs. Bradford knows well—I believe here that the more problematic elements of the phenomenon are exacerbated by the mental and emotional distress of the victim(s). This is not to say that mental and emotional distress is the cause of the phenomenon. But it is my firm belief that a victim of psychic disturbance is most likely to be harmed if he or she is not secure and supported in other aspects of his or her emotional life. In those cases, the ghost or poltergeist is given more psychic space in which to wreak havoc.

  The difference in response from Student X and Student Y to their paranormal encounters speaks to this problem. One student became very ill as a result of her experience with the “ghost.” The other was mentally equipped to see it, to acknowledge it, but not cede any emotional power to it.

  With that in mind, I turn, with some concern, to my general observances of the students in their day-to-day lives. Life in Dearborn is, for many students, isolating, exclusively academic, stressful, and cold. While many of the students are very mature, the depressive effects of being separated from one’s family take their toll. The occasional small poltergeist is likely to find a carnival of opportunity here, and develop more power and energy than it would otherwise, in another setting.

  Given Dearborn’s long and persistent history of ghost stories, it appears that whatever paranormal energy afflicts the building—a lingering and unsettled spirit, perhaps—has been given more force and collective energy by the (mostly negative) attention paid to it by its residents over the years. There is not a single student who lives here who does not know who “the Winter Girl” is. Students fear her—and even anticipate living in fear of her as they move their way up through the grades and then reside in Dearborn for their final year.

  I believe the most effective remedies here might be regular cleansing activities (such as sage burning) and, more importantly, closer attention paid to the emotional well-being of all students housed in this dorm. Mental and emotional strain appears to make individual students vulnerable to the myriad paranormal influences—both real and imagined, I daresay—that have converged in this unique place, and to exacerbate it. It is also the element over which school staff and administration have the greatest control. We have limited powers over restless spirits and unruly poltergeists. But our ability to limit their influences is strong when we recognize the need to take care of the members of the community most vulnerable to them.

  I skimmed the Student X material again, my eyes stalling at the words Student X’s grandparents are generous donors to the school. Whoever she was, she had this in common with Taylor. In Taylor’s case, it was her parents.

  And I considered Bronwyn Spruce for a moment. I was pretty sure she was a legacy student. That didn’t mean her parents or grandparents or any relatives gave money to the school. But it seemed likelier for her than for some.

  I couldn’t think of a tactful way to ask this in a text to Bronwyn, though. And it seemed unlikely to me that a ghost would care much about money. Generous financial contributors to the school, however, were more likely to end up in the larger, more desirable single rooms in the side hallways.

  It was a little tricky, how this happened. Technically there was a housing lottery at Windham. But there were all kinds of exceptions to that rule—and a lot of the most financially well-off students seemed to have vague and self-identified “special needs” that required them to be closer to the bathroom, or by themselves in a big room, or have more windows because of their seasonal affective disorder, or whatever. And so they had ways around the lottery system.

  Maybe one of those more desired rooms was where the ghost resided? Or maybe the ghost just preferred those parts of the dorm—down the shorter, quieter hallways where the rooms were bigger? Maybe the ghost didn’t care how a girl ended up in her
space—like through money and influence. Maybe she just happened to haunt anyone who ended up there.

  Although Kathleen Darkins had mentioned the upper floors having more psychic tension, I had never heard any Dearborn lore that identified a particular floor or room that was specifically haunted. But maybe “Sarah” still had her favorite spots in the building. Maybe she liked the same rooms the rich girls did?

  It seemed too early to text Bronwyn, but at some point I’d ask her which specific room she lived in senior year. And it might be worth asking the Facebook “Haunteds” the same question.

  I went back to the report, read a couple of student interviews, and then looked at the introduction and conclusion again. Both mentioned a case of someone named Tina Resch—related to something Darkins had studied before and that also apparently interested Headmistress Bradford.

  I clicked out of the Darkins file and onto Google, where I typed Tina Resch. Up came a Wikipedia page, an article from something called “Murderpedia,” and countless articles with names like “Paranormal Files: The Curious Case of Tina Resch,” “Tina Resch: Telekinetic Mom or Deceptive Killer?” and “The Real-Life Poltergeist of Tina Resch.”

  Settling against my pillows, I began to read.

  The first article clarified the difference between a ghost and a poltergeist. A ghost, it said, is generally thought to be the lingering spirit of a dead person. A poltergeist is a somewhat more mysterious entity that causes flying or moving objects, loud noises, or other disturbances—usually in the presence of a particular person. A poltergeist was often, though not always, thought to be caused—unconsciously—by telekinetic energy from the person it plagued.

  Tina Resch was a teenager from Ohio who supposedly had a poltergeist. In her presence, plates would smash into walls; lamps would spontaneously fall off tables; radios and other household appliances would turn themselves on and off unexpectedly. In 1984, when she was fourteen, her story hit national news and the media descended on her parents’ home.