CAMBERLY SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
Location: The Camberly School For Girls is located in the Tawhaki Community on the private island resort of Elysium, the Elysian Isle, seventy-two miles northeast of Kauai, Hawaii. The hundred and twelve square mile island is privately owned and surrounded by underwater coral reefs and narrow channels with restricted access limited to charter plane. The island is private property owned by the genial and public yet reclusive host Amadeus Roarke.
Description of Place: Not a stone has been misplaced, not a piece has been altered except for restoration, the three-story twenty-room white Victorian manor house rests on a plot of land nearly identical to the Broadmoor parcel where it once stood. Resting on a foundation of stone and brick, the extravagant structure consists of bay windows, garret windows and rounded windows. Riddled with secret doors and hiding places, a smuggler's cave was added that links the property to the cemetery down the hill. The interior is opulent, a mix of modern conveniences, turn of the century decor and antique furnishings. The central hallway includes a grand staircase to the attic rooms. The school teaches high school/college preparatory classes including art, drama, music, athletics and
Ghostly Manifestations: On October 13, 1978, Edna Camberly was sleeping in her second floor room in the private school she ran when she awoke to the sound of music being played. Resembling a very old Irish folk song, the music was being played on the first floor organ in the hall outside the school's music room. It was very dark that night, not even the sounds of the ocean nearby met her ears as she wrapped a robe around herself to see who was playing the organ. With the music playing to lead the way, she quietly and securely stole her way to the first floor, but the second the organ came into view, the music had stopped. Whoever was playing the organ had vanished. The strange addendum to this tale, that organ has been broken for years and does not work. It came with the house from San Francisco.
Allen LeBlanc, the former school fencing instructor, can also testify to ghosts in the house. He claims to have seen the figure of a man clothed in a dark cape and large hat, rather like the fictional Shadow persona from 1930s comic strips and radio serials, standing on the attic landing and staring down to the first floor. There is never a face, just an anomalous black form in human form with a large cape. LeBlanc also claimed he heard spectral laughter from places on the second floor, but his stories are prone to debate. When Elliot Fielding, an amateur ghost hunter from Seattle, Washington, arrived doing research on the legendary Gentleman Stranger serial killer from the turn of the century, he caught LeBlanc trying to hoax the hauntings for publicity and to slant the research (or perhaps to oust ownership of the property to himself).
"Despite Allen's tomfoolery," Edna Camberly replies. "We do have something here, and it does not need help proving its existence. Whatever it is exactly, we do have something here."
When Camberly first took over the transplanted house to turn it into a school, her sister and assistant, Samantha, was helping out as her assistant. "She prepared all the rooms." adds Camberly. "starting with a room from which at times we've heard inexplicable music, and worked her way through the other bedrooms. When she'd come back up to the first room, she would always find the bed messed up. It was an everyday thing. At first she thought someone was playing jokes on her. But it happened even when she was alone in the structure. The bedding would be found twisted and wrinkled as if someone would be sleeping in it. Sometimes as she stood looking at the messed up bed, the music - very strange music - would start playing. About a few weeks into the school year, he returned to the mainland."
Camberly told of other occurrences: "Sometimes, I get notes from the students staying here reporting that they can't sleep because something was shaking their bed and touching their feet. I don't know how much was real and how much was imagined, but there's something here that can't be explained."
Several of the students, such as Lindsay Witherspoon and Christina Winslet, tell of footsteps on the stairs, eerie music and beds that won't stay made. They describe incidents where whole stacks off books have tumbled to the floor without reason, a unseen figure who never quite reaches the top floor and electronic humming sounds from closets. These occurrences become more frequent in December when the school is close to empty. Edna theorized: "It was almost as if the spirits were begging for our attention."
After Samantha had departed, her duties were picked up by Carolyn Montgomery, cousin to Donna Troy, owner of Belasco Mansion in Maine. Her family has a deep reverence of the paranormal, often acquiring homes and properties just for their supernatural reputations. (One relative once tried to acquire Vannacutt Sanitarium in California.) She also mentions complaints made by the students. "On four different occasions, they complained of noises and voices coming from adjacent rooms that were known to be unoccupied. They heard talking and laughing. They couldn't tell what the talking was about, but it appeared they were having a lot of fun.
"Sometimes there were lights on the walls, like beams of flashlights, but no source of the lights could be found. In one third floor bathroom, girls have heard calliope music, like they would hear at a circus."
Montgomery recalls unaccountable sounds of footsteps on the stairs when there wasn't anyone there. On a number of occasions she has watched doorknobs rattle as if someone was struggling to open the door. Yet, when she would open the door, there would be no one on the other side.
In addition to interior activity, exterior activity has also been known to occur. The students have been awake in the middle of the night to describe the figure of an old man prowling the estate. Carolyn has seen him on occasion while she is working in the study. He looks as if he is tending the garden, sometimes carrying a large sack over his back, toiling under the trees with a hoe or sitting in a large hump at the edge of the path. In 1981, one student felt an over-powering urge to look out her bedroom window and noticed the head of a man looking in through the window. As frightening as the incident was, she just acknowledged it and turned back to sleep. Island security patrol the grounds frequently to deter peeping-toms and unwanted visitors, but their whereabouts were all accounted for that night.
Around March 1983, student Jessica Spears was stepping through the flowerbeds and disturbing the floral arrangements searching for a necklace tossed into the flowers during a dispute with another student. As she stepped on and squashed the setting, she heard a very angry voice screaming at her to get out of the beds. She then looked up to see an elderly and very angry figure racing toward her ordering her out of the beds. Figuring him to be the groundskeeper, she darted off without her necklace, later to have it returned to her by Carolyn, who found it deposited on her desk.
"The odd aftermath to this story..." Carolyn adds. "Is that we don't have an elderly groundskeeper on the grounds."
History: The full history of the Elysian Isle, nick-named the "Fantasy Isle" due to its idyllic utopia paradise, has not yet been made public although it is known that it was private military resort for officers at one point after World War Two. It is known that Amadeus Roarke acquired full private custody of the island around 1957 with the full intention of turning it into a public resort under his complete supervision. Acting as governor, he overseers all the island requirements from the control of the public dinners, comfort and arrival of his guests to overall maintenance of the island. Three communities of residents make their homes in the on-island communes of Tawhaki, Haumea and Tangaroa, the main commune that receives the guests. The native islanders are loyal to Roarke's guidance and leadership. He has had several menservants over the years ranging from a diminutive French man named Tattoo to a tall former African shaman known only as Mojo.
Originally built as a private home in the Broadmoor area of San Francisco, the Camberly School For Girls was constructed around 1878 and passed through several families. It's most notorious history was just before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The last tenant was Dr. Anton Whiteclaw, a physician who has been accused of being the turn of the century serial killer known as "The Gentleman Stranger," described as a thin figure dressed in a long black cloak and broad-rimmed hat. No proof exists that Whiteclaw was the killer who between 1899 and 1906 slew between eleven and seventeen women around Nob Hill. (Some of the murders have been postulated to be the work of copycat killers, but this has not been confirmed.) All of the deaths were marked by a single red rose left at the murder scenes. The only evidence that Whiteclaw was the killer is the fact that he vanished after the last recorded murder on February 13, 1906 and that he knew three of the other victims. On April 18, 1906, the San Francisco earthquake occurred, and the old Whiteclaw house was one of the few to escape any form of damage, adding to its already whispered sinister reputation. It stood largely unoccupied for years until 1973 when Roarke purchased it and had it moved intact to the island in order to prevent its destruction. As the Camberly School, it's a private school for young ladies of prominent families to get schooling away from tabloid influences under head mistress Edna Camberly.
Identity of Ghosts: There are two candidates for the elderly figure seen lurking through and around the house once one disregards the Gentleman Stranger hoaxes. According to tradition, one candidate is Dr. Anton Whiteclaw who seems quite elusive and frightening but not that threatening. The other is that of Arnold Jacoby, the elderly former gardener who planned much of the exterior gardening for Roarke from 1970 to 1974. He collapsed of a stroke not far from the house while tending the gardens in December 1959. It was Elliott Fielding who first named Jacoby as a ghost, although he also felt the female voices were those of the victims of the "Gentlemen Stranger" somehow trapped in the house. Although, this theory falls apart once one discovers the structure was briefly a sorority for young ladies in 1940s San Francisco.
Source/Comments: Fantasy Island (Episode/Storyline: Ghost Breaker) Phenomenon based on the Congelier House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Kelsey House in Fish Springs, Nevada and Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia, California.
The Gentleman Killer very loosely based on Jack the Ripper (1888), H. H. Holmes (1864-1896) and Dr. Thomas Neil Cream (1850-1892).