Mystery #9: Kristy and the Haunted Mansion
Kristy, Bart, and the Krashers are playing an all-star game in another town when they get caught in a crazy thunderstorm. Eventually they get lost and they stuck because all the bridges flood. They notice this huge, empty-looking brick house on a hill and realize they’re going to have to stop there and ask to use a phone or even stay the night. Everyone agrees, though, that the house looks haunted as hell.
A creepy old man answers the door and informs Kristy and Charlie that there are no phones because the power’s out, and there’s no way to walk to a phone if the bridges are washed out. Cue the Scooby-Doo theme song. Turns out Creepy is the caretaker and he gives Kristy a bunch of blankets, some water and bread, and a couple of flashlights and lanterns and tells her the Krushers crew can spend the night in the big house. Apparently no one’s lived there for a while. They notice when they get there, though, that it’s kept up very well and doesn’t smell musty at all. Interesting… Meanwhile, since this is 1993, so no one has a cell phone, meaning that everyone back in Stoneybrook has realized that the van of Krashers is missing. People start freaking out (naturally) and Watson calls the police. The BSC gathers together for a sleepover at Claudia’s since they’re all going crazy without any news.
The Krashers crew decides to explore the big empty mansion before it gets too dark. When they get to the upstairs bedrooms, Jackie Rodowsky recognizes the last name Sawyer and realizes they’re in the Sawyer house… which he’s heard ghost stories about.
“Sometimes people see a woman walking around, and they say it’s the ghost of a woman who died here.” - Jackie, page 56
While exploring the bedrooms, the girls find the diary of a girl named Dorothy, written in 1935. Dorothy is in love with a man named Will, of whom her father disapproves. Dorothy is wrestling with whether to pursue a marriage with Will despite her father’s objections. In the last entry of the diary, Dorothy writes about how she’s eloping with Will the next day. With no other information to go on, Kristy and co. have to guess about what happened in the end…
…until they find a scrapbook of newspaper clippings in the mansion’s library. Turns out that Dorothy went missing during a terrible electrical storm on the night she left to elope with Will. Dorothy was eventually declared dead (of drowning) despite the fact that her body was never recovered. They find a photo album containing photos of Dorothy, Will, and Dorothy’s father Owen Sawyer, who died six months to the day after she disappeared of “a broken heart.” Kristy and Charlie both think Will looks familiar but can’t place him, acknowledging that “he’d be an old man by now.” I BET I KNOW AN OLD MAN THEY’VE RECENTLY ENCOUNTERED WHO MIGHT RESEMBLE WILL. In fact, Kristy and Bart later find the deed for the house in the name of Will Blackburn; it seems he bought it after Owen Sawyer died and he keeps it up as if he expects Dorothy to return home someday.
Kristy, Bart, Charlie and the kids make it through the night and wake up to find the storm has passed and the electricity is back. The caretaker comes by to help them pack up and head out, and it’s Buddy Barrett who puts two and two together that the caretaker is Dorothy’s fiancé, Will Blackburn. Will confesses that he keeps the house up as a tribute to Dorothy but can’t bear to live there, so he stays in the caretaker cottage, and that all the things people see as evidence of a ghost - smoke in the chimney, lights going on and off - are just him keeping the place running. Jackie’s disappointed there’s no real ghosts, but Kristy is satisfied to have at least one mystery solved. Or so she thinks.
Karen and Mary Anne later recognize Dorothy Sawyer as the woman who runs a sewing shop called Sew Fine in downtown Stoneybrook. The whole gang goes to the store and asks if it’s really her. Dorothy confirms that, yes, it is her! And she tells them why she let everyone believe she was dead:
“I did love Will Blackburn. But that night, that stormy, stormy night, when I was swept downstream by the raging creek… I realized something…. I realized that for the first time in my life I was free. Free! I was on my own. I didn’t have to answer to any man: not Father, not Will. For, as much as Will loved me, I knew he would have given me the same sort of life that Father had: a life that was overprotected and stifling. And so I never returned. I know it was wrong to let them think I was dead, but it was the only way I could see for me to take control of my life. And take control I did. I made up a new identity for myself. I traveled all over the world. I had a wonderful time. And then, finally, I settled in this little town, near the village of my childhood.” - Dorothy, page 140
Aside from the obvious ludicrousness of this being possible, Dorothy is a badass and I give it up to her.
