The “guilty twelve”

My boarding school experience with a Ouija Board

Cropwood Residential for Girls. That was the name of the boarding school I was sent to. My very own piece of ‘Harry Potter’! I spent some of the best years of my life there. A solitary old Manor House on the rolling hills of Worcestershire, with unpolluted fresh air, forests and greenery as far as the eye could see. Cropwood was a Manor House that used to belong to the founder of Cadbury’s chocolate, he donated the building to be turned into a girl’s school.

At first, like every child, I became homesick, but then as the routine and discipline set in, I became quite content. There were school rules that we adhered to religiously. Upon waking, we would roll back the ‘counterpane’ and then open the windows to allow the bed to get some air. We would get up, get washed and dressed into our uniforms. At 8am, the gong would sound for breakfast. We would go into the dining room and sit quietly, with our hands on our laps, waiting for our headmistress to come in. When she walked in, we would stand. She would say ‘good morning girls’ and we would reply ‘good morning, Miss Clarke’ before being given the signal to sit down. All of the tables were square, each one seating four girls. Miss Clarke’s table however, was an octagon-shaped one, where it was considered an honour to be sat. Each day, Miss Clarke would pick seven girls and invite them to sit around her table.

The girls would line up in an orderly fashion by the cereal table and help them themselves to cereal with either hot or cold milk, porridge or seasonal fruit and berries with evaporated milk. That was the first course. As we sat eating the first part of breakfast, the toast on the rack would be brought round and placed in the middle of the table, along with a small dish of butter and another one, with marmalade. Once we had finished our first course, the cooked breakfast would be served. Each girl would go up to the counter where the cooks were serving the portions. On the menu was a full English breakfast, or scrambled eggs, beans, tinned plum tomatoes. omelettes or fried eggy bread. Sometimes were would have kippers for breakfast, slathered with delicious melted butter! Initially, it seemed strange to have fish in the morning, but it was quite delicious once you got used to it. The extra toast on the rack was in addition to the toast served at the counter. Of course, the fresh orange juice, tea and milk were on a separate table and everyone helped themselves

If we had the honour of being invited to Miss Clarke’s table, instead of having cereal as a starter breakfast, we would have delicious tinned grapefruit, which would be served in a decorative silver bowl in the middle of the table. Only Miss Clark was allowed to serve the grapefruit. I always hoped some girls would decline their portion so I could have seconds! Miss Clark was already old, shed had marionette lines on her face, her chin appeared almost detached from her face and often reminded me of a Punch and Judy character. Later on, when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, I remember thinking what an uncanny resemblance she had to Miss Deidre Clark

The highlight of the day would be when my friends and I woke up at 7am, put our swimming costumes on and ran down the hill, jumping into our outdoor heated pool. Sometimes the water would be cold and we would squeal into laughter. We would swim and dive to our hearts content before running back up the hill, quickly getting showered and dressed into our uniforms before the gong sounded for breakfast. At the end of each day, after our classes were finished, we would change into our ‘play clothes’ which consisted of hardwearing corduroy jeans and a sweatshirt (in winter we would wear a jumper over the shirt). We would either go horse riding or head to the bike shed and go for a bike ride around the spacious school grounds or go for a walk. We certainly worked up an appetite. We had swings at the back of the school where we spent many a happy hour. The school also had its own tennis courts and allotments where a group of the more senior girls would go and learn to grow some produce.

During the summer months we would go into the forest to forage for wild blackberries which we then brought back to Mrs Carey, our school cook, and she would make us the most delicious pies with them. Also, during the summer months, we would eat our afternoon tea outside on the grass. The cooks would make us an array of sandwiches and freshly baked scones with butter spread thickly on them, then topped with jam. Sometimes we would visit the local farms to see all the animals. I would steal fresh eggs from the chicken coup and take them back to Mrs Carey who would scold me whilst giggling

A memory that will be forever etched in my mind was an incident with a Ouija board. Some older girls decided to dabble with the unknown and proceeded to gather 12 of the most popular girls in the school (of which I was one) for a top-secret mission: to make contact with the unseen. All twelve girls made a solemn oath to never disclose our plan to anyone. The oldest girl, Joanna, bought a Ouija board into school and instructed us that just before midnight, all twelve of us had to leave our dormitories, quietly ascend the narrow staircase into the belfry, seat ourselves cross-legged on the floor around the board, hands spread out little-fingers touching the other girls’ little fingers either side of us. We had to ensure that we went up barefooted, as the Miss Clark’s living quarters were directly below the belfry and we couldn’t risk her hearing us.

Joanna set everything up and we eagerly waited for the signal to make contact with the “other side”. The Ouija board was circular with letters of the alphabet around the outside edge with numbers to the inside of the letters. In the middle of the board were the words YES and NO. Joanna placed a small upside-down glass in the middle of the board, in between YES and NO. The silence was deafening. It was pitch black, except for the full moon shining down upon us. We held our breath in anticipation as Joanna attempted to ‘make contact’ with the unseen world. It seemed to take forever as Joanna whispered dramatically “are you there? If you’re there then make your presence felt”. With our thumbs touching and our little fingers in contact with the girl next to us, we held our breath. Whether or not we believed we could make contact with the ‘other side, what happened next traumatised us all. None of us was touching the glass and the Ouija board was firmly on the floor. The wind wasn’t blowing that strongly, but with our gaze fixated on the glass, IT MOVED to the word “YES”. In total unison, we screamed at the top of our lungs, jumped onto our bare feet and dashed for the narrow staircase of the belfry in a stampede, trampling upon each other in an attempt to get away

needless to say, the noise woke Miss Clark up as well as our dormitory ‘house-mothers’ who looked over us during the night. We all jumped into our beds, pulled the covers over our heads and pretended to be asleep, our palpitations almost deafening us. A few minutes later Miss Clark shone a torch up and down the dormitory and said: “I know exactly who you are, I will deal with you in the morning”. Each one of us assumed that she really DID know who had been up in the belfry. I began crying, I was too afraid to sleep, if indeed, sleep did come.

The next day, we all got dressed in complete silence, none of speaking a word to each other. In the dining room, there was an eery quietness as Miss Clark spoke. She very calmly gave a talk: “last night, a very serious incident happened. The perpetrators know who they are, I want them all to come forward and confess, otherwise I shall be left with no choice but to inform the police”. The fear in my heart magnified. I certainly wasn’t going to snitch! Anxiety crept upon me like a dead weight, what if one of the others confesses? Miss Clark continued: “each and everyone in the school is going to get into a line and one by one you will enter my office and close the door. On my desk you will find a notebook and a pen, I want the names of all the girls involved to be written down, otherwise I will call the police to investigate”.

The whole school queued up in a line, beginning in the dining room and ending outside the headteachers door. We were supervised as each girl went into the office for half a minute or so before coming out. In that half minute, we were expected to write our names down as well as the names of our accomplices. The rest of the school had absolutely no clue what this was about and none of the ‘guilty twelve’ was about to tell.

That was an unforgettable day, because not a single one of us wrote our names down, nor did we snitch on the others. The shock of what had happened in the belfry had shaken us to the core. None of the ‘guilty twelve’ ever spoke about it again. Locked in our vow of silence and horrifying experience, we just wanted to put the whole incident behind us, and we did

None of the ‘guilty twelve’ ever spoke about the incident again and Miss Clark never spoke about it either. She must have known that we had all been frightened senseless and this was a lesson for us, never to be repeated