Captain Lynn walked up to the front door with her single suitcase in hand. She had worked hard to get this position as an assistant director in the boarding house of the military school she had grown up in. She wanted to make a difference in these children’s lives like the school had done for her.
She knocked, but no one answered. She slowly opened the door and peeked inside the narrow hallway. There wasn’t a soul around. As she entered, she could hear students murmuring behind the closed dorm room doors.
Calling it a dorm was a stretch, it was really just a small building with only about 8 rooms for students, three per room.
As she opened the door at the back of the hall, she found the rooms for the two assistant directors and the director. She opened the door for the assistant directors and found both beds to be filled with personal items. Hmm, where was she supposed to sleep?
Then she opened the door to the director’s room and found the bed to be neatly made and the room to be bare of anything that would hint at who the occupants might be.
Perhaps she had read the letter wrong. Maybe she wasn’t to be just an assistant director after all. Something wasn’t quite right.
She went back to the hall and looked down the stairs. There still wasn’t anyone to be found. It was early evening, so someone should be milling about.
Then she looked up the staircase and saw two perfectly groomed shoes peeking out from the tailored and pressed pants of a well-to-do gentleman. He was standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs.
She went back to the hall and looked down the stairs. There still wasn’t anyone to be found. It was early evening, so someone should be milling about.
She called up to him and he slowly receded into the room behind him.
She quickly raced up the steps, anxious to talk to someone and figure out what was going on.
When she reached the top, the gentleman explained that this was his building and he was curious why someone would be milling around after hours.
“What do you mean this is your building? This is the military school’s building.”
As she said it, some of the students, dressed in their night gowns gathered at the bottom of the steps around her.
“Can’t you see those children? I’m here to take care of them. Where’s the director?”
“Ma’am, I’m not sure you understand. I own this building. I purchased it 20 years ago when the military school burned down. There are no children here. Just you and I.”
The History
This home is located up on the side of one of the many hills in Jerome, AZ and the foundation is quickly deteriorating.
Jerome is an old copper mining town that now serves more tourists than miners. It has a famous jail nicknamed “Sliding Jail” because it has slowly slid downhill and is now approximately 200 feet lower than where it was originally built. This may be due to underground blasting that has caused the earth to be unstable.