Horror for Newbies

Bertha Mellish and the Missing Student

On November 18, 1897, junior student Bertha Lane Mellish vanished from Mount Holyoke College. Her disappearance remains an unsolved mystery.

I’m currently working on a book project that involves the Mellish case. Today it feels especially important to say her name.

Note: If anyone would like a (very brief!) peek into my current book project, here is a video of my presentation “Missing Students and Their Fictional Afterlives: True Crime, Crime Fiction, and Dark Academia.“ I gave this talk earlier this year at the Popular Culture Research Network’s “Guilty Pleasures: Examining Crime in Popular Culture” conference.

Missing Person flyer offering a $500 reward for help finding missing student Bertha Lane Mellish. This broadside, which includes a portrait of Bertha Mellish, was posted December 10, 1897, during the search for missing Mount Holyoke College student.ALTThe opening screen of the video for "Missing Students and Their Fictional Afterlives: True Crime, Crime Fiction, and Dark Academia" by Amy H. Sturgis, with an image of a newspaper clipping from 1897 that reads "Missing from the College: Strange Disappearance of Miss Bertha Lane Mellish." ALT
View more on Amy H. Sturgis's website »
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Published on November 18, 2024 08:16
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