Work Text:
R: Welcome to Buzzfeed Unsolved and today we have a rather old, but still well-known case.
S: I’m amazed that we haven’t covered this before now.
R: So am I.
(clears throat)
R: We start on Valentine’s Day 1900 near the town of Woodend in Victoria, Australia stood a school known as Appleyard College, run by the headmistress, Mrs Appleyard. On that fateful day, the school took a trip to a local beauty spot and geological formation known as Hanging Rock. While the girls and their teachers had their picnic, three of the girls ventured further up the rock and vanished. One of their teachers followed them and she too vanished.
S: So, let’s get the facts. The girls in question – Miranda St. Clare, Marion Quade and Irma Leopold – were given permission to explore the rock and to take measurements.
R: Measurements?
S: I think they were measuring the bulges in the rock.
R: I hope so.
(wheeze)
S: Anyway, the three girls climbed up the rock, along with another girl, Edith Horton. According to Edith, after leaving the group, the four of them passed over a small stream. This was confirmed by two young men who had been watching the girls –
R: Sorry?
S: Watching the – the girls.
R: I understand that sexual perversion was viewed differently back then, but come on…
S: They just thought, ‘Righty-ho, then, going to spend my free time staring at some pretty young ladies without their knowledge.’
R: Righty-ho?
S: Australians are descended from the British, aren’t they?
R: True. But only about fifteen percent of Australians are descended from convicts.
S: Really?
R: I’m – I’m not sure if the survey I read meant all Australians or just – anyway…
(clears throat)
R: The four girls proceeded to climb the grassier parts of the formation, up the rock itself. Edith said that Miranda had told her not to look down at the ground, but up in the sky. It seems that the girls seemed drawn in by the rock itself. Not surprising, when you consider that in those days young women barely went outside the house. Edith stopped for a rest on a log but said that the other girls ‘appeared to be transfixed by the natural occurrence all around them’.
S: Sorry?
R: That’s how people spoke back then.
S: How dull would your life have to be to be obsessed with a giant rock?
R: Those were different days. Back then – back then people didn’t have TV, the internet, they didn’t even have radio. This sort of thing would be a once-in-a-lifetime trip for girls who had – spent their lives in stuffy rooms behind closed doors.
S: I guess so.
R: Here is where the mystery truly begins. Edith was sitting on the log when the other three girls started to walk off behind some natural structures. Edith followed them, going through some tunnels between the rock walls. When they reached an open area, Edith said that she lay down because she didn’t feel well. The girls reportedly started taking off their shoes and stockings and climbed around barefoot. They then proceeded to climb up another part of the rock formation. Edith followed after them, still tired. It was at this point that the girls lay down to rest on the rocky ground.
S: At this point the rest of the picnic were also having a nap in the sun. The only one not to do so, according to several reports from the girls, was their teacher Miss Greta McCraw. When Edith woke up, she said that she felt ‘perfectly awful’.
R: Turn of the Century phrase for ‘I feel sick’.
S: The other three girls were walking away from her. Edith would later describe them as ‘being in a trance’ as they moved closer towards a gap in the rock wall. She refused to go after them, running and screaming all the way back to the picnic.
R: She must have been terrified.
S: The party raised the alarm when Edith came back alone. The other teacher with them, Mlle. De Poitiers, soon discovered that Miss McCraw was also missing. There was a quick search conducted by some local residents and policemen, but the party returned to the school that night when no trace of the four missing women were found by dusk.
R: The search parties over the following weeks included the two young men who said that they had eyed the girls. (groans) Didn’t anyone think that this was a little suspicious? Anyway, when these two men searched an area of the rock by themselves, they not only found a shred of lace, presumably from one of the girls’ dresses, but one of them was reportedly catatonic.
S: That’s creepy.
R: What gets even creepier is that one of the three girls, Irma Leopold, was found by one of these two men, who remained unnamed throughout the investigation. However, she provided no information to anyone, saying that she didn’t know what had happened up on the rock. Irma had a bruise on her hand and had had a concussion, but those seemed to be the extent of her physical injuries.
S: It’s strange that she seemed to have been in a – trance – for days without food or water.
R: There was no evidence of any sexual assault, either. Her corset was missing, but that could mean anything.
S: Taking three girls would have been very difficult. Even in a town where you might have a car, it can be very tricky. But up on a massive rock…
R: That’s one of the reasons why this case is so baffling.
S: Anything else before we get onto the theories?
R: Yes. A week after Irma Leopold was found, one of the other girls committed suicide by throwing herself out of the window and through the greenhouse roof.
S: What? That’s – sudden.
R: The reason behind the girl’s death was mostly covered up, as was her name, but the only information I could find was that she killed herself due to fear of going back to an orphanage. Mrs Appleyard in turn would kill herself after throwing herself from the rock itself. The school burnt down the following year. Edith died in Melbourne a few years later of unspecified causes. Irma went back to Europe, married a French count and died in 1968. The last of the girls’ classmates died later that year.
S: Now for the theories.
R: The first and most likely explanation is that Miranda and Marion got lost and suffered either an accident or died of exposure. Miss McCraw also possibly got lost.
S: But that doesn’t explain how Irma didn’t know anything.
R: She could have been traumatized.
S: I suppose.
R: Another theory is that the girls and Miss McCraw were murdered, possibly by the two young men who were spying on them. But if so, what happened to the bodies? The brush and the rock were thoroughly searched and even though they didn’t have the technology they have today, chances are that the bodies would have been found quickly.
S: A third theory is that there was some supernatural occurrence up on the rock. This theory was played up due to the three girls’ strange behavior and Irma’s memory loss. A psychic at the time said that she ‘saw lizards’ and local Aborigines attributed the disappearances to the Australian Dreamtime.
R: There is also speculation of alien abduction, which of course you would believe.
S: Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.
R: In any case, for the time being, the mystery of the girls at Hanging Rock shall remain unsolved.