The Watch That Kept Time Through a Forbidden August Night

The Watch That Kept Time Through a Forbidden August Night

A pale blue nylon watch, found flat against Fenway Hall’s foundation and still ticking after thirty-one years, suggests a vanished moment someone tried to bury. How did a fifteen-year-old girl wake in a hospital with no memory of a night that left a corridor smelling like something sharp and wrong, and why were the school records for that summer erased?

In this episode, we tell the story surrounding a single object and the missing papers that dogged one woman for decades, tracing what is known about the August night of 1986 and the questions that remain about Pam Norris and Harwick Academy. Can a watch and an incomplete archive point to what the school tried to hide?

Person: Sandra Erickson Person: Pam Norris Location: Fenway Hall, Harwick Academy Date: August 13, 1986 Event: Acetone inhalation hospitalization

- The watch was found six inches below the surface, pressed against the foundation under Fenway Hall’s overhang. - The building had been sealed since 1988 and the watch's crystal was uncracked while its second hand was still moving. - The smell in the second-floor corridor lasted approximately four to five minutes on the night of August 13, 1986. - Pam Norris, age fifteen, was transported about thirty miles to a Greer Falls hospital in a private car and released two days later. - Sandra Erickson visited the Caldwell County archive three times (2001, 2007, 2013) and found consistent gaps in records from 1985-1988 centered on summer 1986.

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