There was a time when I was younger that Lucinda’s Dance Academy had been filled with life. Every day I would walk home from Kennedy Elementary School, passing outside the majestic building, and I would be drawn in by the sounds that floated out of the open doors and windows. I would find myself walking up the front steps and peering inside, watching the dancers, absolutely amazed and their beauty and grace. What happened there was an absolute shame.

On the last day of my third grade year, I was walking home in hopes of seeing the dancers in their costumes that afternoon. When I arrived, there were police cars surrounding the building and caution tape blocking out anyone who tried to go in. I looked up at one of the police officers that was standing outside and tugged on his sleeve to get him to look down at me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. He frowned and pushed me off of him.

“You best go home.” He told me, crossing his arm and looking away from me. “This isn’t for children to see.”

Because he was a police officer, I felt that had no choice but to leave, so I continued on my way home to find my mother sitting anxiously on the steps. When she saw me, she ran to me and wrapped her arms around my tightly, tears rushing down her face. I could not understand why she was crying or why she was so happy to see me.

I explained to her what I had seen, and asked her if she knew what was going on. All she told me was that there was an accident. Ever since that day, Lucinda’s Dance Academy has been abandoned…


I didn’t find out until I was thirteen that what had happened at Lucinda’s was no accident. One of the ballerina’s hadn’t gotten the lead role, and apparently she had thought that she really deserved it. According the police reports, the girl had gone insane and took her boyfriends’ gun to rehearsal and began shooting, killing everyone who was there, and then committing suicide.

Lucinda’s Dance Academy was shut down after that, and no one had ever wanted to reopen it. I was in middle school at this point, but I still took the same pathway home. Every day I would walk past the once majestic building and cast a sorrowful glance up at it. Though I had been taking dance lessons for years now at Laurie Lanes Dance Hall, I still remembered wanting nothing more as a child than to become a famous Ballerina at Lucinda’s. No place could ever compare to it, in my mind.

It was a cold and rainy day that marked the fifth anniversary of the shooting, and as I was walking home, I decided to stop and sit on a bench outside Lucinda’s for a few moments to pay some respect. I sat there for a few moments, just staring at it, when suddenly something odd happened.

A very skinny, pale skinned girl was walking down the sidewalk dressed in a pink leotard and a sheer pink tutu. She was carrying a gym bag, and her dark hair was pulled back in an elegant bun. The girls steps were light and graceful, and I watched as she approached Lucinda’s, walking towards the front steps.

“Miss!” I called out, trying to get the girls attention. “Miss! You can’t go in there. I’m sure you have the wrong dance school. Lucinda’s has been closed for years!” I called out to her. I watched as she turned and looked at me, giving me a small smile and a wink, and then disappeared into the already open door.
I jumped to my feet and ran after her, right into the front lobby. I looked around and did not see her, so I headed back into the dance hall. She was not their either. I checked every room in the abandoned school, and I could not find the girl anywhere. It baffled me. Exiting the building, I waited outside for almost an hour to see if the girl would come out, but she didn’t. I decided to just give up and go home.
For the next couple of weeks, I would wait outside Lucinda’s for an hour every afternoon, waiting to see if the girl would return. She didn’t, and after a few weeks, I decided to pass the event off as just my overactive imagination and emotions. I soon forgot all what I thought I had seen…

I was a senior in high school when the tenth anniversary of the shooting rolled around, and still I missed Lucinda’s Dance Academy. I still walked the same path home and still paid the building respect on the anniversaries. So it was no shock that I was sitting outside the building on the warm spring afternoon, looking up at the decrepit building and imagining it as it had once been. That’s when I saw her.
She was wearing her pink leotard, her sheer pink tutu, and she was carrying her gym bag. Her dark hair was tied up. The memory flooded back to me. This couldn’t be a coincidence. I couldn’t be imagining this twice! I jumped to my feet as I had before and blocked her path on the sidewalk. “Miss!” I nearly screamed in her face. She acted as if she didn’t see me though, and merely walked around me. I watched as she approached the steps as she had all those years before, and turned, seemingly looking directly at me, and gave a small smile and a wink, and the disappeared inside the building.
Grabbing my backpack, I ran home as fast as I could. I burst through the front door, startling my mother. I apologized quickly and dropped my bag in the front hall and ran up the stairs to my bedroom. I grabbed my laptop off of my desk and sat down with it on my bed, opening it and turning it on. When I had it on, I went to internet and typed in the details of the shooting at Lucinda’s into the search bar. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for.
I clicked on a link that took me to a list of names of the victims, and was thankful that there were pictures of each one. I scrolled down until I found a picture of the girl I was looking for. Her hair was put up in an elegant bun, and she was wearing a pink leotard and a sheer pink tutu in the picture. Eliza Reynolds. I took the name and searched for her on the internet. I found one article that told me everything I needed to know.

Eliza Reynolds was an upcoming star at Lucinda’s Dance Academy. She had just received news that she was about to dance the lead for the first time in a production of The Nutcracker. Unfortunately, she was never able to dance the lead because on the afternoon of May 11th, 1998, she fell victim to one of the other dancers who went insane and shot everyone in the building before shooting herself…


I was shocked. Surely the girl I had been seeing wasn’t Eliza. It couldn’t be, could it? For the rest of the evening, I spent my time researching hauntings and paranormal events to gain more information on the subject. I never returned to Lucinda’s after that day, so I have no way of knowing for sure what I had seen. But something in my heart tells me that beyond all rationality is another world, and world in which Eliza still exists and returns to Lucinda’s Dance Academy every five years to prepare for her upcoming dance recital…