MARBLEHEAD — Selectman Harry Christensen had to break a date over the holidays — a date with a ghost.
Christensen had hoped to return to Glover School to investigate the possibility that the building is haunted by the spirit of fifth-grade teacher Beryl Atherton, 47, murdered in her Sewall Street home more than half a century ago. Her killer was never found.
Too much publicity may have blocked Christensen from a meeting with her ghost. Somebody in the School Department, he explained, "told me that we can't allow you to do it." He's keeping the reason to himself, but Christensen notes that in the past ghost stories have frightened some of the young students.
Instead, Christensen planned on an anniversary ritual, standing watch outside of the Sewall Street home where Atherton was brutally murdered — choked and stabbed — on Nov. 25, 1950.
The crime shocked the town. With the killer never caught, the terror never really died for those who remembered. Christensen, a Marblehead native, was a child at the time. As a young student, he began to study the case, and he's remained riveted on it ever since.
For one thing, he's been in the process of writing a book on it. For another, he thinks he knows who killed the woman, who lived alone. What's more, his suspect is still alive, he says, and living outside Marblehead.
A lawyer, Christensen declines to name the "killer."
Recently, he became intrigued by the suspicion that Atherton haunts the school — a building that the School Department hopes to tear down soon and replace. In her book "Marblehead Myths, Legends and Lore," author Pam Mathias Peterson notes that present-day teachers have reported the mysterious and fleeting presence of some unknown woman in the halls and sometimes in the upper-floor classroom where Atherton taught.
"The woman is not menacing and does not try to move toward them," wrote Peterson, who is also the director of the Marblehead Museum and Historical Society. "Instead, she seems sad and moves slowly around the room before fading away."
Acting on such stories, Christensen, who does not believe in ghosts, decided to keep an open mind and visit the school on Halloween. If Atherton's ghost was present, he did not see her. But as he departed, he was intrigued to find a gym rope swinging back and forth for no apparent reason.
News stories about his forays may have ended his hope of returning. "WBZ wanted to do a shoot there," Christensen said. That did not happen.
Atherton was not originally from Marblehead. Despite all sorts of theories and speculative motives for her murder — robbery, romance, revenge — there's a lack of any real evidence. Christensen has long hoped the murderer would come out, unable to keep from betraying himself.
In past stakeouts, he's seen many cars slow down as they passed the house. Some went by multiple times. "I take down the license plate numbers," he said. But ghoulish curiosity might explain the traffic even all these years later. "A lot of people in Marblehead still remember."
Christensen has also taken photos of a then-vacant home. At times, looking later at the pictures, he's noticed lights reflected in a window and seen from a certain perspective they combine to create a kind of image, almost as though someone is inside looking out.
But he knows this cannot be true.
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