[Eerie music]

Jordan: Welcome to "Where is Araminta Green?" where I, Jordan Thompson, investigate the disappearance of my classmate and neighbor. Two years ago, I was the last person to see Araminta, and the mystery of her whereabouts just won't leave my mind. This episode, the fourth installment of the series, won't be about Araminta Green though. Instead, it will focus on another Araminta: Araminta Lee. The woman whose name I found on a gravestone and who somehow seems connected to Araminta Green. I hope that finding out more about the other Araminta will also lead me closer to finding the Araminta I knew.

Since Araminta isn't a common name and I have dates from the gravestone—marking the woman's birth and death—to go on, I'm hopeful I will be able to find something about her.

***

[Students chattering]

Jordan: I'm coming to you directly from the school library, where I'm using the databases to access more information than I'm able to at home.

[Keyboard clanking]

Jordan: Once again, I got a trusty partner by my side. Although, I left Kiki at home and she has been replaced by my classmate Derek, who I'm paired up with for the remainder of this course. You want to say hi to the audience, Derek?

Derek: Wow, I get to be on air as well? I'm a celebrity now! Hello, Jordan's listeners!

Jordan: [mumbles] I mean... it's really only you and Professor Carrigan who listen to this.

Derek: That's not true! I saw you had hundreds of listens already when I listened this morning. You're going viral!

[Cheers]

Jordan (narrating): Having checked my stats, it appears Derek is correct. Hundreds of people have listened to my previous episodes. Whoever hears this is listening right now, I guess. I don't know how you found my podcast or what is making you come back to it but thank you for tuning in! It makes me a bit nervous to know that you're out there but will do my best to bring you quality content.

[Eerie music]

Jordan (narrating): So... back to my research. Before even coming to the library, I managed to find an obituary from the local newspaper, claiming Araminta Lee was mourned by her sister Esmeralda Lee.

[Witchy laughter]

Jordan (narrating): Yeah, I'm assuming that's Esme, whom I've already talked to. So Araminta Lee was her sister, the woman whom Araminta Green helped out when she was sick. The woman who previously owned Kiki.

[Cat meows]

Jordan (narrating): The woman who may have been a witch, or at least wielded some kind of mysterious powers.

[Witchy laughter]

Jordan: So... where should we start now?

Derek: Ancestry.com of course! You said you had the woman's date of birth, right? Then I can just...

[Keyboard clanking]

Derek: ...look up the closest census and we'll see if we can find her there. I see from your notes that she was born in 1928. Then we'll need to start by checking the 1930 census.

Jordan: And can you describe to the listeners what exactly a census is and what it contains?

Derek: It's a population count done every ten years, to check who lives where and with whom. So we should be able to find parents and siblings on there.

Jordan: How do you know so much about this?

Derek: I wrote an article last year about my great-grandfather's journey here from China, to find out whether the family lore of him being related to the last Emperor was true. I started my research for an essay in History class but eventually got the article published in a Genealogy magazine.

Jordan: And was he? Related to the Emperor, I mean?

Derek: I found some indications that he may have been an illegitimate son to a distant relative of the Emperor but nothing conclusive.

[Awestricken wow]

Jordan (narrating): Yeah, I know Derek's ancestry isn't really important for this podcast, but I want to give him credit for his research skills and tell anyone who is listening to this to check out his article "Son of The Forbidden City" published by Family Tree Magazine last year. I read it that night in bed and was enthralled throughout!

[Cheers]

Jordan (narrating): Anyway, back to the research at hand.

[Keyboard clanking]

Derek: Here, Jordy, I found her!

Jordan (narrating): That took him all of five minutes... Derek has pulled up a blurry page of the 1930 census for Mistwood. When he hovers over the blurry hand-written notes, transcribed content appears beside them.

Derek: Araminta Lee, two years old in 1930. Next to her sister Esmeralda Lee, noted as a newborn, and... one, two, three... eleven other siblings, all older than the two girls. Then there are their parents: Augustus and Benedicta Lee, both thirty-seven years old at the time of the census. We're in luck that they got quite unusual names because that will make them easier to find in other sources. With a last name like Lee, someone named John would have been impossible to track down. But Augustus and Benedicta Lee should be searchable!

[Keyboard clanking]

Derek: And here it is! A marriage certificate for the parents. They married in 1913 but they lived further south then. Augustus is noted to work as a stable hand at the time, but in 1930, he seems to work as a farrier according to the census.

Jordan: Which means he did what?

Derek: Let's consult our friend Google...

[Keyboard clanking]

Derek: Found it! It's someone who works with horse care. Specifically, trimming the hooves and putting on new horseshoes. Quite often, people who did this work traveled around, offering their services. That may be why the family stayed in your hometown in 1930. This was also during the Depression when a lot of people were forced to leave their homes. So they may have been displaced, traveling the country, and only staying in one place as long as there was work to do. The place where they're living in the 1930 census seems to be some kind of temporary housing since it's just listed as "Barracks".

Jordan (narrating): So if the family was traveling the country, why did Esmeralda and Araminta stay in Mistwood? Well, we found an answer, and I don't want to sound like a hypeman here, but what we discovered may blow your mind.

[Explosion]

Derek: In the 1940 census though, I can't find any of them there anymore. Not the girls. Not the siblings. Not the parents.

Jordan: They left town perhaps?

Derek: Perhaps... and then the girls came back later? But let me check something else first.

[Keyboard clanking]

Derek: Ah... that's what I suspected. Here's Augustus' death certificate. He passed away in 1932 from consumption. That's what they called tuberculosis in those days. And there is more...

Jordan (narrating): Certificate after certificate appears on the screen. Thirteen of them in total. First Augustus, then siblings, and finally Benedicta passed away as well, in 1936. They perished one after one another during a period of four years. Consumption is listed as the cause of death for every single one of them. In cramped and dirty quarters, I guess there was no way to protect themselves once the disease took hold.

Jordan: But what about the girls? How did they survive and where did they go?

Derek: I don't know. I can't find any more records that mention them. They just seem to have vanished. Well, up until Araminta Lee's death certificate that is. She was born and she died, but what happened in those ninety-two years in between isn't noted anywhere. There are other databases we can search though.

[Keyboard clanking]

Jordan (narrating): It takes us a while. Days actually. Derek and I spend the afternoons—after our seminars have ended for the day—deeply entrenched in old archives. I'm the one who finds the article, written in faded ink against yellow paper. It's scanned from a now-defunct local newspaper into a library database. After having trawled page after page of old anecdotes, I had almost given up hope of finding anything. But suddenly, big blocky letters form a headline that takes my breath away. Because it tells a story that feels eerily familiar.

[Gasp]

Jordan (narrating): "The Girls from the Woods" is written above a splotchy image of two young girls, called Araminta and Esmeralda.

[Wind howls]

Jordan (narrating): The article is written during the war-torn early 1940s and tells us that the two girls have just come walking from the woods after going missing five years earlier. In the chaos of people constantly coming and going to the temporary barracks that they called their home, the disappearance wasn't noticed at the time. Since the rest of their family had all perished, no one was around to miss them. No one but their friend Jane.

The text tells us that Jane lived in a cottage nearby and used to play with the girls in the woods behind the barracks. But one day, they were gone. Jane heard that the girls' mum had been buried that day, following their father and siblings into the ground. Jane says that she tried to ask for the girls, but no one seemed to know where they were or even be aware that they had existed. Sometimes, Jane told herself the memories of playing hopscotch and double dutch with Esmeralda and Araminta had only happened in her dreams. Then, her family moved away and the memories faded. But in her heart, Jane knew the girls had been real. So when she happened to come back to Mistwood many years later, accompanying her mother to a new employment, she insisted they'd stop at the field where the barracks used to stand. And that's where she found her friends, safe and sound, and apparently even in good vigor.

[Wind chimes]

Derek: So... where were they all those years? Their mom died in 1936 and this is in 1941, right?

Jordan: The girls insist they were in the woods the whole time according to the article. Their mother told them to go there when she was gone. She told them the woods would take care of them and keep them safe.

Derek: But if they were in the woods the whole time, how come no one found them before Jane? It doesn't sound like they were far away and even if people weren't looking, they should have seen them.

Jordan: I don't know... the article is kind of vague on that part. And there are no more articles?

Derek: Nope, I scanned the coming weeks of that paper and I can't find anything more. And I think I know why... look at the date.

Jordan (narrating): The newspaper is dated December 6th, 1941. The day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Which probably caused smaller local stories to be dropped and forgotten.

[Wind howls]

Jordan: You think Jane might still be alive? Maybe I can even talk to her?

Derek: I looked her up on ancestry.com and I can't find a date of death, so I think there is a chance... I'll see if I can figure out where she resides nowadays but it may take a while. And she would be in her nineties by now. My great-grandma is ninety-three though and still tends to her garden and goes power-walking around the mall, so you never know, Jane may still be spry as well.

***

Jordan (narrating): So that's where we stand. I've uncovered another mysterious disappearance, eighty years prior, involving another Araminta. I have more information but I'm none the wiser. But Derek will keep looking for Jane while I go back home and talk to Araminta's sister Christine in a few days. Hopefully, we will find out something useful that will bring us closer to Araminta. Because if Araminta and Esmeralda could be brought back eighty years ago, I believe the same could be possible today. Araminta Green can still be found.

So stay tuned for episode five whenever it drops!

[Eerie music starts]

Jordan: Subscribe to follow along as new episodes drop.