The story takes place at Brinkley Female College, a mansion-turned-school in downtown Memphis (the building was demolished in 1971). One day, a young girl named Clara Robertson was at the college practicing the piano alone. She looked up from the keys and saw a little girl standing before her with a moldy pink dress and decaying flesh. Clara screamed and reported the incident but nobody paid much attention to it. A few days later the apparition appeared again -- this time, however, two of Clara's classmates were there to witness it, too. It was during this sighting that the ghost began to speak to Clara. She told her that her name was Lizzie Davidson and that her family's treasure was buried beneath a tree stump behind the house.
When word got out of this strange message, some locals recalled that a little girl by the last name of Davidson had died in the mansion ten years prior. Interestingly enough, she had been buried in a pink dress.
Clara received other messages from the spirit, many of them through seances held in her home. She was told that the treasure under the stump was a jar filled with gold coins, jewelry, and the deed to the property. Eventually, Clara's father hired workers to dig up the old tree stump. After hours of digging and prying, the stump was removed and a jar was indeed pulled from the ground. At that moment, a voice warned Clara that the jar was not to be opened for sixty days. However, packets and an envelope could be seen through the jars dirty and moldy glass, suggesting that the purported contents were indeed inside.
Clara's father planned a public opening of the jar, sixty days from the morning it was found. The night before the opening, however, he was assaulted outside of his home and the jar was stolen. It was never recovered.
The most fascinating aspect of this story is that the entire city was captivated by, and perhaps afraid of, this ghostly girl in the pink dress -- by many, this story was accepted as fact. Over the years, other residents of Memphis have claimed to see the same apparition. None of these stories, however, have the same ring of truth nor the elaborate details of Clara's story.
A book was written about the incident later in 1871. Called The Brinkley Female College Ghost Story and written by J.R. Robertson, the work is now in the public domain. You can read the 36 page book in its entirety at the Indiana University website.
