The Old Willis Place: A Ghost Story

Miss Lilian appears outside the shed, shouting for Diana and Georgie to come out. The siblings bolt out the door and run “like rabbits fleeing a fox, like deer fleeing a hunter” (154). They make it to a cave where they plan to stay the night. Diana holds a sobbing Georgie, assuring him that Miss Lilian won’t trap them like she did last time.

Once the initial fear has subsided, Diana and Georgie discuss the cause of their lack of movement: Their physical bodies need to be found and given a proper burial. Until then, Diana reads the ending of Lassie Come Home to Georgie. The last chapters are sad, as Lassie ends up leaving her temporary caretakers, a sweet old couple. The couple “treated her well, they fed her and petted her and loved her, but still she wanted to leave. She had to leave” (158). The book ends with Lassie returning home to her owner, and Georgie smiles.

A few hours later, Diana walks to the trailer to find Lissa. When Diana knocks on the door, she hopes Mr. Morrison isn’t home, as she isn’t “in the mood to pretend to be a normal girl” (159). She is annoyed when he opens the door and eludes his questions. Mr. Morrison ushers her in from the cold, and they wait for Lissa to come out of her room.

Diana returns Lassie Come Home, along with her own copy of Clematis. Mr. Morrison suggests that the girls take Macduff for a walk. He tells Diana that the dog kept them up all night, barking at the howling wind. Diana doesn’t say anything, but she “[knows] what Macduff heard. And so [does] Lissa” (161). The howling wind was Miss Lilian, calling out Diana and Georgie’s names. Lissa gives Diana a sweatshirt to borrow, and she puts it on to appease her and her father. Upon leaving with Macduff, Diana knows it’s time to tell Lissa about the bodies in the cellar.

As Diana begins to speak, she knows “exactly what to say to Lissa. And more importantly, what not to say” (163). Diana makes up a story, saying that back when her parents weren’t as strict, she and Georgie broke into the cellar of the old Willis place. There, they found a secret door. When they opened the door, “[t]wo children were huddled together on the floor. Dead” (165).

Lissa begins to sob and tries to cover her ears, but Diana makes her listen. She tells Lissa that Miss Lilian is the one who locked the door and never returned for the children, leaving them to die. This is the reason why ghosts haunt Oak Hill Manor. She implores Lissa to tell her father to find the bodies, as the children must have a proper burial. Though distraught, Lissa does as she is told. Diana watches her go, knowing that things are about to change forever.

The subsequent diary entry describes Lissa’s horrifying encounter with Miss Lilian. Upon leaving Diana, Lissa begs her father to look for two children’s bodies in the cellar. Mr. Morrison doesn’t believe his daughter, but sees how upset she is and agrees to look. He takes Macduff with him, leaving Lissa alone in the trailer. Lissa grows worried that Miss Lilian might hurt her father, so she walks out into the winter night to find him.

Suddenly, “Miss Willis step[s] out of the trees” (169) and blocks Lissa’s path. She seizes Lissa by the wrist and shakes her, calling her “Diana” and telling her to stop running. Lissa denies being Diana, and the ghost releases her. Lissa runs back to the trailer and remains frozen on the floor, “too scared to move” (169), until her father returns.

A heartbroken Mr. Morrison confirms that he found the bodies, unable to fathom how anyone could do such a thing to children. Mr. Morrison and Lissa hold each other as the latter sobs. After a while, Mr. Morrison calls the police to tell them what he found, and Lissa overhears them mention Miss Lilian likely being the one who locked the children inside the cellar. The police plan to arrive in the morning to see to a proper funeral. The family goes to bed, trying not to think about what happened to the children.

Diana and Georgie awake to a foot of snow. They leave the cave and make their way to the old Willis place. By now, the police know about the bodies in the cellar, but the siblings wish to confirm that they were found. Lissa is in the driveway and runs to the siblings, relieved. She recounts how Miss Lilian grabbed her, thinking she was Diana. Georgie teases Lissa for being scared, but Diana is more forgiving and comforts her friend.

The three children watch as a police car and hearse pull up to the house. Georgie stays to watch them bring out the bodies, but Lissa leaves for the trailer and Diana follows. They play checkers until the police leave. Mr. Morrison returns and tells the girls that the children will be buried with their parents at a place called Mount Holly. Both parents are dead, and there are no surviving relatives.

This news comes as a shock to Diana. Though she’s been dead for 60 years, she had hoped that her parents were “alive somewhere, waiting for news of [their children]” (181). This realization causes Diana to cry, and Mr. Morrison does his best to calm her. She longs for him to comfort her “as if [she] were his child” (181), but she knows he can’t. She heads off to find her own family: Georgie.

Diana returns to the cave, where Georgie is waiting for her with Nero. He begins to describe their bagged remains but gets choked up and can’t continue. Swallowing his emotion, he shares the police’s conversation about Miss Lilian: They debated whether the incident was an accident or not, but they eventually decided that it was intentional as the door had been locked from the outside. Diana and Georgie lament that Miss Lilian got away with murder.

Later that night, Diana and Georgie hear Miss Lilian outside their cave. They dash through the woods to escape, but Miss Lilian runs “as only the dead can run, tirelessly” (186). She calls their names, and the chase continues all the way to the front gate—where Georgie slips and falls. By the time he’s standing again, Miss Lilian has the children cornered. She grabs Diana and says they have “old accounts to settle” (188). Miss Lilian blames the children for making her life miserable, but when they accuse her of murdering them, her expression changes.

Miss Lilian explains that after she locked Diana and Georgie in the cellar, she had a stroke that left her in the hospital and unable to speak for weeks, perhaps even months. During this time, Diana and Georgie died. Upon returning home, Miss Lilian realized what happened and was afraid she would be arrested if she confessed. She spent the rest of her days in misery, waiting to die. For 10 years, her ghost remained trapped in the parlor.

Diana recognizes genuine regret in Miss Lilian’s story. Though what Miss Lilian did was wrong, Diana believes she didn’t mean to commit murder and is remorseful. She instinctually knows that the three must forgive each other in order to leave Oak Hill Manor—so, she forces everyone to hold hands and take turns apologizing.

Suddenly, a bright light appears at the gate, and two figures walk towards Diana, Georgie, and Miss Lilian: The children’s parents have come at long last. Diana and Georgie run to them, leaving Miss Lilian behind. Miss Lilian panics, begging the family to take her with them. Diana explains to her parents that Miss Lilian made a genuine mistake and is remorseful; she invites Miss Lilian to join them. Together, they leave Oak Hill Manor for good.

The final diary entry reveals that Lissa watched Diana, Georgie, and Miss Lilian from afar—specifically, Diana’s forgiveness as they all walked into the light and vanished. Georgie left “Alfie” behind for Lissa, and she hugs the bear close. Mr. Morrison agreed to move away from Oak Hill Manor and enroll Lissa in a public school so she can interact with others her age. Lissa misses Diana, but their time together satisfied her curiosity about the afterlife. She looks forward to seeing her mother again, just as Diana and Georgie were finally reunited with their parents.