The Wyatt School House, 132 Arlington Avenue

When local Rhode Islanders refer these days to the Wyatt School House, it is as the "Wyatt-School House," rather than the "Wyatt School-House:" 132 Arlington has been a private residence since the turn of the century, and was converted to apartments in the early 1980s, along with so many other lovely old Victorian buildings during the so-called "renaissance" of the East Side.



The Wyatt School remained in active operation through almost 1900, hobbled though it was by the appearances of the doppleganger of Emilie Sagee.

Emilie Sagee was a teacher at the Wyatt School from 1840-79. Between 1845-46, her doppleganger appeared four separate times:

The first time Emilie's doppleganger appeared was in May of 1945. Emilie was outside of the schoolhouse chatting with a gardener while a piano teacher was inside her classroom for her students' music hour. Emilie was helping pull weeds. She remained, throughout the appearance, in full sight of all 12 of her students plus the piano instructor. About twenty minutes into the music hour, the doppleganger appeared in Emilie's chair, behind her desk. It sat, staring, motionless and serene, for roughly five minutes. Multiple children attempted to attract its attention through shouting and waving of hands; it did not notice them. A few braver children tried to touch it, but the air around it was somehow thick and impermeable. One girl stepped behind the desk and tried to walk in front of it, somehow bypassing the thicker air that the other children had been unable to penetrate, and walked directly through the apparition. Emilie, outside, had been contacted during this time and was on her way back into the building; the apparition was gone by the time she arrived. (The girl died two years later, but of a presumably unrelated strangulation by unknown parties.)

The second and third appearances of the doppleganger appeared also in Emilie's classroom at the Wyatt school: once during the lunch period, in November of 1945, when the children were all eating at their desks and Emilie at hers. The doppleganger appeared roughly five feet to her right, sitting in an invisible chair and eating an invisible sandwich alongside her, following her movements exactly. The second time was three months later. The doppleganger appeared while Emilie was writing on a chalkboard. Again, the apparition appeared about five feet to her right and mimicked her movements (though without holding any chalk and without writing anything), and disappeared very soon after. The children began to shout immediately upon seeing the apparition; both Emilie and the doppelganger looked to their right, Emilie saw nothing, the doppleganger disappeared seconds later.

The last appearance of the doppleganger occured inside Emilie's boarding room upstairs. Emilie was ill with what was probably a typhoid fever. While sweating in her bed in a hallucinatory near-coma, her doppleganer appeared one last time near her bedroom window. A doctor, a close female friend, and the Wyatt women's rooms landlord all witnessed it standing, back to the room, gazing out of the window for over one minute. None approached or attempted to touch it. Finally, it turned toward the room, smiled gently, and disappeared.

Emilie Sagee, of course, recovered, and enjoyed a full career teaching children, though beset throughout the remainder of her life with accusations of witchcraft. She claimed to have never seen the doppleganger, never anticipated its appearance, but to have sometimes felt tired or nauseated during its occurrence.