{"id":13036,"date":"2025-02-17T13:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T18:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=13036"},"modified":"2025-02-17T13:35:57","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T18:35:57","slug":"someday-ill-write-a-book-about-all-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=13036","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSomeday I\u2019ll write a book about all this.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Night falls, and in the blowing dark, students jog briskly past Kendall Hall, listening for the eerie nocturne played by Sigrid Stevenson\u2019s ghost. The story of Sigrid has persisted as campus legend for the nearly half a century since her death. Allegedly haunting Kendall, her piano-playing specter is no different from any ghost story \u2014 a sensationalized placeholder for the unexplained. In Sigrid\u2019s tragic case, it\u2019s a deeper metaphor for a young girl\u2019s restless spirit, a traveler not yet ready to leave. <\/span><\/p>\n

Blue-eyed with a bright smile, 25-year-old Sigrid had short, reddish-brown hair and an eclectic wardrobe, and she often shunned eye contact. Her personality had many sides: a loner, quirky, incredibly smart and talented, a classical music buff, a Kerouac admirer, and an avid hitchhiker. According to a childhood friend from California, Sigrid was never boring. A piano prodigy at age 8, she played Beethoven after a single sight-reading. After graduating, she hoped to become a music teacher. <\/span><\/p>\n

She never did. On the night of September 4, 1977, three days before classes started, Sigrid was murdered in Kendall Hall. Her sheet music was found placed at the piano, set to be played. <\/span><\/p>\n

In a 2024 episode of Netflix\u2019s Unsolved Mysteries, we meet the Sigrid obsessed sleuths who have examined every detail in her murder. Among them is Scott Napolitano \u201906, who has tirelessly pored over the facts. What began as his undergraduate film project has become a decades-long search for the truth. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I learned her name and what happened to her,\u201d Napolitano said, \u201cI couldn\u2019t stop. It was like cleaning off a dirty window \u2014 every news article, every interview, every new fact made it easier to see the view of the other side. And the more I saw, the more my heart ached for her.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

With renewed interest and attention to the case, investigators hope the show will generate new leads that will bring Sigrid her long-deserved justice. Even so, the tabloid nature of Sigrid\u2019s murder still eclipses her life. Sigrid was a person. A Trenton State College student, with dreams, fears, and ambitions. Among her possessions, investigators found her diary. In it, her story survives. <\/span><\/p>\n

According to her diary, Sigrid\u2019s days were busy. A full courseload. Multiple jobs, music lessons, gym, choir practice (twice weekly), volunteering \u2014 all without owning a car. She biked and rode the bus but mostly thumbed rides. She\u2019d spent the previous summer on a solo trip, adventuring across Nova Scotia. When criticized for recklessness and chided about the risk of catching rides from strangers, she\u2019d abruptly end the conversation. \u201cI wasn\u2019t brought up to ask for things,\u201d she wrote at one point in her diary. <\/span><\/p>\n

Sigrid felt most alive at the piano bench. As she played, color faded from the walls. She played compulsively, late nights, even if it meant finagling her way into locked music buildings. She was notorious with campus security and maintenance. \u201cRules such as \u2018You can\u2019t stay here after five\u2019 mean nothing to me. The time to leave is when practicing is done and I\u2019ve done what I want with the piece,\u201d she wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Illustration
Illustration of the piano in the room dedicated to Sigrid Stevenson \/ Credit: Sergiy Maidukov<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No one might guess that Sigrid, a self-proclaimed \u201cfeisty, female countertenor, who admittedly didn\u2019t wear a brassiere,\u201d suffered violent mood-swings, often losing her temper, publicly weeping. \u201cWhy is everyone trying to push me around?\u201d she asked, a year before her tragedy. <\/span><\/p>\n

If half of literature is about finding home, the other half is about escaping. Sigrid had a loving family. To Siggy, it was sometimes an aggravating love.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know how to set your own pace,\u201d her father often said. \u201cSlow down.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

In Sigrid\u2019s diary, she confessed that she felt tugged in two directions. One was toward financial security and parental expectations. The other direction? The life she really wanted. The road less traveled. The unknown. <\/span><\/p>\n

Sigrid moved 3,000 miles from California. She rejected her parents\u2019 plane tickets, preferring cross-country bus rides instead. <\/span><\/p>\n

She stood at a crossroads. If she didn\u2019t break free and become her own person, she feared that one day she\u2019d wake up in her mother\u2019s body, living a life that wasn\u2019t hers. <\/span><\/p>\n

She was too young to know one day it gets better. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTry laughing at it, Siggy,\u201d her landlady advised. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not how I operate,\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\n

At choir rehearsals, Reverend Aldridge took her aside for singing too loud. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAll he wanted was to help me figure out why I seem to want to outdo the others all the time \u2026 I see him every Monday at 3 now; he thought it was funny that I would refer to it as \u2018free head-shrinking.\u2019 And I told him a number of things: how much easier it is to get along with older people; how I prefer older men to ones my age or younger; all the mother trouble in the family; and how the victim always seems to be a girl.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

It was July 1977. She was eager to hit the road. Thumbing through New England, she crossed into Canada, wearing her \u201cbig-eye little-girl smile for security guards, professors, and every patrolman.\u201d She made great time, obsessively recording road hours between destinations in her diary. She wrote urgently, as though she was running late. <\/span><\/p>\n

Her travels were upbeat, though on the road she worried more often about finding a place to sleep. In those vagabond days, she slept in vestibules, went days without showers, but seemed happy. <\/span><\/p>\n

In restaurants, she\u2019d drink three water refills before glancing at a menu. Thirsty days on the highway, she slipped wild berries under her tongue, feet aching as the wind whistled past her thumb. She didn\u2019t mind walking, so long as it was sunny. She sketched the countryside, gifting her sketches to strangers who helped her along the way. <\/span><\/p>\n

In her diary, she seemed overjoyed, in motion, purposeful. <\/span><\/p>\n

A thick-accented trucker told her, \u201cYou got more nerve than Dick Tracy,\u201d buying her Cokes and sandwiches as she recited her adventures. She offered <\/span>him a sketch, but he declined. His wife got jealous easily. <\/span><\/p>\n

She crossed back into Maine, fished for lobster, camped on a beach, and wrote in her diary. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTime doesn\u2019t mean much up here, but means plenty in the place I\u2019m going to in a few days,\u201d she wrote with a borrowed pencil, fretting over the impatient pencil-lender waiting nearby. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSomeday I\u2019ll write a book about all this,\u201d she wrote. <\/span><\/p>\n

Forty-seven years later, thanks to Scott Napolitano and the college administration, Sigrid\u2019s memory will live on in a designated practice room in the Music Building on campus. Music was Sigrid\u2019s sanctuary. Nothing else compared. \u201cAs long as the music stays, I can face anything,\u201d she told herself. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo here I am,\u201d she stated in one of her final entries, as she hid in a <\/span>church choir room in New York City, waiting for someone downstairs to leave so she could play.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A look at Sigrid Stevenson\u2019s diary shows she had already written it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":301,"featured_media":13048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/301"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13036"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13105,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13036\/revisions\/13105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}