CORINTH — In the last scene of Tim Burton’s 1988 film “Beetlejuice,” a young Winona Ryder in a gothified school uniform mounts her bicycle and wheels away from a tall white schoolhouse. A sign out front names the building Miss Shannon’s School for Girls.
On Halloween four years ago, Kendall Gendron, 38, closed on the sale of that same schoolhouse. Though by then the building had served as a Masonic lodge for years, Corinth children went to school in it until 1972; it was also a local playhouse for some time. Now, Miss Shannon’s School is the site of Gendron’s certified nonprofit, which she hopes will raise enough funds to turn the iconic building into a gathering space for the Upper Valley.
The school’s front lawn has seen two fall markets since Gendron bought it, but this weekend, she’s hosting her first serious event: The Beetle Ball, a ticketed (and sold-out) dance on Halloween night paying tribute to Burton’s “Beetlejuice” in theme and location. Costumes are encouraged; extravagance is inevitable.
Building the Beetle Ball
Gendron answered the door of her schoolhouse in an enormous shaggy pink coat, letting in a sliver of sunshine to the dim first floor, far colder than the weather outside. She gestured to the right, where she had turned an old classroom into a green room for Saturday night’s performers and a general space to store her massive amount of setup stuff. Her loopy handwriting spells out to-do lists in chalk on the school’s original blackboard: “Clean bar ceiling,” “Vacuum/mop upstairs.” On the far right of the board, she left a maintenance list in blockier font, written by the Freemasons who owned the space before her.
On the other side of the entrance, a doorway leads into Gendron’s future cafe. Tables built by the Masons and chairs saved from the school fill a space she hopes locals will frequent once schoolhouse renovations are done.
“I want it to be a community hub,” she says.
She marched up a flight of creaking wood stairs, lined with pumpkins, to a warmer, brighter second floor, the setting for Saturday’s Beetle Ball. Up here, Gendron has covered tables with black-and-white-striped plastic sheets, where attendees can sit and munch on the hot dogs she plans to serve. The bar on the other side of the ballroom will serve canned beer, wine and cocktails; now that the ball is sold out, Gendron eyed her supply, wondering if she’ll have enough.
Betelgeuse himself stood sentry by the DJ booth — temporarily host to a series of power tools — where DJ NIIIK will play music for the “dead dance” Halloween night. Above the stage, where the Burlington-based drag queen Emoji Nightmare will host a drag show at the ball, a bright red mural depicts Dante’s Inferno Room, the strip club that amuses Betelgeuse in the film. Gendron painted it herself.
The schoolhouse is home to Betelgeuse, Pennywise, a kraken, black skeleton bats that hang from the rafters, various horrifying clowns, a dead woman on a swing, a mummy nearly as tall as the ceiling and 120 skeletons. All, of course, fake, but frightening nonetheless — although not to Gendron, apparently.
“I smudged,” she says, throwing open double doors to a rickety balcony with a sweeping view of Corinth in the sun. By that, Gendron means she burned sage all over the building.
Though Gendron owns two other businesses — Devil’s Den Cannabis Co. and Vittles Cafe, both in Bradford — she has spent almost every day in the schoolhouse since July, usually alone or accompanied by her 4-year-old son, getting it in order for Saturday night.
Growing up ‘Beetlejuice’
Other than a six-month period, Wade Pierson has lived in Corinth for all 63 years of his life. The same year the first “Beetlejuice” came out, he moved to the house he has lived in ever since: located, by coincidence, right across the street from Miss Shannon’s School for Girls. If Pierson were a year older, he would have gone to school there for real, as all his siblings did; it closed before he started fourth grade.
“Everything’s connected,” he said.
When Pierson was 24 and lived on Chicken Farm Road, he had to drive around on a ramp for two days to get over the bridge at the intersection of his street and Village Road. The “Beetlejuice” crew built the detour so they could construct a track for the car in which Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis drive to their deaths in the movie.
At the time, Pierson, like everyone else in Corinth, didn’t know that Burton was directing a soon-to-be cult classic. Now, “Beetlejuice” is his favorite movie. It helps that the shot of Ryder leaving Miss Shannon’s includes Pierson’s father’s school bus. And when Warner Bros. shot the 2024 sequel, Pierson had inherited the bus company. He cleaned one up for its three-second cameo in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
“My bus was parked across this way,” Pierson said, gesturing across the street from the front of his home. “My dad’s was parked there.”
In October, Pierson usually decks out his house in “Beetlejuice” decor. This year, though, a lone blow-up Betelgeuse guards his front door, and characters from another Tim Burton town, Sleepy Hollow, haunt his property (including a particularly frightening animatronic cat). Pierson doesn’t want his own “Beetlejuice” decor to distract from the main event across the street.
Thanks to a tip from a man who worked on the film, Pierson had the foresight to save pieces of the “Beetlejuice” set when Warner Bros. had finished with it. At 63, he now owns the entire front porch of the house where most of the movie takes place, plus piles of wood he keeps deconstructed somewhere secret. He kept pieces of wood from the red covered bridge Baldwin and Davis crash into, and now sells them to raise money for kids to ski for free at Northeast Slopes. He hopes to sell a few to Saturday night’s crowd at the Beetle Ball.
“I always thought that somebody would be interested in these things eventually,” he said.
A Halloween wedding day
In all his years living across from Miss Shannon’s, Pierson has seen thousands of “juicers” come to look at the schoolhouse. That’s what he and Gendron call “Beetlejuice” fans in search of iconic sites from the film; they usually drive over the bridge and learn that in real life, the red cover doesn’t exist, and that the house was a facade constructed for filming — but Miss Shannon’s School for Girls stands strong.
Thursday, a Ford Expedition with a family of juicers pulled into Gendron’s grassy lot on their way to Salem, Massachusetts, from Ontario. Stacey Watson has loved “Beetlejuice” since she was a kid, and usually travels on Halloween weekend, so she brought her husband and two sons to Corinth to see where one of her favorite movies was filmed.
“I would have paid to go in, if it was an option,” Watson said.
It might be soon enough, once Gendron raises enough funds to re-expose the schoolhouse’s original ceiling, fix the fire escape and drill a new well.
Though “Beetlejuice” fits a Halloween theme, Gendron wants her schoolhouse to offer community events year-round. As soon as Halloween ends—and after “a week-long nap”—she’ll start preparing for a Krampus Christmas party at the house.
“If I had my druthers,” she says, “children would come. Krampus would scare the pants off of them. I’d get a bunch of great pictures of them crying and having a great time, and then having hot cocoa, and then sending them on their way. Then Austrian food and beer for adults later, and we can all … have a nice merry time with the Christmas demon.”
Then she envisions a Valentine’s Day dance for seniors. “Loneliness is an issue out here,” she says, staring at the demonic strip club painted on the wall. Her schoolhouse, she hopes, will alleviate some of that loneliness.
For Bill Cole, 62, and Sara Murray, 56, the schoolhouse will symbolize exactly the opposite of loneliness. Before the Beetle Ball Saturday, Gendron’s husband Travis will officiate a wedding for the couple from Union, Kentucky. Cole and Murray have been together for 13 years and decided their wedding should be a silly affair at the site of Cole’s favorite film. Until a recent visit to check out Corinth, the soon-to-be newlyweds had never been to Vermont.
“She plays along with all of my ridiculous ideas,” Cole said of Murray.
Cole will dress like Betelgeuse and his bride like Ryder’s character from the movie — Lydia, the object of the evil spirit’s love. Cole’s daughter and her husband will dress like Barbara and Adam Maitland, Davis and Baldwin’s characters in the film.
“When you’re older, like we are … it frees you to do fun things,” Cole said.
In lieu of a wedding reception, Betelgeuse and Lydia will have their first dance at the Beetle Ball, surrounded by skeletons: As romantic as it gets.
