passion
Colin Dickey,
Hauntingly Poignant Author Alumnus frights and delights with real-life ghost stories
WORDS BY JARED SCOTT TESLER PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN MICHAEL KILBANE
S
ince he was a little boy, Colin Dickey MS ’91 had always dreamed of becoming an architect. But while at Harker’s middle school – inspired by highly respected and beloved English teachers, including the late Sylvia Harp – he had a change of heart.
“Harker nurtured a kind of creative rigor that I appreciate – not just memorizing and repeating information but getting us to think critically and to go beyond received truths,” Dickey said. “At some point, I realized that one could easier build things out of words than out of bricks and wood.” And so, at 12 years old, while most boys his age were playing sports or video games, he spent his after-school hours reading books and writing stories on his mother’s word processor. With the nearby labyrinth-like Winchester Mystery House – designed and built by Sarah Winchester, widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, and said to be haunted by ghosts – serving as his muse, his early interest in architecture would creep its way into his latest and greatest passion.
Images provided by Viking/Penguin Press
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HA HARR K E R MAGA Z I NE N E l FA L L/W I N T E R 2016