El Segundo Academy

El Segundo Academy was a "cult school" ran by Aurora Silver. It is the focus of the extra content site What Happened At El Segundo.

Background
El Segundo was a "pseudo-therapeutic, borderline militaristic boarding school" in California. It was founded by Gertrude Edgeworth and experienced several scandals surrounding the discipline used within the school. This discipline apparently included solitary confinement, hard manual labor, and getting their heads shaved.

2001-2003
Between 2001 and 2002, the number of students at ESA went from 97 to 46. All the girls were moved into two 20-person dorms, and the overcrowding led to more fighting among the student body. A girl named Elizabeth Hook, a former ESA student, was discovered in the Tahoe National Forest by a sophomore from ESA. Her boyfriend, a cocaine dealer named Louis Van Straaten, was charged with her murder.

In September, the music department was flooded unexpectedly, seeing as there was no body of water that could have done the flooding. In October, 27 students were trapped in Meredith dormitory by over 30 wild foxes. Police were called, but the foxes dispesed when an unknown student walked through the circle unharmed.

On November 1st, the ESA chefs found every egg they had to be full of stones. The next day (Mabel Martin's birthday), part of the school building collapsed. Students began to faint in the morning assembly consistently.

On December 19th, the school's director, Ron Newman, disappeared. Six rattlesnakes were found in his office. He was found on December 24, incoherent and shirtless, covered in black mud. He never recovered from his ordeal.

The three students who had stayed behind during winter break were snowed in by a blizzard on December 25. They were completely alone save for Maribeth Parker. One of the girls who stayed ended up disappearing from "secluded cabin somewhere in the San Bernardino mountains" not long after ESA burned down.

Only 38 students returned to ESA after winter break, and they were all stuck into one dorm (Meredith). They shared four to a room. Fighting and punishments increased; by the time the class returned from spring break in late March, only 26 girls were enrolled in El Segundo.

April 3rd 2003
On April 3rd 2003 (exactly thirteen years after the disappearance of Lily Martin, as said in Asterion), El Segundo's main building burned down. Meredith dorm was flooded. Callie called the Jericho fire department and two cops were sent to investigate the call, at which point a window exploded with black smoke. Over half the students were injured; Maribeth Parker disappeared for good.