In the fall of 2015, PhD candidate Jason Green made his way to the decrepit Hotel Celeste hoping to conduct an interview of disgraced historian Richard Dawdson, an academic with once unlimited prospects who had disappeared from the tenure track with enough drama to have become an urban legend himself within the department.

The conversation that followed would not be cited in any dissertation, but here, for your consideration, is the tale Dr. Dawdson told that evening.

This is her story.