A SQUEAMISH teenager plunged to her death from a veranda after being shown a book full of gruesome pictures, it emerged yesterday.

Odette Coulson, who was 14, was one of a group of pupils looking through a book called Carnival of the Grotesque during their lunch break at Ripon Grammar School.

An inquest was told she looked dazed and unsteady - then she fell down the stairs from the veranda of the school's cricket pavilion, fracturing her skull on the tarmac below.

And despite resuscitation attempts during the 12-mile ambulance trip to Harrogate District Hospital, she died 20 minutes after arriving there.

Odette, from Sharow, near Ripon, had eaten no lunch before flicking through the book with her friends, coroner John Sleightholme was told during the hearing in Harrogate.

One teenage witness said: "She looked a bit unsteady, a bit dazed. Her eyes were closed a bit. I saw her legs bend and she went backwards down the steps."

Asked if Odette had been squeamish, another pupil replied: "Last year in biology, we were watching a video of people being injected and she fainted."

Recording a verdict of accidental death, Mr Sleight-holme said the book may or may not have contributed to Odette's death and her parents had asked that no one be pilloried in any way for taking it into school.

Odette had been hugely popular at the school and fellow pupils were so shocked by the tragedy that counsellors were called in to help them cope with their grief.

Now their attention is focusing on fundraising for a permanent memorial for Odette.

The school plans to plant a tree and surround it with a bench in her name.

"We were all stunned when it happened. It was like a nightmare," said deputy head Jennifer Bellamy yesterday.