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Libraries: Both Haunting and Haunted

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michelleeb1970

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Sep 10, 2004
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I've worked in libraries for about ten years now, and I have to say, they are incredibly creepy places. Ok, the one I'm in now has a haunted toilet....seriously!. The door sticks, and won't open (terrifying if you're in there.) and there is an atmosphere. Once it was locked, and the cleaner couldn't open it. She tugged on the door for ages. She had to call the caretaker, as she was worried someone was stuck in there. He came in, took the handle..and the door opened smoothly. Not a moment's hesistation or stickiness.

My job involves working in one room of the library while the rest of it is empty. Sometimes I have to go into the empty library. Once I was in there when I heard footsteps coming across the floor towards me...I left quickly. Another time, a colleague heard noises on the roof. Not so unusual..except all the pipes and steps leading up to the roof having been painted with anti-climb paint, so no-one can get up there, except through the inside access stair..which is of course, locked.

Thanks to some bizarre thinking by a certain library authority figure (a right idiot) now the inner doors are locked, so if I want to go into the library, I have to go round the outside and in through the back door..right by the toilet. I always feel uncomfortable when I do this, as if I were being watched.

Anyone else got haunted library stories?
 
L-space my friend, L-space.

The only spooky library I know of is the one in Ghostbusters. I neraly crapped myself watching that scene as a kid!
 
I've always found libraries restful and safe. Even when I stay late and everyone's gone but the last-shift librarians and the janitor, the atmosphere is more like home on an autumn night thatn anything else. Any ghost you met in a library would be benevolent, I'd think, or anyway innocuous. What a grand way to spend your afterlife, reading all you wanted.

Obviously I've never been to michelleb's library.
 
I've worked in libraries forever, but other than Ghostbusters, don't know of any haunted library stories. I did see where somebody wrote "Die" in blood on a carroll once though, and I think a story of mine is going to become a UL before too long....

EDIT to add link to the story I post before:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10820

And the story:
Yes, it's true. I think I started an urban legend. Sort of. Here are the startling details.

At the library I worked at in college, there were three people going for a full-time job. I didn't get it, and another guy didn't get it. A lady friend (I'll call her Beth) of both of ours got the job instead. But the other guy who didn't get the job (I'll call him John Doe) got really mad a disappeared when he was told about not being hired.

He was under alot of stress. he had been thrown out of his house for being gay, and his current lover was of a different race so he was ostracised from the local gay community, and he was on some drugs of some kind.

In any case, my student assistant job was that of "odd job man", and among other things I cleaned up graffitti. So John pulled me aside about a week after the incident, and told me that he had put up graffitti all over the library saying that the lady Beth was of "ill repute", and it was written all over, bathrooms, shelves, you name it.

So I set out to get rid of the graffitti, but my boss asked me where I was going and I told her the story. My boss thought it was very serious, as it indicated that John would not be able to work well with Beth (she would be his new direct supervisor). Bosses were called and it was decided to fire John Doe.

At this point, I was in the stacks doing my job. John was told he was fired, and after leaving the office, he went ballistic. He started asking people "Where is Mr. R.I.N.G.?" and at one point he just hauled off and pulled a bunch of books off their shelves in grand sweeping motions, and otherwise punching and pushing books. The bosses find me and tell me to go home for the day for my own safety.

Next day, I came in to work and it turned out that earlier in the morning John tried to clock in like nothing happened. When he was told he no longer has a job, he used a letter opener to hold himself hostage (he held it to his neck). Police were called, and he was eventually kept from injuring himself and was arrested (and eventually expelled). Fortunately, he was also given councelling, which he really needed.

Now, how did this become a UL of sorts? About 5 years later, my old boss was at a ALA conference and heard it being told as an exaggerated story about the kinds of things that go on at libraries. She was angry and incredulous that the story had ever gotten out, and found out that another librarian at our college had written up the story and it's been circulating ever since in library circles.

It would be interesting to see how the story has changed in the retelling, particularly if there are any librarians who have heard the story and how it's changed (if at all). I wonder if it's told as a true story or as just another made-up "library horrors" story.
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Dunno about libraries, but toilets are often haunted!

I've worked in many hospitals and heard lots of stories about spooky loos. There are plenty of 'creepy crapper' tales on here too.
 
I remember reading about a library in York that was reputedly haunted. Ghostly old men being seen and books being pulled out of shelves etc.

Haunted bogs eh? Well, after a night on the Guinness, ours smells like the gateway to hell! :cross eye
 
Peni said:
Any ghost you met in a library would be benevolent, I'd think, or anyway innocuous.
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I'm not so sure about that. Theres a mad old guy who always seems to be in my library who constantly mutters angrily under his breath and occasionally barks out random swear words at people. (I'm not sure why the staff tolerate him. Are they afraid of him? Sorry for him? Or do they just find it amusing when he growls "Ah, you f***er" at goateed students?)

Anyway, he'd make a pretty un-benevolent ghost.
 
One of the libraries that I've worked in had a basement stack where a lot of the reference books were kept. It was out of the way & pretty creepy in itself. To turn on the central set of lights you had to walk through a good portion of darkened basement & there were always lots of books & stuff lying about that took on a totally different look in the dark! What made it even more creepy was the system that took returned books from the returns desk to the back rooms passed through the basement just under the ceiling. So there were always lots of groanings & clunkings from this machine! I used to hate going in there. I am however a big chicken when its dark & this probably didn't help!!
 
I'm a student assitant at the Kansas City Art Institute Library, which used to be a large, old house. Before it was remodeled into the library, there were stories about the ghost of the last woman who owned the house, whose name was Maimie (not sure how to spell that.) Whenever anything weird happens, the librarians "blame it on Maimie." It's a little bit creepy down in the basement, where the archives are located, especially if I'm by myself. The only "experiences" I've had were very minor though - I'll be the only person in the basement, get on the elevator to go back up to the first floor, and the door keeps re-opening as if someone has walked in front of the motion sensor...libraries are just creepy in general XD
There are also ghost stories about our Liberal Arts building, the Baty House, but I sadly don't know much about them. Even the security guards swear up and down that Baty House is haunted, though, so I like to believe it's true, hehehe.

~Megan
 
My local city library has a ghost. I can't recall the details atm (sorry!). I'll dig 'em out tomorrow.

In the meantime, here's a website with a haunted library webcam!:)

libraryghost.com/
Link is dead. No archived version found. This link apparently led to a now-defunct webpage about the Willard Library ghost:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/willard-library-ghost.10900/
 
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michellelb said:
...all the pipes and steps leading up to the roof having been painted with anti-climb paint, so no-one can get up there...
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What's "anti-climb paint"?
 
stickyrice said:
It's a little bit creepy down in the basement, where the archives are located, especially if I'm by myself. ~Megan
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I read this fantastic horror story in which some students are horribly haunted by the spectres of all the horrors in all the newspapers stacked there - Dr. Krippen, Lizzie Borden etc. Later, when one of these students in Librarian, he tries to warn a similar geeky one against staying late in the basement against rules to no avail, and he is (naturally) found dead with a look of fear frozen on his face.
Title and author eludes me - could someone help me? (Yseult, if you're reading you could, it is in one of those nightmare reader ones).

Zede, anti-climb paint sticks to you and you can't get it off, so everyone knows who's been trying to break in.
 
The library I work in has some foul, evil smelling, foul mouthed, bnoxious entities in it that creep around giving off an air of odious dissatisfaction and restlessness.




Bloody students!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)
 
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The haunted library in York that Cavynaut refers to (above) is, I think, the York Museum Library. I read a long, detailed, account of it in a book, but naturally all I can find now is a brief mention on this website:

York Museum Library
For several weeks a particular book in the library would be found laying on the floor on Sunday evening - the mystery was 'solved' when a caretaker reported seeing an ghostly old man looking through the book shelves.
 
Don't groan, but Most Haunted went to Dartford library. As episodes go it's quite amusing, they have appropriately titled books fall off the shelves in response to their queries. Tales of people being spooked and running out in terror. That sort of thing.
 
I’m just watching a Ghost Hunters were they are at a haunted library. There are a few haunted libraries I know of. The Willard is a well known one and our local library made it on to Most Haunted. Although I didn’t believe 99.9% of it, we went on a ghost tour not long after and saw NOTHING considering how much the MH team claimed to find.

I wondered what it was about libraries that made the susceptible to hauntings. Is it because of how the books can make you feel strong emotions (like theatres)? Or because the haunted ones tend to be old buildings?
 
MorningAngel said:
I’m just watching a Ghost Hunters were they are at a haunted library. There are a few haunted libraries I know of. The Willard is a well known one and our local library made it on to Most Haunted. Although I didn’t believe 99.9% of it, we went on a ghost tour not long after and saw NOTHING considering how much the MH team claimed to find.

I wondered what it was about libraries that made the susceptible to hauntings. Is it because of how the books can make you feel strong emotions (like theatres)? Or because the haunted ones tend to be old buildings?
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Or perhaps reading and peace and quiet bring about an altered state of consciousness where you are more likely to experience strange spookyness?
 
MorningAngel said:
... I wondered what it was about libraries that made the susceptible to hauntings. Is it because of how the books can make you feel strong emotions (like theatres)? Or because the haunted ones tend to be old buildings?
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Maybe it has something to do with the nature of a library - a place where any number of people engage and / or borrow books that pass through many hands only to return to their point of origin.

How many other types of sites or establishments house large collections of things so many people have personally engaged / handled?
 
I worked in a library in Derbyshire for ten years, only left a few years ago. We didn't have any ghostly phenomena but it was very eerie when it was empty, as is probably the case with any public building. I'd unlock the door and walk through the main library (just the one large room) through a heavy wooden door into a private area where we could hang our coats. There was always the odd sense that the library was occupied (similar to the feeling of being watched) and an incomprehensible low chatter of the public. Needless to say I was never overly fond of being the first one in! I think the thing with libraries is also that many of them have been re-purposed, old schools, old manor houses etc.

When I was at school I actually did my work experience in a library in Dronfield, . I did experience something odd there but nothing earth shattering. The library was converted from being an old manor house and I was walking up the staircase when I felt an icy blast pass right through me at some force, It was definitely the sense of being 'passed though' and knocked me back a little way. Not being familiar with the building I was aware this could have been a draft from a window, although it was not like any draft I've felt and I did check all the windows which were firmly closed. I never told anyone about this, only being there for a week and being in my teens at the time. Later that day, or the following day I remember two of the librarians chatting about the idea of having a children's sleepover in the library but they joked about it being a bad idea because of the ghost! From what info I managed to collect without seeming overly enthusiastic they mentioned a female ghost who is seen in the windows, reflected in them, I think, although it's a good twenty years since the incident! Just googled and found a reference to the ubiquitous White Lady.

I did work at a bookshop in my late teens and never experienced anything unusual there myself. The shop later became coffee shop and I had a friend who ended up working there in its new incarnation. She said all kinds of odd things happened and they were all glued to the CCTV monitors. The interesting thing is that there was a gruesome murder case associated with the area of land that the building was built on, The Cesspit Horror 1845, which is the only reason I mention it, as the case is worth a read! Chapter 11 of Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in and Around Chesterfield by Geoffrey Sadler.
 
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