As a rule, most of the library staff don’t work in the library alone. We have to have at least three staff members in the building for the library to be open. The struggle for the perpetually short-staffed night shift is real. We’ve had to close early more than once because too many people called out. The two of us left still have to work our shift, just without patrons.
However, this doesn’t mean staff haven’t been in the library alone. And it’s always an eerie experience.
At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the library closed to the public and only essential staff were allowed to be in the building on a strict schedule. Only three people were allowed in the building at a time, had to work in different areas/on different floors, and were only allowed to work for short three hour shifts. After about six weeks, it was decided that processing was an essential job and since I was doing most of the processing, that meant I went back to work in the library. I was greeted with over 100 items to process in three hour shifts no more than three days a week. Fun! It took me a over a week of those shifts to catch up.
I usually worked at the same time as my director. Rarely was any one else in the building during my shift because I took my time in the afternoons and they usually worked in the mornings. More than once, my director would leave for the day and I’d still have some work to do, so I’d spend maybe as much as an hour alone in the building to finish whatever I was working on.
I was 100% alone in the building, but it never felt like I was. I’d hear noises that sounded like someone down on the lower level or someone walking around upstairs on the children’s floor. And of course, the classic feeling like I was being watched.
It turns out that I’m not the only who’s had this experience. Other people who’ve been in the building have had similar experiences.
We’ve also had those types of experiences when the building was open. It’s not uncommon to be sitting at the circulation desk and hear someone downstairs when no one is downstairs. To the extent that we’ve gone downstairs to check. Part of this is because of the way the building is constructed. Sound travels and bounces in that building in weird ways. It would be perfect cover for a ghost, honestly.
We joke that it’s the ghost of Miss Kent, who was head librarian from 1914 to 1966. She actually started working in the library in 1910 when she was hired as an assistant for Mrs. Rose, who was the first head librarian. Anything weird that happens -the women’s restroom door closing after it’s been propped open, display books falling off shelves when no one is near them, etc.- we blame it on Miss Kent. After all, if anyone would be haunting the library, it would be her.
I think the library probably is haunted. I think most, if not all, libraries are haunted.
Think about it.
A lot of libraries have historical items. Some items are just borrowed to put on display, some belong to them. Most libraries have old books. My library is a repository of local history. We have an archive of items donated over the years, from letters to clothing to pictures to a creepy doll collection that we only recently put into storage after years of giving children nightmares. We even have an artillery shell from the Korean War. We also have many of the books from CH Moore, who at the time of his death in 1901 had one of the largest private libraries in Illinois. Just some really old shit.
It would stand to reason that some energy from these previous owners might still linger. We have entire collections that are just from one person, like the collection of clothes -including mourning gown and veil- that is currently on display. Maybe some of these people decided to stick with their belongings.
Even though this country is obsessed with getting rid of anything that’s more than a few years old and building entirely new buildings, many libraries are pretty old. They put a new addition on my library in 1991 which opened in 1992, but the original building that was built in 1906 and opened in 1908 is still there. It’s over 100 years old. Miss Kent worked in that building for over 50 years, and she wasn’t the only one to dedicate decades of her life to the library. This building’s been sitting around, collecting stories for a long time.
And then there was something that my coworker Kelsey suggested and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. We’re a library. We loan items out. Who knows what kind of energies those items come back with? Something to consider.
So, the next time you go to the library (you are going to your library, aren’t you?), take a good look around and keep your ears open.
You might not be the only one in the stacks.
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