Real-Live Library Ghost Busters

by Rachel

Big library news, guys!  Last week, the New England Society of Paranormal Investigators (NESPI) released the results from their investigation of the Taunton Public Library in Massachusetts.  For three months they surveyed the building using a digital infrared high-definition camera, a K-Z meter, which picks up electro-magnetic fields, a digital microphone and an EVP (electronic voice phenomena) recorder.  Verdict:  Not Haunted.

OK, so maybe that’s not very exciting.  But this little news blurb got me curious about OTHER library spooks.  Apparently there are quite a few:

  • Old Bernardsville Public Library, New Jersey.  Phyllis the library ghost was so active at one time that the staff issued her a library card. The ghost is said to be that of Phyllis Parker, the innkeeper’s daughter, who suffered a nervous breakdown when her boyfriend, a British spy during the Revolutionary War, was hung in 1777 and delivered to the local tavern in a coffin.
  • Peoria Public Library, Illinois. Mary Stevenson Grey, who owned the land where the library now stands, uttered a curse in 1847 that allegedly resulted in the untimely deaths of three library directors in the early 20th century. E. S. Willcox was killed in a streetcar accident in 1915; Samuel Patterson Prowse died from a heart attack suffered at a library board meeting in 1921; and Dr. Edwin Wiley committed suicide by swallowing arsenic in 1924. Library employees report seeing their ghostly faces in the basement.
  • Doris and Harry Vise Library, Cumberland University, Tennessee.  Former Director John Boniol says that the library has a ghost cat. On March 5, 2001, he saw a “cat come floating across my office floor and disappear among the boxes stored under the table behind my desk. I did not see any legs or paws and no motion like a normal cat walking on a floor. The apparition was near the floor, about the right height for a cat, but it appeared to be gliding smoothly through the air instead of touching the floor.”

For more fun times, check out George Eberhart’s series on Library Ghosts, or swing by the interactive Ghost Cam set up by the Willard Public Library so all you little ghost-busters can go a-ghost-hunting day and night.

In the meantime, here’s a spooky preview from YouTube:

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