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Haunted Libraries in South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming

South Carolina

•    Columbia, University of South Carolina, South Caroliniana Library. Employees have seen the ghost of former USC President J. Rion McKissick (d. 1944) walking across the balcony. He is buried on the Horseshoe in front of the library, which was built in 1840.

•    McClellanville, Hampton Plantation. The sounds of a man sobbing and a chair that rocks by itself in the downstairs library are evidence of a ghost in this 1735 building.

Tennessee

•    Hendersonville, Robert E. Ellis Middle School. Formerly Hendersonville High School, this structure is haunted by a phantom known as The Colonel. A figure has been seen lurking in the windows of the second-floor library.

•    Johnson City, East Tennessee State University, Gilbreath Hall. The site of the library prior to 1998, the hall hosted a resident ghost that closed doors and left windows open by mistake and turned off unnecessary lights. One student claimed that she saw an apparition of founding President Sidney Gilbreath framed in an upper window one night.

•    Knoxville, University of Tennessee, James D. Hoskins Library. Footsteps of the “Evening Primrose,” supposedly a former graduate student, are sometimes heard after hours. The smell of cornbread is associated with her. A maintenance specialist said in 2004 that he’s heard doors shutting and can sometimes smell cooking late at night.

•    Lebanon, Cumberland University, Doris and Harry Vise Library. 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. I couldn’t tell if it came in through the door or came from under my desk.” He’s experienced eerie feelings in the Clement and Castle Heights rooms. A former librarian also reported the ghost of a little girl dressed in white with whom she used to play peek-a-boo around the circulation desk.

•    Memphis, University of Memphis, Brister Library. The university’s main library from 1928 to 1994, the Brister ghost is said to be that of a raped student whose screams have puzzled campus security.

•    Rugby, Thomas Hughes Free Public Library. The ghost of Eduard Bertz, the librarian who organized this collection in 1881–1883, is said to have appeared to Brian Stagg in the late 1960s and provided hints on how to restore the library to its original shelf arrangement.

Texas

•    Alice High School. The library’s ghost throws books off the shelf and is said to be a man who died when the library was built.

•    Boerne Public Library. Since 1994 the library has been housed in the Dienger building, an 1884 structure originally built as a general store. Some can feel a presence inside, and at night people say the lights go on and off.

•    Brownsville, Dr. Garcia Middle School. TV sets are said to turn on at night and books fall off the shelves.

•    Brownsville, University of Texas, Arnulfo L. Oliveira Memorial Library. Former Library Director Yolanda Gonzalez said she has seen the door to the Hunter Room open and close by itself and books in glass-fronted cabinets move slowly. She said in the October 29, 2004, Houston Chronicle that in her 47 years as a librarian she grew to accept that the spirits were there: “When I finally got a secretary, I told her don’t be afraid of things that happen here.” From 1948 to 1954 the UTB library was located in a wing of Gorgas Hall, which formerly served as the hospital for old Fort Brown and where a ghost nurse dressed in white was said to walk into locked offices and sit behind desks.

•    Corsicana, Navarro County Courthouse. Late-night users of the law library have heard someone walking on the stairs between the second and third floor. Speculation centers on a man shot by the sheriff after a political dispute.

•    Houston, Milby High School. A ghostly librarian has been reported.
•    Houston Public Library, Julia Ideson Building. The older section of the Central Library now houses special collections and archives, but it had the main collection from 1926 to 1976. Ghostly music could sometimes be heard drifting through the building. J. Frank Cramer, a night janitor who practiced playing a violin while wandering through the building after closing, was allegedly responsible. He lived in a small apartment in the basement until his death in 1936. Hattie Johnson, who came to work there in 1946, said the music could be heard on cloudy days and lasted a long time.

•    McKinney Public Library. A ghost is blamed for books getting misplaced or knocked onto the floor.

•    San Angelo, Fort Concho Museum. An active army outpost from 1867 to 1889, the fort’s Officers’ Quarters 7 building now houses the museum library. Lights have been reported late at night, and in August 1997, Museum Librarian Evelyn Lemons was sitting at the microfilm reader looking at the names of people who had died at the fort. “The back door just started coming open, and when I said ’Hello,’ it stopped. It’s a wooden porch, so you can hear people when they walk off,” she said. There was no one outside, of course. “I guess I should have looked at whose name I was on when I was looking up dead people, to find out who was coming in the back door.” Lemons recalled other brushes with the unseen when she was an educational assistant working in a different building, Officers’ Quarters #9. An invisible presence locked the door on her several times. However, it used a restored 19th-century lock, not the modern deadbolt.

•    San Antonio, Hertzberg Circus Collection and Museum. Bequeathed to the San Antonio Public Library by Harry Hertzberg (1884–1940), this is the oldest public circus collection in the United States. Custodian Mario Lara has felt cold spots in the building, especially in the basement near the bookstore. Staff members have heard keys jangling in the rare books collection and footsteps in the third floor hallway. Ghostly voices, a strange light, and books rearranging themselves in closed stacks are also reported.
•    San Antonio, Institute of Texan Cultures Library. A ghost with crunching footsteps can be heard in the audiovisual room. Nicknamed Old John by the archival staff, he also rearranges books.

•    San Antonio, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum. This 1929 Spanish colonial mansion was the former McNay residence. Researchers in the library in the Tobin Wing can sometimes hear a female voice singing an unrecognizable tune.

•    San Antonio, Our Lady of the Lake University, Sueltenfuss Library. A former janitor haunts the library basement.

•    San Antonio, Whittier Middle School. Strange noises and books and chairs moving around are attributed to the ghost of a 15-year-old girl who fell on the staircase leading from the library to the auditorium in the early 1950s.

•    Waco, Baylor University, Armstrong Browning Library. This special collection devoted to the works of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning moved into its own building in 1951. Some say the spirit of Elizabeth Browning peers out of the top-floor library window at night.

Utah

•    Provo, Brigham Young University, Harold B. Lee Library. Moaning voices can be heard in the Music Library on level 4.

•    Salt Lake City Public Library, Chapman Branch. KSL-TV reported October 28, 2004, that Circulation Specialist Andrea Graham saw a ghostly form as she opened the 1918 Carnegie library one morning, and she also watched a puppet launch itself from a window ledge.

Vermont

•    Northfield, Norwich University, Chaplin Hall. From 1941 to 1993, this building housed both the library and a male ghost who knocked books off the shelves and played tricks with the lighting.

Virginia

•    Essex County, Blandfield. A male figure haunts the downstairs library of this privately owned 18th-century mansion.

•    Fauquier County, Edgehill. The ghost of Civil War Col. William Chapman has been seen in the library of this private 1790 house, and he is thought responsible for opening locked doors and making loud noises late at night.

•    Stratford, Stratford Hall Plantation. The apparition of Revolutionary War hero Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee (1756–1818) has been seen at a desk in the library of the 1730s-era Great House.

Washington

•    Snohomish City Office Building, Old Carnegie Library. Catharine McMurchy, library director from 1923 to 1939, died in 1956 and her ghost could be seen or heard walking in the basement of this 1910 Carnegie before the library moved to modern quarters in 2003. In 1991, Children’s Librarian Debbie Young was taking a break in the staff room when she saw an older woman walk down the stairs from a storage area and exit the room. For a while the library had a ghostcam to try to catch her appearances.

•    Spokane, Centennial Middle School. Students have seen an old woman with no legs floating around in the library.

•    Tacoma Public Library, Anna E. McCormick Community Rooms. This 1927 building served as the stacks area of the library until 1984 when a substantial addition was made to the north end. Maintenance workers reported disturbances in the old building for a three-week period in 1995, shortly after the terms of a bequest changed the name of the addition to the Anna Lemon Wheelock Library. Water faucets turned on, boxes fell to the floor, and one person saw the apparition of a gray-haired woman, possibly Anna McCormick who had funded the original library.

•    Toppenish, Mary L. Goodrich Library. A man and woman have been seen looking out one of the top-floor windows.

West Virginia

•    Morgantown, West Virginia University Library. Ghostly sounds and an odd presence are sensed on the upper floor of the old section.

Wisconsin

•    Cornell Public Library. An overwhelmingly uncomfortable feeling permeates the basement where the restrooms are.

•    Madison, University of Wisconsin, Memorial Library. The ghost of the university’s first librarian, Helen C. White, has reportedly been seen floating through the library stacks. One Christmas break when the library was closed, a student library assistant doing catch-up work in the reference stacks heard someone whisper “Sally Brown” when no one was around.

•    West Bend, University of Wisconsin Washington County Library. At night, lights switch themselves on, books fall, and doors slam.

Wyoming

•    Burns High School. The library walls are said to shake mysteriously.

•    Byron, Rocky Mountain High School. In 1952 or 1953 School Superintendent Harold Hopkinson heard footsteps walking down the hall and then he heard the library door open and close twice. “As I stood there looking,” Hopkinson remembered, “those footsteps went right past me and there was no one there. I heard them continue down the stairs to the front door, which I heard opening. . . . I didn’t dream it. There really was something walking on that old floor, which used to creak in a certain way.” He said his predecessor refused to go to that part of the building after dark, and so did he for some time afterwards. The custodial staff agrees that something is amiss. Eddie Davis, who was a maintenance man at the high school for 13 years, heard a blood-curdling scream coming from the girl’s restroom late one night in 1989. “It set my hair on end,” he said. But when he cautiously went inside, there was no one there. Another time, Davis’s wife, also a custodian, was retrieving some materials from the second floor when she saw a small, “smoky-looking something” in the hall. “It stunk to high heaven,” she said. “I got the feeling that thing was telling me to jump out the window. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t get to the door. But finally I took off and ran. I wouldn’t want that to happen to me again,” she whispered.

•    Green River, Sweetwater County Library. Lights have gone off and on mysteriously ever since the library opened in 1980. Flapping sounds reverberate through the building at night. Former Director Patricia LeFaivre said that her staff has seen dots of light dancing on the walls inside the closed art gallery room in such a way that ruled out an external light source like car headlights. Back when the library had electric typewriters instead of computers, at least two of the machines were seen to type on their own. There was no paper loaded at the time, so if these were messages, they were lost. The staff experimented by leaving paper in the typewriters overnight, but no phantom typing occurred. The most bizarre event occurred some years ago when the interlibrary loan librarian turned away briefly from her computer—it was a dedicated Geac terminal—and when she looked back she saw her name spelled out on the screen. “I don’t think the system could have done that itself,” LeFaivre explained. “It had no word-processing capabilities, and at that time we didn’t have email. Her name appeared in quite large letters . . . with nothing else on the screen.” Since 1993, the staff has kept a record of all odd goings-on in a Ghost Log. The library was built on top of a cemetery dating from the 1860s. Most of the graves, primarily those of Asian railroad workers, were moved in the 1920s, but a coffin turned up as recently as 1985. Paranormal activity most often takes place when maintenance crews are working on the building or the grounds. LeFaivre added, “What’s interesting is that when we finally accepted the ghost’s existence, it seemed to quiet down—like it just wanted to be recognized.”

•    Thermopolis, Hot Springs County Library. Books strewn about, strange noises, and shadowy figures have been reported.

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