High Spirits: The Ghost Log Blog

Ghost Log 2000

2000

3/2/2000 Unidentified Staff

This person was here early. She smelled breakfast food & heard voices from the Bookmobile room. When she went back to see who was here, no one was there. The Bookmobile people did not come in for 1 hour after.

3/20/2000 S.C., R.D., M.M., K.S. (Staff)

The strong “fish smell” was going on most of the evening. There has been a lot of snow today. It is suspected that is related somehow. Snow melts and water gets into pockets of “whatever” and the smell is around.

5/17/2000 Micki (Staff)

I was in the ladies room and heard the stall next to me close. When I came out there was no one in the room but me. I had not passed anyone going in either.

8/11/2000 JM (Staff)

I heard my name called several times while out shelving. When she came up no one had called for her.

8/14/2000 Micki (Staff)

I was working out in the stacks shelving and I heard Ruth’s voice call my name. I came to the front desk and she said she had not called.

8/17/2000 C.H. (Staff)

I was in the ladies room when I heard what sounded like someone tapping their shoe. I knew there was no one else in there, so I tapped mine 3 times. There was maybe a 15 second pause and I heard 3 taps in response. I tried again, but nothing happened.

9/22/2000 Staff

Security gate went off, no one was around.

9/28/2000 Micki (Staff)

While in the ladies room, first stall, I heard a tapping from the sink area. When I came out there was no one to be seen.

9/29/2000 Micki (Staff)

I was working in the bookmobile room at my desk around 10:30am, across the room I heard noises from up by the ceiling (a vent was there). I looked around and it stopped. I assumed it was coming from the vent. About 45 minutes later I heard the same noise, but it sounded like it was coming from the floor area. I looked and saw nothing. I was getting nervous, so I went out from and found busy work for a while. Later around 11:30am when I went back I heard noises in the garage just out the door and into the back of the garage. I looked and there was nothing.

10/4/2000 All

Alarm gates went off again, no one was around.

10/16/2000 Micki (Staff)

I heard a slight noise while in stall #1. Then the toilet paper “dropped” into place in the holder in stall #2.

10/28/2000 All

Alarm gate went off 2 times before 10-am. No one was around.

11/9/2000 All

Front gates went off 7 times in a row.

11/16/2000 All

Front gate went off again.

11/18/2000 Micki (Staff)

As I came in, 9:45am, the security gates were sounding off. I came in and cleared the gate with the clicker. The gate went off again. I turned around and said “oh just stop it!” and it did not go off again.

11/2000 Staff

In November on a Saturday several employees came in to work, about 10 am. The security gate was sounding off. Once they came in the security gates began flipping open & closed. Also the front doors opened as it “someone” had pushed the handicapped buttons. At the end of the day (5pm) they were walking out back hall and heard the gates sound off again. They left.

Is the Library Haunted?

The term “haunted” is used most often to define unexplained happenings.  It seems there are skeptics and believers, but there is very little hard evidence.  Ghosts or spirits can not be caught in a jar and shown to your friends or framed for display on your fireplace mantle.  There are so many varying stories of hauntings and yet there is rarely any proof.  So what should we make of this? 

I have worked in what is thought to be a “Haunted Library” for 15 years.  Many people staff and patrons alike, tell tales of unexplained happenings.  Yet there are some staff members that have worked in this building since it was built and are not convinced.  Many of the staff have smelt an unusual smell, like dead fish from time to time.  Cigar smoke and flowery cologne also has been smelt.  Soft whimpering or crying has been heard in the ladies room and “she” is sometimes referred to as “Moaning Myrtle” from Harry Potter fame. But is it a haunting or is it just unexplained phenomena?

Why is it some of us seem to have these experiences more often and others do not.

A friend and co-worker of mine thinks it is because some of us are more sensitive to spirits or energy around us.  It does seem to be the case here.  As you read the Ghost Log, you will notice that the same names do come up more than others. There is one person that has said that she does see a female shape and a male in a top hat and a “funeral coat” from time to time. 

I have a theory that there is a thin veil between the world of the dead and ours.  It seems that from time to time someone from their side and someone from ours collide.  We are asked often “where are the ghosts?”  Well as I have often heard said on one of my favorite TV shows “Ghost Hunters” on the SciFi Channel, quote “Ghosts do not appear on queue.”  The encounters are random at best and do not seem to have a pattern or plan to the sightings. I agree with the members of “Ghost Hunters”.  I have never seen a recordable pattern of happenings that could give reason for the happenings. 

The official answer to the question, “Is the Library Haunted?” is……….

“We know unexplained things happen here, but we can not prove the library is haunted.  I must say, I hope in time we will be able to show proof, but for now, we just keep making reports in the Ghost Log as they happen.” 

 Tell me your thoughts on the subject.

Ghost Log 1999

1999 2/25/1999 J.H. (Staff) About 6:50am Joyce was standing by front desk computers and the security gate alarm went off. 2/4/1999 All Staff Answering machine kept going off by itself. 9/17/1999 J.H. (Staff) Joyce was shampooing carpets. She felt like someone was watching her. 9/24/1999 J.W. (Staff) The “strange smell” was back. Jo smelt it out in the stacks. 10/16/1999 Patron & staff A patron had gone through the security gates and set off the alarm. After resetting it, the alarm went off continually for about 5 minutes. We had a time getting it to shut off.

Excerpt from “Ghosts on the Range” by Debra Munn Part III

Part III The Library Built over a Cemetery 

Another time Don heard strains of “something that sounded like Beethoven” coming from the piano in this same multi-purpose room.  “I heard just a little of it, but then it stopped.  And there was absolutely no one else around,” he said.  “What made this even creepier was that it happened the same night that the gate swung back and forth by itself.”

Perhaps his scariest experience was hearing voices, however.  “One night when I was carrying out the trash, I thought I heard people talking” he said.  “So I set the trash outside and closed the door as if I’d already left.  Apparently, whatever was in the building thought I had.  But then I sneaked back inside and heard the voices coming from the multi-purpose room.  It sounded like a man and a woman yelling and arguing, although the words were muffled so I couldn’t tell what they were saying.  And since I had just come through that part of the library before taking out the trash, I knew no one was there.

“I even checked to make sure that the noise wasn’t coming from outdoors,” Don said.  “But finally, I gathered up my nerve and opened the door to that room.  As soon as I did, the voices immediately stopped!”

Don Leasor was not the only staff member to hear the strange voices.  A former maintenance assistant who was too terrified to be interviewed claimed that she often heard them when she worked alone from eight until ten at night.

Since so many frightening things were taking place late in the evening, library director Helen Higby rearranged schedules and made it a rule that no one worked alone.

“Even if it turns out that there’s nothing there,” she pointed out, “if someone were to get nervous and imagine something, then trip and fall down the stairs, we might not find them until the next day.  And we’ve got enough ghosts already!”

Not long after the new policy took effect, the business manager came in to do some work on a holiday, and mindful of the new rule, she brought her Doberman pinscher along. “After she had been in her office for a while,” Helen said, “the dog suddenly went over to the door and cocked its head as if someone were outside.  Then it came back and sat down in the middle of the room, but it continued to stare at the door, fully alert.  That’s all that happened, but it gave everybody the creeps, because dogs, unlike people, don’t imagine things.

“At one of the staff meetings,” Helen continued, “I told everyone, “Listen, I know how to deal with budget cuts; I know how to deal with all kinds of normal problems.  But I don’t know how to deal about having a priest come and bless the building, but some of the employees didn’t want that.  In their minds, that gave credence to something they didn’t want to thin about.”

Apparently nothing out of the ordinary had been reported for a year or so at the time of my interviews in February 1988, but it is unknown whether the phenomena have stopped or are just not as noticeable now that workers are forbidden to be alone in the building.  Skeptics might conclude that the new rule provides less opportunity for overactive imaginations to concoct spooky stories, but with so much evidence from so many people, it seems clear that something of an unusual nature was occurring.  Even former librarian Grace Gasson, who attribute the disturbances to the building’s structural defects and the susceptible imaginations of the living, admits that she has no explanation for such things as the wildly oscillating security gate.

If the troublesome manifestations at the Sweetwater County Library were indeed of a paranormal nature, what caused them?  Do the spirits of the dead really return to wreak havoc when their resting place is disturbed?  No on I interviewed believed that the spirits were of a malicious nature.  As Helen Higby observed, “Whatever is going on, if it’s some kind of being, apparently it’s benign, because it hasn’t done anything destructive or harmful.  And in a library, you could make a big mess in a hurry if you wanted to by through the books on the floor or dumping the card catalogues.”

Whatever caused the strange events at the library, most of the staff are less inclined to scoff at the supernatural these days.  And even without the new rule, the odds are that you’d have a hard time finding anyone willing to spend the night there alone!  

Special Thanks to Debra Munn and her publisher for allowing the copying of this article.

Ghost Log 1995-1998

1995

No entries made to the Ghost Log for 1995. This does not mean there was no activity; this only means no one took the time to document events.

1996

5/3/1996 J.H. (Staff)
Voices were heard all morning.

8/8/1996 S. (Temporary Staff)
One of my friends came here to see me and later on he went to the bathroom. When he went in the said he heard a child calling for their mommy faintly. He came out and there were no children in sight.

10/10/1996 K. M. & Micki (Staff)
Karen & I were at the Circ Desk and we both heard “someone” whisper “Micki” from the other side of the Circ counter out front. No one was there.

10/9/1996 S.C. (Staff) 4;30pm
I was talking to Mary T. at the White Mountain Library and I distinctly heard a whispering voice say “s..t..o..r..y” over our conversation.
(For 2 days we had the sharing ghost stories & Monroe 6th grades-our “residents wanted more”.

12/9/1996 Micki (Staff)
At 9am closing we heard a loud thud. Judy and I walk over the Young Adults were it was. There was a small book on the floor. I walked around the stack to the SciFi section to see if there was someone we missed and the thud was heard again. We left.

1997

10/6/1997 Micki (Staff)
I was on the phone by Judy’s desk. Started to choke from the smell of strong woman’s perfume. Then it was gone.

1998

No entries made to the Ghost Log for 1998. This does not mean there was no activity; this only means no one took the time to document events.

Just Thinking

I am sitting here thinking. Today a man asked me “Is the library really haunted?” We have a standard answer we give, “Some think it is and some think it is not. We have unexlained happenings here, but we have no real proof.” This got me to thinking…..just what will it take to make someone believe?

In many religions there are recordings of miracles and amazing events. There is not always proof, but the true believer beleives.

Mainly my take is that until it happens to you and you see a ghost or hear a disembodied voice, people are just very sceptical.

Tell me what you think.

Excerpt from “Ghosts on the Range” by Debra Munn Part II

Part II The Library Built over a Cemetery (continued)“People leaving the library have to pass through a gate,” Helen explained, “and if a book isn’t checked out properly, an alarm goes off. There is, however, a bypass which allows people in wheelchairs to leave without going through the gate. The bypass is a little higher than waist level, and it’s made of wrought iron. Obviously it can’t be too heavy if a wheelchair has to pass through it, but it wouldn’t blow in the breeze, either.

“One night two of my staff were the only ones left in the building, and at ten minutes to nine, they were getting ready to close up. Each one was at least fifteen feet away from this bypass, but all of a sudden, it slammed as hard as it could, swung open again, and then oscillated back and forth for several seconds until it came to a stop! It acted as if someone had smashed into it as hard as he could, but nobody was even near it.

“That was the first I’d heard about any unexplained phenomena,” Helen continued, “and the two women were so upset that they didn’t want to talk about it. But afterwards, I started hearing about other weird thing that had happened.”

Many of these involved unexplained electrical disturbances. Women staff members on several occasions reported turning off the lights in the multi-purpose room, only to find them on again ten minutes later, with the switch controlling them still in the “off” position. Maintenance men Marlin Dillard and Don Leasor experienced similar disturbances in the same room and on the stairwell, and each time they could determine only that nothing was causing a short.

Ed Johnson was no more successful in finding the cause of mysterious behavior in a vacuum cleaner. “One night after the library had closed, I was running the sweeper back and forth between the book stacks,” he said. “Once I moved too far and pulled the plug out of the wall. Naturally, the vacuum quit working, so I turned the switch off and went back down the stacks to plug in the fifty-foot cord. But before I had walked back to turn the switch on again, the vacuum started by itself!”

Ed is positive that the switch was off when the machine came to life. “The next thing I did was to unplug it, wind up the cord, and say to whoever was there, “Okay guys, the buildings yours. I’m going home! Lots of times I’d had feeling that I was being watched, but nothing like this had ever happened before.”

Nearly everyone I interviewed reported the same sensation of being watched, especially in the multi-purpose room. A custodian was vacuuming there one day when she happened to glance up at an adjoining stage. The curtains were open and the stage was set for some upcoming event. The woman thought to herself how nice it looked and went back to her sweeping. When she glanced up again a short while later, the drapes were closed. Because they were operated by an electric opening and closing mechanism, the woman reasoned that one of the control switches must be at the circulation desk, and that the staff there were playing tricks on her. Upon confronting them, however, she discovered that the only switch for the curtains was the one in the multi-purpose room itself.

Maintenance man Don Leasor had another eerie experience while vacuuming, when he heard what sounded like someone “rattling the heck out of a keychain.”

“Whatever was making the noise was in the same room with me,” he explained. “And whenever I’d shut the vacuum off, the noise would stop, too.”

Don has probably experience more unnerving incidents that anyone else. Several times since he began working in April 1986, he has seen mysterious glowing lights inside the building.

“The first time,” he said, “I was getting ready to walk out the door, so I turned off the lights in the front room. About five seconds later, I saw small glowing lights moving over the wall, right above the entry way, just as if someone were shining little flashlights with eight-inch diameters of illumination. The glowing would appear and disappear every three or four seconds.”

Don is certain that he was not seeing reflections from passing automobiles. “I’ve seen car lights shining from the street and into the library, but these looked nothing like that.”

Even more upsetting was the experience shared by Don and former custodian Marlin Dillard. “We were upstairs, in a different part of the library, but we could hear distinctly what sounded like somebody latching the doors to the multi-purpose room,” said Marlin. “Then when we went down to look, nobody else was anywhere in the building.” Strangest of all was the fact that the doors were not even pulled shut when the two men came to inspect them!

(to be continued)

Special Thanks to Debra Munn and her publisher for allowing the copying of this article.

Ghost Log 1994

1994

2/14/1994 J.M. (Staff)

The printer on the public computer went off and on. Computer by Judy’s desk went on and off. Judy heard her name called. Front Circ computer screen went “black”.

2/25/1994 Micki (Staff)

The printer by Judy’s desk turned off.

9/1994 J.H.(Staff)

Joyce has been hearing keys rattle and doors shutting. She saw movement from her side. She has heard them a lot lately.

11/10/1994 J.M. (Staff)

Judy reported answering machine messing up on Thursday.

11/12/1994 J.M. (Staff)

Judy found laminator on when we opened. It could not have been on very long. Thank goodness. Also computer in backroom by Judy’s desk kept messing up.

Please note: Not all years will have alot of reports or entries. This may be due to lack or reports or the staffs unwillingness to log the reports.

Excerpt from “Ghosts on the Range” by Debra Munn Part I

Part I

The Library Built over a Cemetery

If you think that ghosts inhabit only old, run-down buildings, think again. The Sweetwater County Library in Green River was opened as recently as 1980, yet it appears to be one of the most haunted spots in Wyoming. And no wonder, when you consider that it was constructed on top of the city’s oldest cemetery.

Many of Green River’s earliest citizens rested peacefully but anonymously in unmarked graves until 1926. When the grounds were needed for town expansion, however, the bodies were all supposed to be exhumed and moved up the hill to the current cemetery.

Marna Grubb, now the mayor/secretary of Green River, was one of the many curious children who came to watch the gruesome procedure. “Some of the kids on their way to school actually took rings and other thing right off the corpses!” she said and shuddered. “I saw only one of the bodies myself, but that was enough. He was just a skeleton, wearing an old western-style, fringed leather jacket. And what was strange was that he still had a red beard.”

When housing for veterans was constructed in the area during WWII, it soon became obvious that not all the bodies had been exhumed in 1926. As more remains were discovered, they, too, were re-interred in the new cemetery. After the veterans’ residences were no longer needed, the old cemetery grounds were left alone until 1978, when the library purchased them for the site of its new building. As soon as the groundbreaking began, however, workers made yet another grisly discovery: according to architect Neal Stowe of Salt Lake City, from eight to twelve more bodies were found in unmarked graves!

“A heavy caterpillar was going back and forth, loosening and moving the soil,” he explained. “I walked right through the middle of the site, where something that looked like a deteriorated coconut was sitting on top of some freshly churned dirt. I picked the thing up, turned it around, and recognized it as part of a skull. Little tufts of dark brown hair were still clinging to it.”

“I stopped the construction immediately and told the contractor that there might be other remains in the area, too. We met with various city representatives to try to determine the extent of the bodies still on the site. Any marking that may have been on the graves had long since been destroyed, and the records of the burials had apparently been misplaced, so it was next to impossible to determine what remains belonged to whom. We walked through the site and stated probing with hand shovels, uncovering bits and pieces of wood as well as a variety of decayed bones,” the architect said. “The remains were typically buried in old wooden caskets that had deteriorated because of soil conditions.”

When the new group of bodies was taken from the site and reburied in a common grave on top of the hill, old bits of hearsay resurfaced. Remembering the Oriental-looking scraps of cloth that had been found in one of the earlier excavations, some people theorized that the cemetery was in fact a Chinese graveyard, even though at least one of the corpses had red hair. Another revived rumor held that the bones were those of smallpox victims and that the town was again endangered by their exposed remains. This conjecture proved as groundless as the other, as a July 12, 1978 article in the Green River Star explained. For while Green River’s railroad workers had indeed experienced a smallpox epidemic between the 1860’s and the 1890’s, the victims had all been buried at the far end of the old cemetery and their graves had never been disturbed.

What was disturbed, however, was the new library built upon the twice-excavated grounds. Almost from the outset, those who worked there described it as a spooky place, and former maintenance man Ed Johnson confirms that there are still bodies underneath.

“In the spring of 1983, I helped with the landscaping,” he said. “One day the contractors working in front of the main doors dug up a bunch of wood. At first I thought it was old construction debris, but then I saw the bones!

“They called the corner and stated pulling the skeletons out,” he recalled. “But then they ran into a problem. Some of the bones were underneath the sidewalk and couldn’t be removed without tearing up the concrete. Since the landscapers didn’t want to do that, they dug up only parts of those bodies.

“As I remember, first they dug out three adults-actually I should say two and a half-because on one body they just pulled out the legs and pelvic girdle and left the rest. They also found one infant grave, and I believe they were able to take only the foot and shin bones from it.

“In 1985 and “86, more structural work was necessary, since the building had begun to sink,” Ed continued. “While the construction workers were drilling into the foundation, one said that they found a whole, small coffin with the body of another child inside. This corpse was almost perfectly preserved. The flesh was like gelatin, but otherwise, everything was intact.”

In spite of these newest ghastly finds under the building, the library employees never lost their sense of humor. “When the contraction workers drilled holes in the slab to inject some grout, the staff did one really goofy thing,” said library director Helen Higby. “They bought one of those paper skeletons and suspended it so that one arm was sticking out of a hole!”

But the employees were not so amused by the strange actions of the security system one evening in the late summer or early autumn of 1986.

(to be continued)

What do you think?

For some time now the curious have visited the Library. They look for ghosts and shadows and listen for strange noises. They come in slowly with expectant looks on their faces. They walk around with anticipation. They walk through, you know, just to see if a “ghosts” will jump out at them. And almost always, there is nothing to be seen. And they leave disappointed, BUT not always.

On occasion someone does come forward with an experience. Usually, they will come right up to the front desk and say, “I heard something” or “I saw something”. We try to stop and listen and document all reports. I must stress, we have never felt in danger or had anyone hurt. There are not books flying through the air as some have reported, that did not come from us. Also we do not have ghosts walking around the library at all times (that we know of or see). Do Not Believe All The Stories That Are Told!

You must remember “spirits” do not show up on command or at least they do not here. I do not think it works that way. Some people have experiences and some people do not. Many factors may play a part in each separate event or sighting.

The ultimate question is “Is the Library really haunted?” Well in truth, we just don’t have proof one way or the other. We have things happen. One staff member and a few patrons say they have seen a person or what looks like a person. And sometime we hear voices or whispers. There are the unexplained smells, like cigars or cologne and there is what sounds like “swishy skirts”, you know, like the old crinoline skirts making noise as a woman would walk.

There are visitors that are themselves “Story Tellers of the Haunted Kind” with stories of incredible ghosts and hauntings. I must say, some or truly unbelievable. Sometimes I feel like the bar tender in the movies, that listens to all the customers’ stories. People just want to vent and be heard. They want to know that they are not crazy or at least not alone.

Remember these are unexplained events. No one really can say what is happening. We have ideas, we think we know, but we do not have proof.

What do you think?