The Library Vault

On Saturday, July 8th, Assistant Director Mary had just moved into the newly renovated office space in the basement under the Old Bank. The entire space had to be emptied, rewired, repainted, and refurnished after the Flood of 2022. Mary was the first librarian to move into the new main office.

When Mary sat down at her new desk that Saturday, she realized her computer had no power. Neither did any of the outlets in the large room. She took out her trusty iPhone, turned on the flashlight, and went searching for the fuse box by going down what staff call “the Creepy Hallway.” This is an area behind the new main office where staff only go when absolutely necessary, or if they take a wrong turn on their way to the bathrooms.

Russell Library’s main building has two basements. The first, and oldest, is the basement of the Old Church, which connects directly to the Lobby and is on the same level. The second basement runs beneath the Lobby and children’s areas, including beneath the Old Bank. The Old Bank’s basement was expanded during the 1980s additions and renovations. In addition to staff offices and facilities areas like the Boiler Room, the Friends of the Library operate out of the Hitchcock Room in the basement. It’s also home to the Vault, of course.

Our basement is so disorienting that staff who have worked here almost thirty years still report getting turned around in it. It has over a dozen rooms and many emergency exits going up vine-covered stairwells. The Creepy Hallway that leads past the new staff main office ends in one such emergency exit. When you open the door to the hallway, the lights flicker on slowly and disjointedly. A small, abandoned room on the left has a disreputable sink and long counter reminiscent of a small photography lab . . . or a morgue?

That Saturday, Mary located the main fuse boxes in the HVAC room off of the Creepy Hallway. A large HVAC system had been installed in the 1980s when the Old Church had been connected to the Old Bank. Until then, the room had been an easy-to-access work room. Now, stuffed with large pipes and other HVAC equipment, the room has become all but abandoned. The HVAC equipment takes up so much space that you cannot stand up in the room. You have to crawl around it on the floor, or walk while bent double. A red chair sits in there under the low ceiling. I can only speculate why.

The HVAC room still houses the fuses and switch boxes for the Old Bank, but not much else . On this Saturday without power, the switches all looked normal. There must be more fuse boxes nearby, but where? As she shone her light around the HVAC room, she noticed a gap under the HVAC piping. The wall also ended there. She ducked under the gap. Beyond the wall lay a room she had never seen before, despite having worked at Russell Library for years. Like Indiana Jones, she found a secret room that few knew about.

Inside the room, Mary found the missing fuse box and switches. She also found a water heater and shelves with misplaced objects like book labels from the ’80s. The secret room even has a clouded window that you can locate beneath the exterior wall of our old Storytelling Room, if you know where to look. Most interestingly, she also found what looks like a walled up doorway. We do now know what it was for, but it leads into the new office of this author.

On the other side of the wall with the walled-up doorway sits my desk and that of the Head of Information and Adult Services. We had not noticed the outline of the old doorway on our side until Mary discovered the empty room. Now, it seems pretty obvious.

Mary just happens to be a leader of our Secrets of Russell Library tours. She also has been kind enough to help with our recent paranormal investigations of Russell Library with the Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society. The findings of those investigations (still ongoing) will be included in this year’s Secrets of Russell Library tours.

I try not to think about that dark, empty room that sits behind my desk’s wall. I also try not to think about the odd coincidence of Lil’ Deb starting to move around my office around the same time of the Secret Room’s discovery. Lil’ Deb, in case you did not meet her on last year’s Secrets of Russell Library’s tours, is a doll . . . or a demon. We’re not quite sure which.

She used to live in The Pit behind The Boiler Room. Last October, she escaped. Now, she has chosen to reside in my office. Ever since the Secret Room’s discovery, I find her in a new place in my office every few days. I can only guess that she’s getting restless for Halloween to come again.

Even though I have also worked at Russell Library for years now, I am often surprised by new discoveries about the library. With four patched-together buildings and almost two hundred years of history, there’s so much that we do not know about the place where staff spend the majority of our waking hours.

As Fall quickly approaches, the Secrets of Russell Library team has reconvened to plan the 2023 Secrets of Russell Library tours. This year, we will also be conducting Secrets of Russell Library, Junior, tours just for kids and families. Our librarians are searching through the archives of Russell Library’s past to find new material. We can’t wait to show you what we found. Stay tuned. Sign-ups for the 2023 Secrets of Russell Library begin September 29th.