The Library Vault

This time it was a dark and stormy night.

I stood in the bay window of the old white house next door to the library that serves as extra office space and stared over at the library. I could see lights moving around the upper level of the tower. Thunder rumbled and lightning lit up the sky.

Suddenly a hand gripped my arm. “Do you think they found anything?” a voice whispered out of the darkness.

I, a coworker, and my daughter were waiting in the white house while a group of ghost hunters braved the dark building in search of the truth. Were there or were there not ghosts at Russell Library?

If you read my previous blog post (Ghosts at the Library?), you will know that the Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society (ECPS) came to Russell Library last Spring to look for ghosts. What we fondly call the Frankenbuilding (because it is a conglomeration of four different structures from four different time periods) is so big that they didn’t have enough time to do a complete investigation of every area, so they asked if they could return at a future date to complete the task.

It was a Saturday night in August. Thunder storms were rolling through Middletown. We met the ECPS team in the parking lot at 8pm and told them that there had been very little paranormal activity since their last visit.

“That often happens,” one team member replied. “It’s as if the ghosts just want to be recognized. Once they are, they tend to quiet down.”

As they carried their equipment into the building, they told us they wanted to set up a camera near our CD cases. That area had been the scene of some activity the last time the group was in the building.

“I hope you get something,” I said dubiously. “We haven’t seen any activity there since your last visit.”

We went down the stairs into what was once the basement of the church. (For those who are not familiar with the history of our building, it was once an Episcopalian church. For more details about our history, check out the history page of our website.) As we rounded the corner into the CD area, we all stopped and stared. A drawer on one of the CD cases was open.

A member of the EPS team grinned. “They know we’re here!”

They began to set up their equipment as I, my coworker, and my daughter went through the building to shut off all the lights. Ghost hunters work in the dark and at Russell Library, the lights are motion-sensitive and can only be turned off by shutting off the breaker. As the library grew dark, we used our phones to light our path back through our rambling library to the portion our building that was once a church. Most of the ghostly activity seemed to occur in that section of the building.

We told the ECPS team that we would be in the old white house next door to the library. It was important that no one else be in the building except the investigators so that their findings would not be compromised in any way. As we walked up the main staircase that led from the basement to the library’s Reading Room, I happened to look up at the mezzanine level that contains our nonfiction stacks and saw a shadow dart across the space.

I stopped and exclaimed, “What was that?”

A team member who was on the stairs behind me said, “Oh, good. It’s going to be active tonight!” As if to emphasize this point, thunder rumbled overhead.

He seemed pleased, so we left them to it and exited the building.

They were in the building for close to four hours. Thunder shook the old white house and lightning lit up the sky. Near the end of the night, the three of us who were waiting in the old house stood together in the bay window and watched the lights in the tower.

Once the ECPS team finished they packed up their equipment and met us in the parking lot.

“We’re all done,” the team lead announced. “We got some things on camera and on audio. There was a lot of activity in the tower. We even got chased by a bat.”

With that they bid us a cheerful goodnight.

I stood staring at the darkened building, my coworker and my daughter standing on either side of me. We now had to go into that dark building and turn all the breakers back on so that the lights would work when the staff came in the next day. I suddenly felt like I was in an old horror novel.

Conscious of the hints we had just heard about the paranormal activity in the library, the three of us ventured into the building. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite a creepy as a haunted library at one-thirty in the morning.

We did not experience any strange phenomena as we turned the lights back on. Apparently, the ghosts were just as satisfied with the evening as the ghost hunters and we were left in peace.

The Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society will be returning to the library in December to report on their findings in an event open to the public. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive an announcement of the event. Until then, sign-ups are open for our free Secrets of Russell Library tours. Tours begin this Friday the 13th and last throughout October. On the final night, Friday October 27th, members of the Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society will join members of the Secrets cast at a special After Party, benefitting Russell Library. Tickets are on sale now.