The Library Vault

Are you brave enough to visit the most haunted library in Connecticut?

To be honest, it’s not really very spooky here. Russell was labeled “the most haunted library in Connecticut” by the Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society when they were giving a presentation about the findings of their two investigations here at Russell. They gave the library a rating of 4 out of 5 on their paranormal activity scale. This is the highest non-malevolent rating.

The ECPS emphasized that our library is “spirited” not “haunted”. Spirited refers to interesting phenomena that is not particularly scary. Haunted is, well, haunted, a “look-for-a-new-job” type of designation. Fortunately, that’s not something we need to worry about!

Using the evidence from these two investigations (you can read about the investigations here and here) plus a wealth of library history that our intrepid librarians discovered, we decided to give this year’s Secrets of Russell Library a new twist. Instead of tours with a guide describing the history of the library, costumed actors will portray some of the people from the past who had a connection to the library.

Audiences will get to meet two teens who knew the building when it was a church in the 1840. Their story is frankly hilarious. Then comes the wife of the custodian who worked at Russell at the turn of the last century. She has a tale about the early troubles the library faced as it struggled to become established in the community. By the way, that custodian is rumored to still haunt the library. This tale is followed by the story of the first female director of the library who ran the library at a time when no one believed a woman could do the job. The final story is from a groovy woman from the 1970s who will explain just what went wrong with the 1983 addition.

What else may you discover? Well, how about what happened in the basement of the old church? Why does a former library director still “visit” the library? Why do the CD racks move by themselves?

Some of the stories are humorous, some are tragic. All are true and reveal the fascinating history of the library.

These ghostly stories will be followed by a tour of the basement of the library where some spirit activity has been known to occur.

Secrets of Russell Library will run two nights only, Friday, October 25^th and Saturday, October 26^th. You may register for these tours via our website.