The Haunted Library

I’m happy to be making my first appearance as a guest-blogger (this is Tom, not Erin, writing). Fall is here and Halloween is coming soon, so I thought I’d share a spooky story with everyone.

As you may know from Erin’s posts, I do most of my work in a little office on the other side of the courtyard from the room we live in. But the Academy also has a library that takes up an entire wing of the building, and I spend a lot of time working there too. The library is a very old fashioned place, as you can tell from the pictures. To check out a book, you basically just take the book and leave a little note saying “I took this book, drop by my office if you need it.” During the day, the library is a lovely place to be. On the main floor, the tall windows mean that the whole place is flooded with natural light. At night, on the other hand, things can look a little different.

I do not advise the use of that stairway.

There is 24-hour access. And if you’re really a nerd, sometimes there is a book that you just need to see. At night, the library is unbelievably spooky. The main floor is bad enough, with its creepy candelabrum and endless dark corners (all the aisles really do make for a lot of dark corners). And the crowd of busts that frown down at you doesn’t help things. The rest of the library, buried under the main floor, is even spookier. The underground space was originally one massive hall, but a scaffold-like structure was built into it so that it’s two stories, each with a cramped, low ceiling. The odd design of the built-in structure makes it so that there are dozens of little hallways that dead end suddenly, and creates rooms whose sizes are impossible to gauge. It can be easy, too easy, to forget which way would let you back out. There are lights in the various hallways and rooms, but they are motion-activated, so you have to pluck up your courage and walk into the darkness, trusting that a light will come on. And if you stay still too long while reading, the lights will suddenly snap off and you’ll be left in the dark. You hear noises and want to yell out “Is there anybody there?” But you resist the urge, fearing that something will answer “Yes . . .”

After Erin and I had been here about a week we found ourselves in the library at around half past midnight. We had been at a party hosted by the Professor-in-Charge (who, in the charming manner of academic titles, is not actually the person in charge). The party had been on a rooftop terrace nearby, and we had walked home with one of the other fellows. The three of us decided to drop into the library—not because we needed anything particular, but because we had had a few drinks and were making the most of our unrestricted access to the grounds.

We entered the library through the locked door on the courtyard, and found our way into the vestibule on the main floor—although we did not find the lights. We went into the main hall, with the busts and the candelabrum, and I started to have some misgivings. This place looks completely haunted, I said to myself. It turns out that I was right.
 

Some inscriptions plastered onto the wall.

Some say that ghosts are the result of people dying with unfinished business, others that ghosts are the product of writers in need of a good literary device. Either way, it wouldn’t be surprising for the Academy to be full of them. The Academy was built on the grounds of a bloody battle in 1849 between French troops, determined to restore the Pope, and Garibaldi’s miscellaneous fighters. (In one of those quirks of history, the papal army was actually fighting on Garibaldi’s side.) Even more than our location, the building itself seems a likely to find the unquiet departed. You can see from the picture on the left that ancient inscriptions were plastered into the walls of the courtyard. Apparently, in 1915 when the structure was built, this was considered to be a perfectly responsible way to store antiquities. Look at the picture below, and you notice that many of the inscriptions start with the letters “D M.” As Latin epigraphists will cheerfully inform you, this is an abbreviation for Dis Manibus, “To the gods of the underworld...” These inscriptions were taken from tombs.
 

Dis Manibus . . .

You might expect then, that the library would be haunted by one of Garibaldi’s soldiers, or by an ancient Roman who’s a little miffed by his tombstone being used as wall-paper. The ghost in the library, however, is said to be that of an early librarian here, a man named Van Buren. And he is by all accounts a benevolent ghost.

We did not see Van Buren that night in the library, although the place did scare the crap out of us. For the purposes of bloggeristic integrity, Erin insisted that I spend a night working in the library after midnight. I chose my location carefully. I wanted a full view of the mezzanine with the candelabrum (surely the place where a ghost would appear), but I also didn’t want my access to the door impeded if circumstances arose that necessitated a hasty retreat. I waited and worked. I did not go down into the lower levels, below the ground. (I’m not crazy.)

Van Buren did not visit me that night, although I suppose I can hardly expect him to appear on command. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open though, and you’ll hear from me (screaming in fright from Italy) if I do run into him.

Happy Halloween everyone!