Meridian-Lauderdale County Public Library

By Jennifer Jacob / staff writer

When you hear the words "ghost" and "library" in the same sentence, the first thing to pop into your head might be something like the opening scene from "Ghostbusters" — books flying off the shelves, card catalog drawers bursting open, a gruesome apparition, and one terrified old librarian.

At the Meridian-Lauderdale County Public Library, the signs of a haunting are a bit different. You're not likely to bump into the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man or find any books that defy gravity, but some curious things have happened there — cold spots, eerie feelings, bumps in the night — which some library employees have attributed to otherworldy spirits.

The Meridian Star, accompanied by Dr. Alan Brown, a professor at the University of West Alabama-Livingston who has authored numerous books on haunted places, visited the library one spooky evening to try and answer the question — is this place really haunted?

Things that go ‘ding’ in the night

So what makes people think the library is haunted?

"It's mainly just eerie feelings," said Reference Librarian Kevin Chatham, who assisted in The Meridian Star's ghost hunt. "Even I've gotten eerie feelings."

In addition to the sense of foreboding that often accompanies alleged hauntings, Chatham and Library Director Steven McCartney have felt unnatural cold spots and heard strange noises on the library's second floor.

"Whether its a natural phenomenon or something else, I don't know," McCartney said, but often, when alone in the library at night, he will become

suddenly cold for no apparent reason. The chills, he said, are often accompanied by a strange feeling of unease.

If all those drops in temperature weren't enough to give McCartney chill bumps, some spooky, unexplainable noises coming from the library's only elevator one night certainly were.

McCartney recalls one night when he worked late, alone in the library, with all the doors locked and most of the lights out. While sitting in his office, off to the side of the mezzanine, he distinctly heard the elevator ding.

Startled, he grabbed a flashlight and went out into the library to search for an intruder, but there was no one there, and the elevator hadn't moved.

Chatham, too, reports that the area around the elevator just doesn't feel right, especially on the second floor above the mezzanine.

"Once you step off that elevator at night, it's just sort of a heavy feeling," he said.

Chatham and McCartney both reported that other members of the library staff have had goosebumpy feelings upstairs, especially in the processing area and around a particular storage closet.

But whether those feelings were caused by anything supernatural has never been determined. The library, though spooky, has never produced any reported apparitions, Electronic Voice Phenomena, or any other physical evidence of a haunting.

Still, some library employees remain convinced that the building is haunted, and think they know who might be haunting it.

If these walls could talk

The stern old librarian in big glasses leaning over the mezzanine to scold the employees below. The woman who cherised books, loved efficiency, and spent who-knows-how-many-hours compiling a library history. The way Chatham describes her, late Head Librarian Jeanne Broach fits the bill of library ghost almost too well.

The image of a ghostly Miss Broach lingering to watch over the library 32 years after her death is not a hard one to conjure, but an article published in The Meridian Star less than a month after her death portrayed a Jeanne Broach who would not have been likely to cling to years past, even in the afterlife.

The article, titled, "Let the past go, she lived those words," explained why the city council and the library board of trustees decided against naming the library after Broach. A no-nonsense woman, Miss Broach would have considered renaming the building a waste of library time and resources, not an honor.

Miss Broach scoffed at titles, even her own, and was known to have uttered the words, "I don't believe in those people who can't let go of the past."

A contempt for those who dwell on the past isn't a quality normally associated with ghosts — but since no one knows whether ghosts are even real, it would be a stretch to assume we know what haunts a place or why.

Just because Miss Broach didn't seem ghostly in life doesn't mean she isn't still with the library in some way. Whether or not Miss Broach's actual spirit haunts the library, employees are certainly haunted by the idea of an imposing and forceful presence.

"If the power was out and it was the middle of the night, I woudn't want to go in the room where Miss Broach's portrait hangs," McCartney said. "It wouldn't surprise me if in fact there was a ghost zone, if Miss Broach wasn't here."

Dr. Brown believes there is another candidate for the post of library ghost, one who clung to that plot of land long before the library was built upon it.

The current incarnation of the Library was opened in 1967, but the library was not the first building to reside on the corner of 26th Avenue and Seventh Street. There was once a home there that belonged to a Mr. A.J. Lyons.

Reportedly, Mr. Lyons' wife, Josephine, took her own life in the home. Little is currently known about Mrs. Lyons, but according to Dr. Brown, suicides often result in hauntings, making Mrs. Lyons an automatic candidate for Library Ghost.

Whether there is anyone else likely to have left a supernatural imprint on the library is hard to determine.

"I don't know if anybody knows the real history of this particular site," McCartney said. The lot has reportedly housed a restaurant, a nun's home, and a house belonging to the Rosenbaum family, but what went on in those places and who spent time there is a mystery.

The Investigation

Although the existence of ghosts has never been indisputably proven, paranormal investigators have a few ways of using physical evidence to determine whether or not an alleged haunting is real.

Equipment used in The Meridian Star's investigation of the library included video and still cameras, voice recorders for Electronic Voice Phenomena (sounds that can be heard on a recording but could not be heard by the human ear at the time they were made), infrared thermometers used to prove or disprove reports of cold spots, and Electromagnetic Field meters, to detect unusual surges in energy.

Our team of investigators scoured the library from the dank basement to the crisp top floor, paying special attention to the areas that had given library employees "eerie" feelings.

The basement was the site of the first EVP session and the first false alarm.

During the session, the lights were turned off and the doors closed. Except for the little red dots meaning that the voice recorders were rolling, it was pitch black.

To put it mildly, the mood was creepy. Everyone was ready for some sign of the paranormal. Asking questions into thin air, everyone had chills, sure that at any moment, something, anything, would happen.

And then it did. Just as Dr. Brown, addressing spirits that may or may not have been there, asked, "Give us a sign of your presence," there was a strange noise. The energy in the room went from somber to excited. The session continued, and the same sound was heard again. Unbelievably, on our very first try, it seemed we had discovered a ghost.

Then we turned on the lights, and alas, the sound wasn't coming from any ghost, but some kind of fuse box.

The rest of the evening continued in much the same way. Ticking time clocks, the clanging of the book drop — every odd sound we heard proved to be completely ordinary.

It wasn't until the very last EVP session that our team had an experience it couldn't explain.

While sitting around a table in the processing room on the second floor, taking our last stab at finding any evidence of spirits in the library, Meridian Star Photographer Paula Merritt became suddenly cold, got chill bumps, and felt something brush against her cheek. At the same time, everyone else experienced the same feeling.

Using an infrared thermometer, Dr. Brown checked to see if the temperature had indeed dropped. It had not. But the feeling of chills continued, and a logical source of it could not be found.

The investigation presented no physical evidence of paranormal activity — all the photos taken were orb-free, the voice recordings contained no EVPs, and all the readings from the infrared thermometer and the Electromagnetic Field detector were normal.

But the consensus that an entire group of people felt something brush against their cheeks at the same time made it hard to say with confidence, "This library is not haunted."

The diagnosis

Inconclusive.

After several hours of investigating the library, our ghost hunting team did not find any solid evidence of a haunting. But we did have some hard to explain encounters that left us spooked. In the case of the library, we felt one evening didn't give us enough time to make a conclusion, but many who work there may remain convinced that the building is home to otherworldly spirits.

If there are spirits in the library, McCartney said, "I hope they're friendly, and I hope they read."