Strange sounds... mysteriously moved books... and a woman who appears when you're alone. We have a lot of scary stories on our shelves, but this is one some library staff have experienced for themselves.
Staff have reported a number of strange happenings at the Hobart Branch of LCPL, all occurring when the patrons have gone home:
Once, back in the '90s after re-painting the workroom, staff came in to find a strange green slime covering the walls.
There have also been strange sounds in the building in the evenings before closing time, when it's quiet and there's no one but staff around.
One night, a janitor was staying late cleaning the building with two buckets out – one for dirty paper towels, another for soap and water. She turned away and when she looked again, the water bucket had been stacked in the paper towel bucket. The janitor would not work at Hobart Branch after that, and another janitor quit entirely after hearing a voice tell her to 'get out!'
Staff closing the building at night would make sure everything was tidy and ready for opening the next morning... and then return the following day to find books on the floor or placed where they shouldn't be.
And of course, a few staff members have reported not just hearing things, but seeing something decidedly strange: the Hobart ghost.
One staff member was packing video cassettes before opening and saw a white-haired woman wearing a black dress and clunky old-fashioned shoes walking up one of the ramps in the library. Since the branch wasn't open yet, no one should be inside. The staff member went after her to find out how she'd got in, but when she searched for her the woman was gone.
And one night the Hobart branch head at the time was closing up the library. He went downstairs to make sure the meeting room and exterior doors were locked. When he came back upstairs, he headed to the Main Street door to leave when a strange feeling made him look back. As he turned his head, he spotted a woman in a floor-length white dress.
He turned back around and walked, very quickly, to the door and went home, reporting that he'd much rather earn his gray hair the traditional way than by investigating ghosts at the library.
(Note: LCPL now has a policy against staff working alone in our buildings, simply for safety's sake – but since the implementation of this policy many years ago, there have been no further sightings.)
So, who is the Hobart ghost? That much remains a mystery. Here's what we know:
The current Hobart branch is built on the site of a former blacksmith shop and town dump (which may have been a part of the blacksmith shop). At another point, it was a stagecoach stop, and then a hotel. The hotel burned down and was replaced with a beach house, but one that businesses operated out of rather than a residence.
The rumor is that a woman was murdered in the house, which was then sold directly to the library, but there are no official reports of a murder in the newspapers of the time.
If there is a ghostly woman haunting Hobart's stacks, she only shows herself when people are alone in the library it would seem.
Is she a former resident with unfinished business? Could there have been a murder at some point in the site's history that no one knows about? We don't know, but we invite you to share your theories and stories – in daylight, if you please!
