A Haunting Among Us!
For more than thirty years, Avery Morrison Public Library has had strange and unexplained experiences that have happened to library patrons and members of the library staff. In all of the occurrences, no one has been harmed.
Clocks, whether electric or battery powered, will not run in the North Carolina Room. Different clocks have been tried without success. Also, computers will not work there.
One patron does not feel comfortable in the North Carolina Room because of an eerie feeling that comes over her when she enters. One employee made much effort to tell those who wanted to use the North Carolina Room all that they needed to know, instead of going there with them.
When ghost hunters came, one of them saw a reflection of a man in a gray suit in the glass of a window.
People are heard talking and walking in spaces not occupied by anyone.
A woman has felt that she is being followed in the annex. Noises are heard there, too.
When the main librarian went with a grandmother to find a book for her grandchild, she saw a man standing in the spot where she needed to be to get the book. He disappeared and was not seen again anyplace in the library. The librarian could not believe what had happened and had to sit at a table to get herself calmed.
The computer technician was working one night by himself with outside doors locked. Suddenly, a woman began screaming and hollering in the back of the library. He thought that she had been locked inside and was desperate to leave. He hurried to help her, but a woman was not found.
A part-time employee saw a person go behind a row of shelving. However, he vanished.
The main librarian stayed late to get a much-needed project finished. She was seated at a computer when something like fog or smoke rose from the computer. It moved in a wave across the library and into a corner of the children’s room then disappeared. That caused the librarian to leave immediately. She felt that what she was doing would be best done later.
The library was being closed at the end of a day. All computers and printers had been turned off when two printers began printing two different cryptic messages that were unreadable.
On a Friday afternoon just before closing time, six sections of shelving with more than seven hundred books on them fell off a wall and spread out over a large area on the floor. A woman had just moved from that place or she would have had serious injuries. Shelves fell off a wall another time, but what happened then was minor.
The main librarian was busy in the small kitchen with her back turned toward the sink with the cabinet above filled with dishes and glasses. Suddenly, the cabinet and everything in it crashed to the floor and threw glass on the table, chairs, and other flat surfaces. Shards from the shattered glass were driven into the sheetrock wall. With all that happened, not a piece of glass touched the main librarian, even on the floor at her feet. She was almost in a state of shock, but she was very thankful not to have had a major injury.
James C. Byrd, Special Collections & Local History Librarian
(submitted October 17, 2020)
Image: Morrison Room in the Avery Morrison Public Library in Newland, NC