library ghost

Library ghost

Random

This morning I was inspired to bring my pinhole camera to work to re-shoot my “library ghost” photo. The original didn’t come out exactly as I wanted. Plus, now I’m walking around with a cane. I have props! So I dressed myself in black, found a lace poncho thing in my office that I thought might add to the drama, and set up my pinhole camera.


Processed with RNI Films. Preset ‘Kodak TriX 200’

I exposed the shutter, and stood in front of the camera for 1 minute 30 seconds.

As I stood there, posing in the aisle, I heard some whispering in the next aisle. I assumed  that it was our volunteer, searching for books and whispering to herself. I thought to myself, “please, please, please, don’t wander over here while I’m doing this.” I didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing.

Thankfully, the very long minute and a half ended and I wandered around the stacks with my camera to see if I could find the volunteer, to see where she was.

THERE WAS NOBODY THERE.

I either heard the whispering in my head or it was the library ghost.

The story

Life

Many of you have already heard this but I wanted to blog this anyway because it is SO AMAZINGLY WEIRD. I just don’t know what to make of it.

I have been weeding the Young Adult Fiction collection at the library. For those of you not familiar with library jargon, weeding is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. We need to make room for new books so we get rid of books that aren’t circulating. I’ve been going through each book in the collection, seeing when it has last checked out and figuring out the average times it has checked out in a year. If it has checkout less than two times per year on average, it’s outta here.

It’s valentines day.  I’m humming along, doing my librarian thing, minding my own business. I scan a (kind of dorky looking) book and see that the last checkout was storage. Which means it has been years since it was checked out to a human. The book was in storage a year ago while we were in our temporary building. I was getting ready to send it to the recycling bin but instead I opened it up because I noticed something inside. What I saw completely floored me completely because it was valentines day and THIS is what was inside this book that had not been in the hands of a human being for I don’t know how long:

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WUUUUUUUUUUUUUT?!?