{"id":4438,"date":"2023-10-31T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/thepreservationlab\/?p=4438"},"modified":"2023-10-31T09:30:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T13:30:08","slug":"scary-stories-from-the-stacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/thepreservationlab\/2023\/10\/scary-stories-from-the-stacks","title":{"rendered":"Scary Stories From The Stacks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every year the Preservation Lab celebrates Halloween with some fun, spooky and scary content, and this year is no different. However, this year we decided to reach out to our UC Libraries colleagues to hear about their encounters with the unknown, with the paranormal, and share with us any of those stories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Scary<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We received a few submissions that were downright spooky, creepy, and just unexplainable. So prepare yourself! Go ahead and settle in, grab yourself a hot chocolate, and cozy blanket and enjoy!! Hopefully you can sleep after this..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General spooky remarks from Mike Braunlin (Classics Library)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“Ghosts – Local lore is that the Blegen building [which is presently home to the Classics, CCM and ARB libraries] has some of them. In the Archives and Rare Books Department on the 8th floor, an apparition has been seen over the years. I read once that the Classics Department had its offices in that space years ago, and that the entity might be one of the professors of that time. I can add nothing to this story, but for years I became very uneasy whenever I had to visit our rare books in ARB and I am not usually bothered by such things. In later years, what used to invariably scare me when I retrieved a rare book was the life size photographic image of former UC president Nancy Zimpher that was placed in ARB\u2019s stacks. They never moved it (something I would have done regularly), so I knew exactly where I would walk past it; but every time I did, it terrified me anew. But the image is now gone, and as I am also entering an age where I may soon number ghosts as my companions, I no longer fear those stacks.\u202f”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ghost of Blegen Library by Kevin Miller <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Published in Folkstream<\/em> – volume 3, issue 3, December 1980 [courtesy of Mike Braunlin]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Cincinnati is a city steeped in tradition and folklore. Drawing upon a population of Eastern settlers, European immigrants, and Appalachian migrants, the Queen City has a varied heritage of tales and legends. Some of these, murder legends and ghost stories, have been around for the life of the city. But folklore is always being created and at least one ghost story is recent in origin: the ghost of Blegen Library.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Located at the south end of the University of Cincinnati campus, the Blegen Library is a large, rectangular structure built in 1930. Formerly known as the Main Library and then as the Old Library, the building was rededicated last year in honor of Carl Blegen, an early Classics professor at UC In the cavernous foyer, sculptures and bronze panels depict the heritage of learning while the chandeliers exhibit proverbs in bronze silhouettes, proverbs in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Hebrew, Chinese, Latin, and Japanese which extol the virtues of education. Printers marks, the trademarks of famous publishers in the history of the printed word, decorate the high walls and stairwells. Blegen Library has a scholarly demeanor, but is at the same time a stuffy, forbidding place.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember my years as a graduate student at UC, trying to negotiate the confusing stairwells, the maze of book stacks and small rooms. Some of the book stacks were located ‘underground and in the summertime, the dankness and humidity would assault me like a warm sponge. I often expected to come upon one of those career graduate students which infest every library, hiding in his carrell, his hair turned white and eyes pink from years of little sunlight, turning to me with a small, tubercular cough.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Creepy
Image provided by Mike Braunlin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Atop the library is the Rare Book Room, a secluded area set off from offices, classrooms, and reading rooms. It is a dark room kept at a constant cool temperature and even humidity to preserve the volumes. Little drafts of air waft around theological tomes and travel accounts, in between shelves of poetry and stacks of folios. In 1976, while l was a students at UC, a student worker was shelving books in the Rare Book Room, alone in the quiet gloom, Suddenly she felt a chilling presence and turned to see a man in the stacks beside her, a rather innocuous and shadowy man who had instantly appeared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terrified and breathless, she rushed downstairs leaving her work unfinished. Soon her tale of a ghost quickly spread across campus and I heard about it for the first time. Since then, the story of what the student saw has circulated around Cincinnati.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An informal ghost investigation was conducted for her by a UC professor but the spectre did not reappear. Some versions have it that the man was wearing a gray suit and glasses, others that he was short and smoked a pipe, Some folks believe it was the ghost of a former Classics professor who suffered an untimely and tragic death. His office had once been in the room where the rare books are now housed, and it happened to be near the spot where the ghost was encountered. Be that as it may, the student forever refused to return alone to the Rare Book Room for as long as she was in the library’s employ.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since I’ve come back to UC as an archivist in the Special Collections Department, which houses the Rare Book Room, I’m often asked by friends and acquaintances about the ghost and in turn I listen to what they have heard. Folklore is a dynamic process, always being generated and always changing. Legends are created all the time and spread by word of mouth. Whether there truly was a ghost of Blegen Library or not, its story is becoming a part of Cincinnati folklore, an example of the creative process in folklore.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, there are no offices or reading rooms in Blegen Library. The building is being renovated and the sounds of welding torches and drills have for a time replaced the echoes of students’ footsteps on marble stairs. The bronze panels and chandeliers and printers marks will survive the renovation. Perhaps the ghost will too, patiently awaiting another visitor.\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is our reenactment of part of the story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A post shared by The Preservation Lab (@thepreservationlab)<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>