Ghosts – Page 3 – BibliOccult

Museums house artifacts of historical, artistic and cultural significance, providing visitors a unique opportunity to catch glimpses into the past. The Cleveland Museum of Art, however, allows you to catch a literal glimpse into the past. It stands to reason that a museum filled with treasured items would be haunted. But the Cleveland Museum of Art has taken this to an extreme. It is allegedly home to several spirits, and has been dubbed one of the US’s most haunted museums.

This week’s topic isn’t a library or a bookstore or directly related to books, but museums share many of the same values as libraries—primarily the preservation and sharing of information. This information doesn’t have to come in the form of books. Art, artifacts, memorabilia—all these items provide invaluable insights into the past, present, and even the future.

Now that I’ve justified talking about a museum, I can dive into the nitty gritty of the haunting. Or should I say, hauntings.

If you stand in front of an artwork that was beautifully painted by an Impressionist, you might feel captivated, at a loss for words, and have an overwhelming desire to escape into that world of pastel shades and blurred reality. But what if it were possible that the subjects of these paintings could come to life? No, I’m not describing The Night at the Museum, but what many visitors and employees claimed to have experienced while roaming the halls of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Continue reading “A Gallery of Ghosts: The Cleveland Museum of Art’s Various Hauntings” →

Ghosts, Writer

They left their hearts in San Francisco: The Ghost Stories of Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman

January 30, 2018January 30, 2018 Helen

Tony Bennett once sang “I left my heart in San Francisco”. It looks like he wasn’t the only one…

Dashiell Hammett, author of noir classics such as The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, was an infamous womanizer during the prohibition era. It wasn’t long before he set his sights on Lillian Hellman, a lively fledgling playwright with great talent and feminine wiles. The two had an on-again, off-again relationship that spanned over three decades.

The Thin Man movie image — The cast of “The Thin Man”. Hammett loosely based the character of Nora Charles on Hellman.

The accounts about the nature of Lillian and Dash’s relationship vary greatly. Some sources say that they were “friends with benefits”, which was rather progressive for the time (Vercillo, 2007). Neither Dash nor Lillian wanted to be tied down, and they enjoyed their time together, but were never in a committed relationship. Other sources say that their relationship was volatile, filled with passion and, sometimes, violence. Dash couldn’t stay faithful, which led Lillian to cheat out of vengeance. It is entirely possible that these accounts are false, and that Lillian was painted this way because the thought of a liberated woman was, at the time, unpalatable. Lillian was said to proposition men half her age, but these stories aren’t told in the same way that they would be were it a man to have been the one doing the wooing. It’s a double standard, but it reveals how history is shaped by those who tell it. A dual biography written by Joan Hellen paints the lovers as anything but idyllic. Dash might have even been violent towards Lillian. While I haven’t had the chance to read the entirety of this book, it has a tabloid-like feel to it, and it can be difficult to determine just how much is based in fact, and how much true. Especially when both parties involved are now dead.

Continue reading “They left their hearts in San Francisco: The Ghost Stories of Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman” →

Ghosts, Haunted Bookstores

A Haunting Read at Rivendell Books

January 16, 2018January 16, 2018 Helen

Rivendell Books, a used, rare, and out-of-print book store in Barrie, Ontario is home to a history buff who spends his days and nights pacing the aisle that shelves books on WWI and WWII. He reads and obsesses about the Great War, often removing books from the shelves and sorting them into piles. But he isn’t an employee that needs to be given direction, and he isn’t a loyal, yet irritating customer. He’s a ghost.

Continue reading “A Haunting Read at Rivendell Books” →

Ghosts, Haunted Bookstores

The Newer Haunting of the Oldest Bookstore

November 20, 2017 Helen

The oldest bookstore in America, the Moravian Book Shop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has been continuously running for over 270 years. There are some solid arguments that it’s actually the longest running bookstore in all of the world (Sullivan, 2016). Of course, a place like this would pick up a few ghosts over the centuries. There are at least two spirits haunting this bookstore—if you believe the stories, of course.

Today’s blog post is a little shorter, because I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and I’m writing an entire book in just thirty days. I don’t have many words to spare! I picked this story to dissect because there isn’t much evidence supporting or refuting the claims of the people who’ve seen strange things in this bookshop. But it still makes for a fascinating story…

Continue reading “The Newer Haunting of the Oldest Bookstore” →

Ghosts, The Unexplained

A Genuine “Ghost” Writer

November 13, 2017December 3, 2017 Helen

In 1912, a St. Louis, Missouri housewife named Pearl Lenore Curran had a good friend and writer named Emily Grant Hutchings over for a visit. Emily brought a Ouija board with her, because she was interested in the resurgence in “spiritualism” that had taken over America at this time (Carroll, 2015). They experimented with the Ouija board, but it wasn’t until almost a year later that Pearl received her first message from the beyond.

Pearl began to channel the writings of “Patience Worth”, a British woman from the seventeenth century. Pearl would sit at the Ouija board, her hands whipping the planchard back and forth as her husband, John, transcribed the many poems, short stories, and novels of this seventeenth century author. Patience could also take over Pearl’s mouth, engaging the many scholars who came to observe this miraculous feat in delightful conversation. She also took over her hands, as Pearl later wrote by hand with what is considered “automatic writing”. Pearl/Patience would come up with poems at the drop of a hat, given only a prompt from a skeptical onlooker. Many scholars at the time praised her work, and they didn’t know what to believe (Diliberto, 2010). Was she writing these fully composed works of fiction off the top of her head? Or was she truly channelling the spirit of a seventeenth century writer? Otto Heller, Dean of Washington University’s Graduate School said: “I still confess myself completely baffled by the experience” (Diliberto, 2010). Many books have been written about her, and some, like Edgar Lee Masters, believed wholeheartedly that she was a true medium, while others, like Harry Houdini, believed her to be a fraud (Schlueter, 2012). Continue reading “A Genuine “Ghost” Writer” →

Ghosts, Haunted Libraries

The Tragic Tale of Phyllis Parker

November 6, 2017November 6, 2017 Helen

What do you do if your library has a ghost that’s so active she’s been seen floating among the stacks by numerous people over several decades? You issue her a library card! That’s exactly what the staff at the Bernardsville Public Library in New Jersey did. Although, their ghost hasn’t checked anything out. At least, not yet…

This post is going to dissect the story of Phyllis Parker, the ghost who haunts the Bernardsville Public Library. But this is more than just any old ghost story. This is a story of true love and high intrigue that deviates slightly from your typical bodice ripper.

Continue reading “The Tragic Tale of Phyllis Parker” →

Haunted Bookstores

The Ironic Ghost of Attic Books

October 13, 2017October 22, 2017 Helen

An ironic ghost haunts the basement of Attic Books, an antiquarian and used bookstore in London, Ontario. I’ve decided to start BibliOccult with this story, because not only have I been to this bookstore, but I may have encountered its spirit. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Built in the mid-to-late 1800s, the stunning red brick building on 240 Dundas Street was initially only one storey, with the first and second storeys being added during renovations in 1880. The gargoyle, which adds a Gothic look to the building, was only added in 1996 (1).

The building has housed many businesses over the last century and a half. The first inhabitant of note is Abraham Spry. He worked as a tailor in the building in 1875 (1). However, he only stayed there a year before moving on, transferring his business to another building on Dundas Street. It’s my understanding that he didn’t stay there long enough to grow attached to the building. He didn’t stay there long enough to die.

Continue reading “The Ironic Ghost of Attic Books” →

Welcome

A New Beginning

October 8, 2017March 29, 2018 The Night Librarian

Welcome to BibliOccult, Library of the Odd, the Obscure, and the Occult. Other than the fact that I clearly love alliteration, what does that tell you about this blog? This will be a place where you can find a variety of posts to tickle your fancy and send chills down your spine. If you thrive on the bizarre, and you’re intrigued by the unknown, then you’ve come to the right place.

Updated weekly, this website will curate strange (but not always supernatural) stories from the news and from history, as well as the occasional book or film review. I’m fascinated by the supernatural, especially ghosts, so they’ll be a highlight of this blog. In addition to being a librarian, I’m a murderino with a forensics degree, so there will inevitably be some analyses of unexplained murders (and their subsequent hauntings) thrown into the mix.

If you’re interested, click follow. The first official post will be on Friday the 13th. I look forward to unnerving you soon…

Book shelf