Miscellany

A Ghostly Encounter

When I was sixteen and a madly keen library junior, I volunteered to do relief duty for six weeks at a small branch some miles from where I worked at the headquarters of Kent County Library. Miss Davies, the County Librarian, smiled at me approvingly, and rang back to tell them to expect me on the following Monday. I went by train, a few stops down the line, and walked the mile to the library in good heart.

Northfleet Library was a large old house that had once been a family home, and although it was on the main street, it was set well back and circled with a high wall. I went through the wrought-iron gate and in to the mellow hall to meet my new colleagues. They were a pleasant bunch, and I was the youngest. The garden was well-tended and I enjoyed a sandwich lunch there before I returned to counter service, book processing, and all the mending and tidying up that went on non-stop in a busy branch.

In the afternoon Mrs. Finch, who ran the branch, took me into her room, and went through my weekly timetable with me. I was surprised to learn that on two evenings a week I would be entirely alone, and in charge. This could never happen now. Library staff must always be a minimum of two, and three is more usual. Management has learned to expect and be wary of bad things happening that could lead to trouble. In those days – the late 50s – no one expected the readers to be other than ‘troublesome’ from time to time and only in a totally manageable fashion. No one worried about leaving a half-trained adolescent all alone from five to seven with not even a panic button or a caretaker around.

And, in fact, I had little trouble. I used to clash sometimes with an old woman tramp who insisted on warming herself by the 2-bar electric fire in Reference, singeing her clothes and stinking out the library. Another man, a half-wit, would stand and stare at me for forty minutes on end, his head nodding non-stop on his weedy little neck. Some of the school-kids would try it on, and I had an occasional run-in with some stout and tweedy matron reluctant to pay her fine.
Mostly, I managed, and began to enjoy the feeling of being boss, would take tea and biscuit to the desk – strictly forbidden – and help the readers more than I was allowed to when the qualified staff were on duty. I liked to leave everything neat and tidy for the morning staff.
Counting up the money, locking up and letting myself out into the dusky evening was some kind of endorsement that I was grow-up at last, capable, and competent.

This procedure for locking up was complex. The children’s department – converted from what was originally the cellar – closed at six, when I shooed them all home and switched off the lights. At quarter to seven I would clear the reference room if I was able, and then go up the stairs to the third floor staffroom and office. The day’s taking were put in the safe, and I would switch off all the lights and descend again, my coat and bag over my arm, and checking Reference as I went by. If it was empty – and it usually was – I would switch off the lights there, too, and that was the second floor closed down.

Back at the counter, I would ring the bell for a ten minute and five minute warning, issue books to the stragglers, and bid them a cheery goodnight, then do a last walk-round to check all windows were closed and locked and that no-one was lurking in the bookstacks. Then I walked to the back wall and turn off all the lights except the outside light that illuminated the lobby. I suppose for some people it would be a bit spooky walking through in the dark. They were old-fashioned wrought-iron bays where strange shadows wavered as you moved beside them.

But it never worried me until 24th September that year, which had been a somewhat grey and foggy kind of day. Donald, the staring man, was hard to shift, and the old tramp woman had been particularly smelly and recalcitrant. I felt triumphant when the library was cleared of customers at last, and I had only to switch off the main room lights and I could go home. The basement was in darkness, the second and third floors were in darkness, and put my hand up to the board and switched off all the main room lights one by one.

Halfway across the floor every light in the building suddenly blazed into brilliance. Lights I had turned off at six, at half-past six and now at seven came back on together. As I stood there dumbfounded beneath the neon strips, something brushed past me, sighing as it went. Footsteps clumped heavily up the stairs and the office door that I had shut and locked a bare ten minutes before swung open – I heard it creak– and then slammed shut.

When you are terrified your hair really does stand on end. I felt mine stir and lift and I screamed, four times. Then I ran, through the main room, into the lobby, out the door, down the garden path and through the gate. Once safely outside I leaned against the wall, half-fainting, and panting heavily with fright. A stout woman in the bus queue came over to me, trailing her sons behind her. They were sullen teenagers, with their hands in their pockets, and when I had recounted my story, they consented grudgingly enough to go back inside and check. I refused to accompany them.

They came back in ten minutes. The library was in darkness again, and they carefully locked the front door, and handed me the keys. I caught the bus to the station. When I walked into the kitchen for my supper, I was still so white my mother insisted on dosing me with malt extract. She was always convinced I was anaemic, but I’m not: I’m just a paleface.

I could not tell her what had happened. I had been thinking it through on the train home, and making no sense of it. I couldn’t tell anyone at work either, and I thought I would just endure the two weeks of my six weeks cover that was left, leave the library behind and never return to Fleet if I could help it. I took precautions, bribing the tramp with tea and biscuits to stay until I locked up, tolerating Nodding Donald, and asking a friend of mine who was a curate to phone me every thirty minutes. Surely no one could harm me with a holy man on the line?

A week later I had locked up and, glancing inside, suddenly realised I had left all the gas fires on. I found myself crying, because all my supporters had gone home, and I knew that nothing would induce me to go in to that dark library and turn them off. Next day, as I expected, I was called to account, fortunately by the caretaker, Mr. Jenks, who had a soft spot for me and waited until lunch-time when I was alone to scold me. To my surprise I found myself explaining why. I told him all about the incident, and he went still and quiet as he listened, his eyes fastened upon me intently, with something in his expression I couldn’t understand.

“What have they been telling you?” he said, roughly.
“What do you mean, Mr. Jenks? I haven’t talked to anyone.”
“Not heard any stories?”
“What stories? No.”

He sat silently on the bench beside me, thinking hard, then he took my hand in his. “Listen, girlie”, he said. “A year ago last week I came into the library at six a.m. to clean it through like I always do. When I got to the third floor, there was a notice on the staffroom door and it was locked. The notice said, Before you enter, call the police. And that’s exactly what I did.” He paused and shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and fixed them on me. “When the police went inside with my key they found a young woman dead on the floor. She’d gassed herself. Three months pregnant she was. At the inquest it turned out her boyfriend dumped her when she told him, and her father threw her out. Yes, she killed herself, poor lassie, and she did it here.”

We were both silent and then he got up and walked away and I went back to work. Later on Mrs. Finch called me into her office and told me I was expected to stay another six weeks as the staff member was still too sick to return to work. I gave in my notice on the spot and transferred to a college library in a bright and modern building.

Since then I’ve made my career in academic libraries. And - I still believe in ghosts.

posted by Jenny Argante @ 5:04 AM