The Paranormal Database

Bell Ringing

Location: Aberdeen (Aberdeenshire) - Aberdeen Central Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2008
Further Comments: The East of Scotland Paranormal Society investigated this building and claimed to have heard footsteps, whispering, and the sound of a bell.

Bloody Puddle

Location: Antrim (County Antrim) - Mussenden Temple library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: A mysterious patch of blood occasionally appears on the floor of this building, evaporating away a few minutes later.

Box Mover

Location: Bedworth (Warwickshire) - Library
Type: Poltergeist
Date / Time: Circa 1960
Further Comments: Storage boxes on the top floor were discovered rearranged after being tidied. After being sorted again, staff downstairs could hear banging above them; something had once again reorganised the boxes.

A woman wearing a veil, illustrated by Wayne Lowden.

Veiled Woman

Location: Billericay (Essex) - Burghstead Lodge (currently Registry Office & Library Archives), south-west room on first floor
Type: Crisis Manifestation
Date / Time: Nineteenth century
Further Comments: A nurse was attending to an ill man in this lodge. On two consecutive nights she spotted, standing over the man, a veiled woman in a green gown who mysteriously vanished. On the third night, the nurse approached the woman and removed her veil. What she saw is unknown, as the following morning she was found insane and her patient was dead. The nurse herself died a few months later.

Little Girl

Location: Billericay (Essex) - Cheyne Library, 118 High Street
Type: Unknown Ghost Type
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: The ghost of a little girl has been seen on the stairs of the building.

Area around the library, Brighton.

Child in Pyjamas

Location: Brighton (Sussex) - Area around the library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Prior to early 1990s
Further Comments: Thought to have been killed during a Second World War bombing raid, this small ghostly child dressed in pyjamas is said to carry a wooden toy. It is not clear whether the ghost has been observed since the 1990s, when the last of the bomb damaged buildings were fully demolished.

Monk

Location: Bristol (Somerset) - Library adjoining the cathedral
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 16:30h (reoccurring)
Further Comments: This phantom monk dressed in grey has always been seen around the same time.

Town library, Burnley.

Piano Man

Location: Burnley (Lancashire) - Town library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Twentieth century
Further Comments: A piano in a lecture theatre here was seen to play itself and has been also heard several times since.

Tapping Typewriter

Location: Coalville (Leicestershire) - Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1950s
Further Comments: Eileen Latimer appeared on a 1955 television programme to discuss her experiences working after hours in this library, which included hearing a tapping typewriter and finding books falling off shelves without reason.

A ghostly butler amongst the books.

Lady in Grey

Location: Dorking (Surrey) - Pippbrook House (currently Dorking Library)
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: The ghost of a woman wearing a long grey dress is reputed to haunt the staircase, while a phantom butler has also been reported.

An ghostly archbishop reads through old books.

Archbishop Narcissus Marsh

Location: Dublin (County Dublin) - Marsh's Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: The wraithy Archbishop still looks through the books and manuscripts which line the library's shelves. One legend says he is searching for a lost letter, hidden within the pages of an unknown volume.

Vanishing Person

Location: EC1 (Greater London) - Holborn Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2010s
Further Comments: An archivist using a mirror in the third floor bathroom glimpsed a person walking behind her and turned to find nobody there. An art curator visiting the then-unused fourth floor was violently pushed in the shoulder by an unseen presence, and a cleaner working in the basement ran from it in terror, refusing to say what she had seen or return to the library. Strange lights have also been witnessed in the reserve stock room and doors open and slam by themselves.

Book Loving Gentleman

Location: Felbrigg (Norfolk) - Mannington Hall, Library
Type: Post-Mortem Manifestation
Date / Time: 11 October 1879, and 1912
Further Comments: Witness Dr Augustus Jessop claimed to have spent a night in 1879 researching in the library, sharing his work area with a red haired ghost. Possibly unconnected, an exorcism was performed on the site in 1912 to rid the building of a poltergeist - part of the upper floor was bricked up after the procedure.

Gone?

Location: Fraserburgh (Aberdeenshire) - Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: A 1988 newspaper article alludes to the library ghost not being heard for some time, suggesting it had left the building.

Septimus Pitt

Location: Glasgow (Lanarkshire) - Mitchell Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 2000s
Further Comments: Although Pitt the phantom is the creation of Scottish poet Brian Whittingham, staff at the library have reported icy chills on the second floor.

Grey Lady

Location: Huthwaite (Nottinghamshire) - Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Occasionally seen wearing a grey silk Victorian dress, this female ghost is more likely to generate the sensation of being watched.

King's Lynn Public Library.

Monk

Location: King's Lynn (Norfolk) - Public Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: This figure is reported to haunt the basement of the building, once a monastery. At one time, staff were apparently too scared to enter the area by themselves.

Sir Herbert Marshall

Location: Leicester (Leicestershire) - Central Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Former Lord Mayor of Leicester, Sir Herbert, was said to be heard playing a piano in the library after his death, the site where he owned a piano shop in the nineteenth century. Books would occasionally fly from shelves, with the ghost of Marshall blamed.

Man in Brown

Location: Lerwick (Shetland) - Shetland Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: Formerly a church, the library is reputedly haunted by the ghost of a man wearing a brown coat. Staff claim that books have flown off shelves without being touched, and disembodied footsteps heard in the basement.

Elderly Lady

Location: Mansfield Woodhouse (Nottinghamshire) - Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: An elderly woman is reported to haunt this building, as is (unless it is the same entity) a faceless monk that walks through walls and closed doors as if they were not there.

Murderer

Location: Market Deeping (Lincolnshire) - Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 1973, 1986
Further Comments: The man who haunts this building murdered a woman on the site and buried her body under a nearby stables, now site of the fire station. In 1986, a cleaner claimed to have seen the ghost three times, while a decade earlier, staff heard somebody leave the building, although they were alone at the time.

The front doors of the Lit and Phil Library.

Door Opener

Location: Newcastle upon Tyne (Tyne and Wear) - Lit and Phil Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 25 October 2012
Further Comments: Video footage released showed a fire door opening on its own accord, although a gust of wind or change in air pressure are the more likely mundane explanations. The building is also used by ghost hunt organisers.

Elsie Marshall

Location: SE3 (Greater London) - St John's public library, Blackheath
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Twentieth century
Further Comments: A former missionary killed in China, Elsie has appeared to have returned to her former home, gently pushing past people if they stand in the way of the invisible entity.

Banging

Location: Shrewsbury (Shropshire) - Shrewsbury Library
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: June and September 2009
Further Comments: The West Midlands Ghost Club carried out an investigation that recorded the sound of female vocals in June. Returning in September, they recorded a clanging noise which ended in a loud bang.

Mr Naylor

Location: Souldern (Oxfordshire) - Rector's Cottage library
Type: Crisis Manifestation
Date / Time: 1706
Further Comments: Mr Naylor, dead for five years, appeared to the rector here; they sat and chattered for ninety minutes. The ghost finally announced that the rector would soon pass away himself, and a few days later the man of the cloth died mid-sermon.