The scent of lavender drew library-goers into the mysterious Braun Room on the evening of Oct. 29. When students walked into the dimly lit room with the stacks of books decorating the walls, their eyes were drawn to the portrait of Mary Norton Clapp found on the first floor of the library. Next to it was Clapp in the flesh, wearing a white dress with puff sleeves and pink ribbons, her blond hair in a bun. She looked the exact same as she did in her portrait.
Around Clapp the faint eerie music of the theremin played, preparing the students and a few others in the room for what they had signed up for — the Haunted Library Tour.
The Occidental library hosted an event called “Mary Norton Clapp’s Haunted Library,” created by Senior Director of Administration Brian Chambers, the college archivist Alanna Quan, Special Collections Librarian Helena de Lemos and Director of Teaching, Learning and Research Support and Interim Director of Special Collections and College Archives Sarah Paramore. Director of Academic Advising and Core Program Coordinator Edmond Johnson played the theremin during sections of the tour.
The first part of the tour started in the Braun Room, with Quan sitting in an armchair dressed like Clapp alongside the real Clapp’s portrait on the first floor of the library. Johnson was playing the theremin, and the tour-goers were chatting quietly, waiting for the event to begin.
Chambers walked in wearing a shark head. He called himself the Library Loan Shark and gave a short opening speech. The loan shark (Chambers) told a library tale of a Special Collections book that was loaned 50 years ago and just recently returned, and then, he began telling Clapp’s story.
Clapp (Quan) cut off the loan shark, telling her own tale — when and how she died, her mother being the anonymous donor for the building of the library named after her and the strange things that the construction people had noticed happening.
In that moment, everyone in the room turned around to the scream of Miss Havisham (de Lemos), a character from Charles Dickens’ novel “Great Expectations,” standing in the back of the Braun Room wearing an old, tattered wedding dress.
Clapp asked the audience to meet her on the third floor of the library. The library staircases were decorated with spiderwebs and other spooky decorations. A cardboard cutout of Danny Devito poked out of Chambers’s office.
Clapp told the audience the second haunted story. It was about the 1959 College Librarian, Andrew Horn, who heard suspicious and eerie sounds from inside the library walls. Clapp said no one believed him.
“He knew with certainty that the scratching was a manifestation of the library’s secrets and that they were not going to let him go so easily,” Quan said as Clapp.
Clapp asked the audience to go to the library’s fourth floor tiers, where she then reappeared suddenly. She told the story of a reporter for The Occidental, Margaret Fisher, who found an old book containing firsthand accounts of Occidental’s past while looking through the stacks in Fall 1950. Suddenly, Margaret was stuck in the darkness of the labyrinth that the tier had become. She was unable to escape the stacks, just like all of the people from the book she had picked out to read.
The event ended with Johnson demonstrating how to play the theremin and allowing some members of the audience to come up and try it out.
According to Chambers, this was the second time the library planned the Haunted Library event, the first time being in 2019.
“We threw out the idea last year about maybe doing it, but this year we got serious about it,” Chambers said.
Chambers said that while in 2019 just 33 people signed up for the tours, this year they had 50 students signed up and another 50 on the waitlist.
According to de Lemos, one of the reasons she and her colleagues organized this event was to showcase the library as a more fun setting and to show a different side of the librarians.
Chambers said they were also inspired by the legends and myths that exist surrounding the library and its haunting history.
“We all hear them from students and we joke about them, and it’s fun so we kind of wanted to give life to that,” Chambers said.
Some of the stories that Clapp told during the tour were inspired by true events, according to Quan. Quan said the names of the characters, places and the dates are all true facts.
“Obviously, we’ve embellished a little bit to make them proper, spooky stories. In that way, it’s kind of also a fun way to introduce everyone to some of the history of the library as well,” Quan said.
The library staff said they are thinking of making this a yearly event. Quan said she would love it if they did the event on a regular basis to make it an anticipated tradition. De Lemos said in the future, they will try to accommodate more people and have the event over a couple of nights.
Mina Jenab (senior), who attended the second tour, said she would go to another event if the library hosted it.
“I was surprised by this event,” Jenab said. “It was fun and a nice change up to my routine. I also liked that it was sort of a small group, it felt intimate.”
Contact Francine Ghazarian at ghazarian@oxy.edu
