TLDR
Staff at the 1893 Albright Memorial watch books fall off shelves on an empty lower level. Basement shadows, self-opening doors, orbs on the stairs.
The Full Story
Books fall off the shelves. Staff mention it before anything else, and they don't mean one book knocked askew by a draft. They mean books leaving the shelves in the middle of a quiet afternoon on the lower level, with nobody in that stack.
The Albright Memorial has been a functioning public library since May 26, 1893. Joseph J. Albright sold coal for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, and he and his wife Elizabeth raised their children in a house at the corner of Washington Avenue and Vine Street. After both parents died, the Albright children cut a deal with the city: tear the house down, put a public library on the spot, keep the family name on it. The Buffalo firm Green & Wicks got the commission. At John Albright's specific request, the architects modeled the exterior on the Musee de Cluny in Paris. Indiana limestone, Medina sandstone, Spanish roof tiles, Italian marble fireplaces inside.
1,500 people signed up for library cards in the first three weeks the doors were open.
The paranormal reports here are a specific flavor of library haunting. Basement shadows that move across the far wall and are gone when you turn the corner. Doors on the upper floors opening and closing with no one nearby. Orbs photographed on the staircases. And the books, always the books, abandoning their shelves on the lower level. Wyoming Valley Ghost Tours runs paranormal investigations in the basement stacks, and the library itself partners with them for combined history-and-hauntings tours. Either the most honest library programming in Pennsylvania or the best-dressed hustle. Possibly both.
The building went on the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 1978. During World War II, the library ran a Victory Book Campaign and collected nearly 35,000 volumes for servicemen overseas. None of that has made the shelf activity slow down.
The door has been open for 130 years without closing. Long enough for a quiet building to accumulate opinions about the people inside it.
Researched from 6 verified sources. How we research.
