This is the ninth entry in my Twelve Days of Southern Spirits Series celebrating traditional ghost story telling over Christmas.
Danville-Boyle County Public Library
307 West Broadway Street
Danville, Kentucky
Last year I began work on a series looking at haunted libraries throughout the South. While Kentucky was published, I have only just come across the information on this library.
Starting as many public libraries, the Danville Library originally started as a subscription library in 1893 occupying a rented space. In 1920, the library board purchased a downtown building as a permanent location. In 1936, that building was demolished and replaced with the Young-Rodes Library building. That small structure has been augmented in later years with the addition of several more attached structures to create the large library that exists today.
A 1999 article in the Advocate Messenger notes that the library has had some anomalous activity. Several years previous to the article a library employee passed away. Shortly after their passing, an employee working on payroll discovered that the employee had been punched into the timeclock. Two weeks later, the deceased employee’s time card was punched out. The librarian insists that there is no way the employee’s card could have been punched in or out by someone else.
Since that time, there has been some other “strange happenings” occurring with or near the time clock.
Sources
- Clay, Julie. “Specters of the past still haunt area cities.” Advocate Messenger. 31 October 1999.
- Fairchild, Dave. “Boyle County Public Library’s history and future.” Advocate Messenger. 2 May 2018.