Would You Visit a Haunted Bookshop?

Reading Addicts love a good bookshop and many of us dream of being left in one overnight- but would we feel the same if it turned out the place was haunted?

It seems like the beginning of the perfect ghost story… An old building, packed to the rafters with memories, the books full of people’s stories and authors’ energy… A ghostly figure floating through the shelves at closing time…

The oldest book shop in the USA- the Moravian Book Shop in Pennsylvania- boasts its own spectral member of staff: a dark figure seen occasionally wandering through the store. According to an employee, Jane Clugston, the spirit once warned her of danger, and potentially saved the store, and her life…

Jane saw a dark figure walking through the store, going into the kitchen. Following the figure through to the kitchen she, and a coworker, realised both the stove and the fan were left on- perhaps the ghost was warning them?

“I don’t know why this person, ghost, spirit drew us back there, but I guess to turn off those appliances,” said Jane, “I’d never thought of it until I told someone else and they said a ghost led you back there. But in that back hallway a lot of people have said that they’ve felt things and they’ve seen things.”

Another supposedly ghost-infested bookshop is the aptly-named The Haunted Bookshop  in St Edmund’s Passage in Cambridgeshire, UK. The Haunted Bookshop (or Sarah Keys Bookshop) is set in a quiet and ancient area near the St Edward King and Martyr Church. The shop stocks some rare and antique titles as well as your usual fiction/non-fiction fodder.

With such a great range of vintage titles it is no wonder there is some ghostly energy seeping out of the walls. Legends of a ‘white lady’ appear all over the UK in particular, and this old bookshop is no exception. This version of the ‘white lady’ apparition creeps about on the bookshop stairs smelling like violets. No one is sure who she is/was but it is no surprise patrons see unsettled spirits as the violent history surrounding the area where the shop stands.

Would you visit a haunted bookshop? Or stay in one overnight? I know I would!