All library locations are closed Monday, May 29 in observance of Memorial Day.
The parking garage adjacent to the Main Library is open at 75% capacity during repair work. NPL has secured discounted alternatives for our patrons during this time.
Welcome to All Things Eerie, a collection of spooky tales and strange stories of the invisible world and its scary inhabitants. Any time is a good time for a ghost story.
Paul Smethers, a former high school English teacher, is an Associate with the Adult Services Team at Main.
His special interests are poetry, ghost stories, and the French Bourbon dynasty.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, whom we know simply as Mrs. Gaskell, wrote the following short story, “The Old Nurse’s Story,” at the invitation of Mr. Charles Dickens – whom we know to be a thoroughgoing aficionado of the ghostly tale.
The story of Tom Walker is a variation on the legend of Doctor Faust, a 16th century magician and astrologer, well known to have sold his soul to the devil for wisdom, money, and power.
“The Canterville Ghost" is a short story by Oscar Wilde about an American family who move to a castle haunted by the ghost of a dead nobleman who killed his wife and was starved to death by his wife’s brothers.
An English writer nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times, H.G. Wells was prolific in many genres and is often called the Father of Science Fiction. But wasn’t Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the book that really launched the genre of science fiction?
Tonight we draw our attention to one of the stories of Algernon Blackwood, a former Commander of the British Empire, who was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre.
We introduce our new podcast with a very special ghost story, this one by a Mr. Dickens, whom we all know as one of the most prolific and beloved authors of the 19th century.
We shall only spend a brief moment introducing the controversy over the attribution of tonight’s story to Daniel Defoe. The reason for this question of attribution lies in two facts: Daniel Defoe was well known to publish many works anonymously, and many anonymously-published works were casually attributed to him. Because of those two reasons, literary scholars have found endless ways to argue this matter, none of which matter much to us. But there you have it.
