Bham Library Archive

Fate Magazine did a story on the library’s ghost. There’s one person here who thinks she has seen the ghost. She doesn’t want to be identified, but she has given me permission to tell her story. This was the Public Library until 1984. It was built in 1927. Thornley was the director in the 1950’s-1970’s. On the third floor of this building is the auditorium. Most of the sightings had been in that area. Our former archivist never actually saw him—doors opening, that sort of thing. That’s when the archives were on the third floor. Then two or three years ago, a young lady who used to work in our administrative offices was in the auditorium preparing for a reception. She was putting out drinks and things. When you go into the auditorium, the stage is in this end of the room. In the back are tables where they set up refreshments. There’s a doorway that leads to the kitchen. She said she was putting things out and she was alone and it was late in the day. She looked over and there was a man in a suit standing in the kitchen door. She said she looked at him, and he vanished. We tried to do a line-up with her. We took up some photographs. I showed her a picture of Fant and some other people and she wasn’t able to pick him out.

There’s a story about an electrician who was trying to work in the stacks area. I’ve heard different versions of the story. In one version, a man appeared and actually spoke to him. In another version, after he saw this person, he was frightened enough that he never went back into the stacks by himself. We have had staff members who haven’t seen anything, but because of the doors [opening and closing] won’t go into the stacks. We had one young lady a few years ago who wouldn’t go back into the stacks unless someone went in there first and turned on all the lights. The stacks are pretty dark and dingy, and there’s a light down each aisle.

What Marvin Whiting saw in the auditorium at that time was the swinging doors. Fant Thornley always smoked cigarettes—Chesterfields. He [Marvin] was up there late at night working, and he heard the elevator come up. The doors opened and closed, and he smelled cigarette smoke. At the time, there was no one in the kitchen. It was late at night, and there was no one in the building except Jim, the security guard. Jim said he never went up there, and a lot of people talk about the elevators. There are other people who have said that they have been in the library alone, and the elevator door opened and there was nobody there. I sometimes wonder if some of the staff haven’t been perpetrating Mr. Thornley’s legend. There was a staff member named Rochelle Sykes who said she heard the elevators running, but there was no one there. So that’s basically it.

Every Halloween one of the newspapers or TV stations comes over to do a story on Fant. Fant gets a lot of attention, and there’s not that much to the story.

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Last updated 10/09/02

Birmingham Public Library Archives by Jim Bagley

Birmingham Public Library Archives
by Jim Bagley