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Copyright 1991
Louis Jefferson Long Library, or as it is better known, Wells College Library, was opened in 1968 - hardly long enough ago for it to harbor any of the romantic and antiquated ghosts which so commonly appear in legends surrounding other campus locations. Nor is the library built on the site of a former indian burial ground (all rumors aside), nor yet situated in a locale infested with some innate evil, as are themes in popular horror novels.
All of the above notwithstanding, there is something a bit peculiar about the library. Any student who has remained in the library, studying late into the night, can confirm that there is something rather unsettling about the place.
Walking among the stacks at night, or occasionally even during the day, and especially on the third floor, with its dim lighting casting weird shadows against the high, oddly-pitched ceilings, that strange, prickly feeling will creep over your neck and shoulders, the way it does when someone is watching you. You look around, yet there is nothing there, nothing but stacks and stacks of books.
You peruse the stacks, pondering which volume will suit your needs, answer your questions or set you on the trail of even more sources. You stand there, book in hand, leafing through the pages, when you hear the sigh. The wind blows high against that crazy cathedral-beamed roof, causing the wood to creak and moan. And yet it sounds uncannily like the soft breathing of some huge sleeping creature.
You look around again, and still you are the only person in the building, save for the workers at the desk and a student or two at the tables in the brightly-lit circulation area downstairs. And then you feel it -- the heavy oppressive feeling of all those books - all that knowledge - pressing in on you, each volume containing a glimmer of the mind and soul of its author. You think of the effort and the energy that went into each author's work, then think of the hundreds of thousands of residual sparks there must be lingering in those books, teeming masses of them. And somehow the sum is more than the total of its parts, as if some unseen and unsuspected being has been born of all that energy and is feeding itself upon all those books, sucking from a pool of knowledge vaster than any of us could ever hope to grasp. The sheer burden of all that knowledge so close at hand presses in, making the aisles seem ever narrower.
A sudden gust of wind shudders the building, shaking you from your reverie, and yet is that shudder not unlike some giant and knowing beast stirring in its slumber? Now it is your turn to shudder and scurry downstairs to the light, vowing never again to walk alone among the stacks at night.
Aurora, NY -- February 12, 1991
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