Book-throwing ghost?

A former Library colleague reports having undergone a frightening experience whilst in the Senate House bookstacks. Some years ago, he was alone on the 8th floor, and had to look for a book in the room at the southern end of the floor. It was quiet and still. Bending down to the bottom shelf to locate the book, he was startled to hear a sudden noise behind him, as a book scudded along the floor, landing close by. It had, apparently, been thrown across the room – but by whom?

Alarmed - since he knew there to be no-one else on the 8th floor at the time - he did not linger, but grabbed the book he had been searching for, and quickly left the room without further delay.

[NB: this is the same room where a similar event was reported... CLICK HERE ]

John! There’s someone up there!

“John!  There’s someone up there!”  “If you go into the head end, right, and look at what’s happened. The lights get switched on!”

This was directed to John Stone the Building Services Technical Officer.  John was taking me on a tour of Senate House and we were at that time exploring the basement to investigate stories of lakes and wells rumoured to be located beneath the building (more on that later). 

The concerned voice came from inside a room in the out-of bounds section of the basement which is currently undergoing building works.  We entered the room and found a group of subcontractors on a break. The subcontractors explained to us that for the past six weeks or so, at 3am each morning, the lights on the 12^th and the 15^th floors have come on by themselves. 

The 12^th and 15^th floors are used to store library books and the floors are secured at the end of every day by the library staff.  Presence detectors are installed on these floors; these are designed to turn the lights on if a large enough mass moves in front of their sensor beams. 

The lights come on at 3am, but no one is there; this has obviously perplexed the night staff somewhat. One subcontractor was interested to find out what books were stored on those floors and I’m rather curious about this myself.

Senate House - if you're passing by at 3am, look up to the 12th and 15th floors to see the lights come on by themselves!

Sudden temperature drop - utterly discomposed

Another account of a mysterious drop in temperature and feelings of extreme unease in Senate House Library:

"The details are lost to the mists of time since this happened more than a year ago, but one day I was up in the Stack looking for a book. It was light outside and temperate inside, ideal (i.e. reassuring) conditions for being in the usually creepy Stack. As I was crouching for the book, it suddenly became cold, but there was no draft – just a drop in temperature. I also remember the silence started to roar in my ears in a rather eerie and persistent fashion. These two occurrences served to discompose me utterly and instil in me an urgent need to skedaddle out of there as soon as possible. I am happy to report however that the ‘presence’ in question (if it wasn’t just my nerves) took pity on me and did not make an appearance – for surely if it had, there would soon thereafter have been a death (from fright) in Senate House and perhaps another ghost to add to the collection."

8th floor ghost?

"I was working late until 6.30 earlier this year and had to fetch from the Stack. One of the items on my list was on the 8th floor. I approached the relevant section; suddenly I felt the temperature drop and I began to feel uneasy. I thought maybe I was imagining it, but when I looked up the book I saw that the book in question was about ghost stories. I decided to take the book and leave as quickly as possible. As I was leaving, I glanced through the lift door and noticed that a light had come on near to the section where I had been. The lights are motion sensitive and there had been no one else up there. I told a colleague about this at a later date and we tried to find the book on the catalogue but had no success."

That haunted lift, and the Harry Price Library room

From a Library staff member:

"But I do remember, back in the days when we used to escort readers up into the Harry Price Collection sometimes, when Mr Wesencraft (Harry Price Librarian) worked up there, over hearing a conversation about the Tower Lift. A visitor, as they left the Library was saying something along the lines that they had “felt” nothing when they were in the Harry Price Library although with the subject of that collection, and the age of some of the material there, they had expected to.

However they did not like being in the Tower Lift and always felt “cold” when in that area. Another member of staff agreed they felt this too, and commented that this did not surprise them since it was the lift shaft in which the Principal (Sir Edwin Deller) had been killed during the building of Senate House.

Another commented that it was also the lift shaft which had had the fire in it, thankfully no one was killed by that! The smoke did make an awful mess of the stacks though."

Several people have also remarked upon the cold temperature in the former Harry Price room (the current writer can also confirm this to be the case). Whether this is a result of its being situated on an outer wall, or because of some other, more eldritch cause, remains to be determined...

Death of Sir Edwin Deller

New staff commencing work at Senate House are inevitably regaled with stories of the 'haunted lift', although there is some uncertainty as to which lift (Senate House has several) is intended.

What does not seem to be disputed is the identity of the putative ghost - that of Sir Edwin Deller, Principal of the University of London. Elected to this position in July 1929, Deller was originally "...a member of the administrative staff, who had left school at 14 and worked as a clerk in various offices, taking his degrees in law as an evening student. He was, in fact, a born admin-istrator as well as a man of great wisdom and savoir-faire." [(p.218, The University of London 1836-1986: an illustrated history by Negley Harte, Athlone Press, 1986]

On 27th November 1936, Sir Edwin was showing some visitors around the half-finished building, still being constructed. A contemporary newspaper article explains what happpened next:

"They were standing in a temporary lift used to reach the tower of the buildings. The lift had gone up to the first floor, about 30ft, with a skip containing concrete, and this had been run along steel rails on the first floor and emptied. John Lapper, a workman employed by Holland, Hannan and Cubitt, Ltd, who was handling the skip, did not know that the lift had gone down again for Sir Edwin, who was going to view the new works. The skip, weighing about 5 cwts, was pushed along the rails to return to the lift. It fell down the shaft with Lapper on top of it, and struck Sir Edwin and those with him."

Three days later, Sir Edwin died. His memorial service was held the following month at the Temple Church. The inquest arrived at a verdict of accidental death, additionally stating that the tragedy had been the result of "negligence by employees."

Newspaper obituaries did not fail to point out the irony of his death having been a direct result of the new University building project, a project to which Deller had dedicated so much time, energy and enthusiasm.

A death notice published in The Times (30th November 1940) contained the following elegy:

I find him in the wonder of his Tower,

That monstrous, beautiful and bloody Tower,

His wordless monument, which seems to say,

"For this he worked and planned and gave his life,

Then took his wages - Death - and went his way"

The lift haunted by Deller's ghost?

Haunted Lift?

Sir Edwin Deller (1883-1936), was Principal of the University of London between 1929 - 1936.

On November 28th, 1936, Deller was visiting Senate House Tower, then under construction, and it was here that he met an untimely end, being crushed by a falling item of construction equipment.  The exact nature of this equipment is under dispute, though it was large enough to simultaneously injure four others!                             

Deller's ghost is said to haunt a lift in Senate House , but is it this lift? 

Another lift has been suggested as a possible site of the accident, although possibly not of the haunting...

                                                                                                                 

Watch this space for more on Deller's ghost and please do send us any relevant information which may shed more light on the haunting.