History & local legend
Phoenixville Public Library's Carnegie Room is the setting for a familiar closing-time story. An employee who worked there for seventeen years said he carefully pushed the chairs into place before leaving, only to find them scattered when the library reopened the next morning.
Writer and regular library visitor Lindsay Merkel collected that account along with reports of an elderly man and his dog walking among the shelves. Another figure, a little girl, was said to appear in the basement children's library and sometimes in the elevator leading down to it. Rocking chairs moving without occupants and unexplained closing doors added to the building's reputation.
The library became the subject of paranormal investigations, including a 2009 visit filmed for SCARED! Merkel distinguished those reported experiences from her own visits: she knew the stories and sometimes felt watched, but did not claim to have seen the figures herself.
