The Homewood ‘Haunted’ Library: Staff shares stories of spooky encounters in the public library

Is the Homewood Public Library haunted? Some of the staff think so.

Before Homewood Public Library was at its current location on Oxmoor Road, it was Homewood Church of Christ.

The church used to host Sunday school meetings in the bottom level of the building, until it was bought by the city of Homewood as the city’s new library in 1984.

Since it opened in 1986, the library has been a center for mystery and intrigue in Homewood, as residents and ghost hunters alike try to answer the question: “Is the Homewood Public Library haunted?”

Over the years, several librarians and patrons have reported hearing women’s voices, books flying off the shelves and doors slamming open and shut by themselves.

The library saw the most activity when renovations were being made to the library in the 1990s, according to the book “Haunted Birmingham” by Alan Brown.

Former Library Director Debbie Fout remembers working in the downstairs of the library, which is where the administrative offices were located, while offices on the first floor were being built and the building was being remodeled.

“I was working late one night,” Fout said. “It was on a Friday night and I was the only one in the building and I left my office to go to the restroom and I left my door open because there was no one else in the building. When I came back, the door was closed and it scared me because I thought I locked my keys in there but it wasn’t locked. I worked there a while longer and then the next time when I had to go down the hall, I was positive that I closed the door. … When I went to the restroom and came back, the door was open.”

Fout said she also remembers when a construction crew ran out of the building in the middle of the night while renovating the building.

“They were putting in the sprinkler between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m,” Fout said. “They’d come in after we closed and finished before we opened in the morning. One night, the lights began going off and on by themselves. A few minutes later, some lightweight metal studs began moving across the floor by themselves. Then the electrical cords start dancing in the air like snakes. They got so scared that they took off in the middle of the night and left all of their tools in the library. Later that night, they called the police and had them come into the library and get their tools.”

When the foreman of the work crew heard about what happened, Fout said, he had all of the crew drug tested, with some workers refusing to go back inside the library.

“We’re haunted and this place is as creepy as can be at night,” said Library Director Judith Wright.

The library has seen several ghost hunters and psychics, Wright said, but she remembers one particular visit very well.

Co-founders of S.C.A.R.E. Alabama, a paranormal research organization, Kim Johnston and Shane Busby approached Wright to ask if they could stay late and do a ghost reading.

“I was like, ‘Sure, come down around 7:30-8:00 p.m., the lower level is mostly cleared by then so I’ll take you around,’” Wright said. “We were looking into doing after-hour ghost tours with them, where people would pay as a fundraiser for the library and walk around with the ghost hunters and do readings of their equipment.”

Wright went downstairs to walk around with Busby and Johnston so she could unlock all the doors and “try not to roll her eyes” from skepticism, she said.

While Wright was sitting in the Friends of the Library bookstore, which also used to be one of many Sunday school rooms, Johnston and Busey asked the “spirits” questions and then waited for them to communicate their answers through their equipment, which operates similarly to an AM/FM radio, Wright said.

“They were asking a series of questions and I’m not paying that much attention,” Wright said. “They asked the question ‘How many spirits are here?’ The radio goes silent and then, as clear as day, you can hear something say the number ‘Nine’ over the scanner and then it goes quiet. I said, ‘OK, everyone grab a buddy, lights on, we are out of here.’ I was done.”

Since then, as a joke, Wright said, library staff say ‘Goodnight, nine’ as they lock up the library every night.

When librarians and patrons returned from quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, no one heard much from “the nine” until the library held a ghost tour once cases were reduced, Wright said.

“I remember one night, a director took a group downstairs with the tour guides around 10 o’ clock at night,” Wright said. “I stayed upstairs in my office. I was at my desk working and she sent me a text message and she’s like, ‘Stop it,’” Wright said. “I said, ‘What?’ and she texted back ‘stop moving around above us. We hear you walking around in your high heels above us.’”

Little did they know that Wright was sitting in her office working, on the opposite side of the building, she said.

“She was like, ‘Don’t joke with us’ and I told her, ‘I have not moved from my desk,’” Wright said. “When they came back upstairs, she went on the security camera to look and I sat right at my desk.… They heard a woman in high heels walking, but at no point did I walk over to where they were.”

Leslie West, head of adult services, got stuck at the library during the infamous “Snowpocalypse” in 2014, she said.

After she was done helping with a program that day, she had to help make sure that everyone left the library safely, West said.

She knew from how slowly everyone was leaving, she said, that she wasn’t going to be able to make a trip home through heavy traffic because of the snow.

West decided to walk to Nabeel’s to buy groceries and spend the night in the library along with Tricia Ford, former executive director of the Homewood Chamber of Commerce, West said.

Since Ford got settled for the night in the library’s staff room, West said, she decided to reside in her office for the night.

“It was the perfect place to spend your ‘ice’ in,” West said. “We had heat, light, power, I had my office, my computer games, my phone and my dinner. I was perfect.”

She turned off all of the lights around her office, which is in the adults department, and went to sleep, West said.

West was awakened at 3 a.m. by a woman who was laughing hysterically, she said, but there wasn’t anyone else in the adults department.

“It’s about three ‘o clock. I wake up and there’s a woman laughing hysterically, and I mean loud,” West said. “It woke me up. It felt like it was standing right outside, in the middle of the floor out there [in the adult department]. I listened and I thought, ‘Is that Tricia?’ and I go, ‘Oh my God no, it is not Tricia.’”

She said she began talking out loud as she was laying in her office with a blanket over her head, asking the ‘spirit’ to stop.

“I said, ‘I know I’m in your place but this is my place too and I can’t leave. Please stop laughing, you’re scaring me to death,’ and they stopped,” West said. “The next morning, Tricia came over and she knocked on my window. I asked her, ‘Were you in my department last night laughing?’ and she said, ‘No, why would I be doing that?’”

When the library had a psychic visit, West said, she asked about the woman who was laughing while she was sleeping.

“I asked her ‘who was the lady laughing’ and she said ‘Oh, she used to live on this property because she was so delighted that someone was here because no one’s usually here in the middle of the night,’” West said. “I told her that she scared me and she goes, ‘Well, she quieted down didn’t she?’”

Though the library is ‘haunted,’ the general consensus from experts is that the ‘spirits’ aren’t evil, Fout said.

Wright said the staff have embraced the ghosts as a part of the Homewood Public Library family, Wright said.

“We just think of those spirits as a part of our Homewood Library,” Wright said.