Alexandra Bush，数字制作专家
今年十月，当前的形势决定了我们必须把恶作剧和款待留在室内. Fortunately, working at the MHS provides more opportunities to get scared than one might think. Read on for some short glimpses into the more macabre side of the MHS and its collections.
Close Encounters of the Winthropian Kind
“When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square; when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine: it ran as swift as an arrow towards Charlton, and so up and down about two or three hours.”
The three men, who were in a boat at the time, 当他们看到奇怪的光时，他们正在顺流而下吗. After it vanished, they inexplicably found themselves “carried quite back against the tide to the place they came from.第二件事发生在几年后, in 1644, when three men approaching Boston in a boat at night saw two lights rise from the water, coalesce into the form of a human figure, and walk south. A week later, the lights returned:
“Sometimes they shot out flames and sometimes sparkles… About the same time a voice was heard upon the water between Boston and Dorchester, calling out in a most dreadful manner, boy, boy, come away, 它突然从一个地方移到另一个地方，距离很远, about twenty times.”
温斯洛普没有解释第一种说法, but of the second he postulates that the disembodied voice is that of a man involved in the explosion of a ship in that same area of the bay. 那人临死前，自称会行巫术.“船被烧毁后，他的尸体是唯一没有找到的.
Another Creepy-Crawly Diary Entry
John Quincy Adams’ lifelong diary is similarly touted as an invaluable account of life in early America as part of a prodigal family. JQA涵盖的话题广泛，声音独特生动. 这段手机网赌软件排行榜他床上的蜘蛛窝的描述肯定会让人不寒而栗:
我彻夜未眠, under a perpetual irritation of the skin over my face and almost every part of the body, which I supposed to be the effect of what is called prickly heat— But on changing my linen this morning I discovered it was caused by a nest of Spiders just from the egg-shell, 它们很小，只有通过它们的运动才能察觉. It was like the continual titillation of a feather passing over the skin at a thousand places at once— It was a night of exquisite torture without pain— My linen and body were covered with them. I immediately stripped, changed all the clothes I had been wearing, and took a warm bath at Burnside’s. 这个可怕的民族是怎么来找我的, 我不能确切地确定——他们已经产生了皮肤炎症, and almost an eruption in various places…”
Portrait of a Serial Killer
On 7 May 1876, Thomas W. Piper, 他是波士顿沃伦大道浸信会备受尊敬的司事, 承认在教堂的钟楼里谋杀了5岁的梅布尔·杨. 在两天的紧张质询的压力下, Piper also confessed to several cases of arson as well as two earlier crimes; the assault of prostitute Mary Tyner with a blunt object, 以及谋杀女佣布丽奇特·兰德里根. 他以高水平的文化水平和标志性的飘逸黑色斗篷而闻名, Piper was spotted fleeing the scene of Mabel Young’s murder by a man identified in the case notes as “Glover.” Later on, 当格洛弗听到女孩被杀的消息时, 他把这两件事十大正规网赌网址起来，并把情况告诉了警方. Throughout the trial and confession, Piper retained an air of detached apathy, only becoming nervous once he was convicted. 他于1876年3月26日被处以绞刑.
Walter L. Sawyer, one of the witnesses to the trial, compiled a scrapbook of drawings, photographs, and newspaper accounts immortalizing the man who would come to be known as the “Boston Belfry Murderer.”
Poor Rebeccah
There’s no scary story behind this item, but several MHS-ers insisted that she belongs on this list. In fact, her provenance is quite idyllic. “Rebeccah Codman Butterfield” is a doll, 可能是科德曼家族的人打的, 是西罗克斯伯里的超验主义社区布鲁克农场的一部分, Massachusetts. 她的衬裙上别着一张捐赠者母亲写的纸条，上面写着:
“My name is Rebeccah Codman Butterfield. I was born in 1841. 我是我母亲做的，我是布鲁克农民的宠儿 & their children. 布鲁克农场被称为先验主义者. I grew up with the Alcotts, George Ripley, John S [Dwight], Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, Elizabeth Peabody & 纳撒尼尔·霍桑——难怪我看起来有点崩溃! 我是巴特菲尔德家所有孩子的娃娃 & a beloved member of that brilliant colony.”
How sweet! One of our Reference staff, 也是推荐丽贝卡加入这份名单的小组成员之一, fondly remembers retrieving artifacts under her watchful eye while she was living in the stacks.
Hallowed Halls
尽管MHS拥有庞大的档案收藏, 我们位于博伊尔斯顿街1154号的大楼经受住了历史的考验. 尽管这是该协会自1791年成立以来的第七个地点, 我们在现在的空间里已经居住了120多年. 1970年，在MHS上又增加了一大块, expanding the office and collection storage space by filling in the middle of the original, L-shaped building. As many in the archives field can attest, old buildings packed with decades of personal papers carry with them an innate weight—a sense of presence. 下面，国安局的员工讲述了我们大楼里发生的不可解释的事件.
Independently of one another, 两名MHS老兵提到了从书架上传来的清晰脚步声. 其中一人回忆了与过去的运营人员的谈话, who swore they heard “measure footsteps back and forth” while they cleaned the building after hours. The other described how the wooden floors (now concrete) used to creak and groan near the areas where the new addition connected to the original building. 他说，当他走过过道时，脚步声听起来就像他自己的回声. He wondered if the sound could be attributed to the previous owners of our various collections, 跟在他们的遗留物后面. Or perhaps, after nearly 230 years, MHS founder Jeremy Belknap still felt the need to act as steward to his treasured collection.
Stories like this tend to pile up when speaking to Operations staff and other employees who often find themselves in the building at night. 有几个人记得21世纪初的一件事, when an arm of the crystal chandelier hanging in the lobby crashed to the floor in the dead of night. The CCTV camera footage from just before the arm fell showed the chandelier swinging back and forth as if pushed by an unseen force—the only movement in a completely dark, silent room. When asked, the Art and Artifact Curator had a perfectly sound explanation; after a faulty repair job, “the weight of the crystal beyond the pin and cement join proved too heavy and failed and slowly separated from the end plugged into the chandelier base. The shifting weight was enough that the finely balanced chandelier to start swinging and when the arm fully separated and fell, that made the swinging wider.“至于那天手机网赌软件排行榜原因导致手臂分离，目前还没有答案.
The other group that probably deals with the bulk of experiences like this is the Reference staff—in other words, 那些经常钻研书本的人. 任何在图书馆的书架上呆过的人都能证明它们的怪异. 冷风和一排又一排的落地架子, interspersed with portraits, busts, and mannequins, greet anyone stepping into the MHS stacks. 一位参考书的工作人员记得有一年冬天的工作, 在此期间，她花了很长时间独自一人坐在书堆里。
“For the most part it was just eerie. Being superstitious means I have always kind of viewed the collections as alive to a certain extent, 我只是尽量尊重他们. Several times while in the stacks I would hear random sounds—sometimes wall tapping or sometimes banging sounds. 我记得有一次我特别紧张, and I said out loud, “除非你愿意出来帮我, give it a rest.“没有人出来帮忙，但噪音平息了一会儿. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about the intense feeling of unease I would get every time I was close to that rocking bassinet. One time I thought I saw it moving. That thing has always given me the creeps. Otherwise not much happened, just a mixture of eerie silence and varied clanging sounds.”
The staff member quoted above would often talk with another staff member about that cradle, 但对它的研究得出了极其正常的结果. 然而，这位前工作人员记得另一次遭遇:
On a dark, rainy Saturday, 那天，她收到了大楼里为数不多的研究人员之一发来的寻呼请求. 要求的小册子描述了19世纪50年代胡萨克隧道的建设, 这个工程充满了事故，以至于这条隧道被戏称为“血腥坑”.“在20多年的建设过程中, a total of 196 workers died in explosions, cave-ins and floods. 被书中令人惊讶的内容所困扰, 工作人员冒险去找小册子, 和其他类似的书一起塞在一排高密度的滚动书架的最末端. She wheeled the shelves apart, slipped between them, and followed the call numbers to the back wall. 信封上写着“胡萨克隧道灾难”.” In spite of herself, she stopped to scan the shelf, 选择另一本书，打开读几页. Accounts of cave-ins and suffocating workers nearly distracted her from the moving shelf behind her, closing by itself due to uneven flooring, until it had nearly crushed her. The uneven flooring argument makes sense, of course, 但在她几个月的工作中，这是书架第一次这样做.
祝大家万圣节平安快乐!
References
约翰·温斯洛普的日记，“新英格兰的历史”，1630-1649年. Pg. 154, 294.
John Quincy Adams Diary, volume 30. 22 August 1818. http://partners.www.fitbackreform.com/publications/jqadiaries/index.php/document/jqadiaries-v30-1818-08-22-p382
COMMONWEALTH vs. THOMAS W. PIPER. 120 Mass. 185. 20 March 1876. http://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/volumes/120/120mass185.html
New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]), 09 May 1876. 编年史美国:历史上的美国报纸. Lib. of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1876-05-09/ed-1/seq-4/