HAUNTED LAWRENCE

The Kenneth Spencer Research Library is one of the many libraries
on the main campus of the University of Kansas. However, it is set
apart from others in that it is a research archive housing collections of rare
documents, books, tomes and manuscripts—many of which are hundreds
of years old. Constructed on a slope of Mount Oread, the library was
established in 1968 by Helen Foresman Spencer to serve as a memorial
to her late husband, Kenneth. To ensure that the building’s archives and
collections were well stocked, she donated his old papers and books to the
library. Ever since, the library has continued to grow, and today it is a major
center of research on the KU campus.
Large libraries, with their myriad nooks and their rows upon rows of
dusty books, can often be a bit eerie, especially in the later hours of the
day. Consequently, it might come as no surprise that in 1972—only a few
years after the library was opened—the University Daily Kansan featured an
article about KU folklore in which writer Joyce Neerman claimed that the
Spencer Research Library might be home to a ghost. Citing testimony from
library employees, she wrote that odd occurrences had been reported in the
building, such as the library’s elevator stopping between floors or moving on
its own accord. According to Neerman, some believed that these incidents
were caused by “the ghost of Kenneth Spencer, returning to be around his
papers and other belongings.”
But excepting Spencer’s desire to once again be surrounded by his things,
there is not much of a reason for the building or the grounds to be haunted.
HAUNTED LAWRENCE
The Spencer Research Library elevator. Author’s collection.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the land on which the
Spencer Research Library would be constructed was open and undeveloped.
After World War II, the area was temporarily occupied by four provisional
structures. These had been erected by the federal government to provide for
the influx of veterans who had decided to enroll at KU, and at some point
in the 1960s, these buildings were demolished without incident.
The rumor that the Spencer Research Library is haunted seems to have
emerged sometime in the late 1960s and then faded largely from the public
consciousness a decade later. Employees currently working at the library
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HAUNTED LAWRENCE
have not had a run in with any bookish ghost. (And one librarian even
argued that if the building were home to a spirit, it would not be of Kenneth
Spencer but rather that of the very fastidious Helen Foresman Spencer,
reacting to remodels and modifications of the library that she personally
commissioned.) Even employees who worked in the building in the 1980s
claim to have never heard the legend, although Beth Whittaker, the assistant
dean of Distinctive Collections and director of the library, said, “I did hear
that the elevators were a bit mysterious in years past, but that’s about it.”
Nevertheless, whether the odd events that occurred in the early 1970s
were caused by a spirit or just by a bug in the building’s elevator, Whittaker
does concede that the library “can be very spooky at night when it’s empty.”
The Spencer Research Library is located at 1450 Poplar Lane, at the very
heart of the KU campus. The library is open to everyone