This Halloween, the Rubenstein Library (the Rare Book Room) of Perkins Library hosted its first-ever Haunted Library Screamfest.
This novel event, planned as an “Open House for Students,” was open to everyone from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Various niches of the Duke community contributed to this event. Representatives from the Rare Book Room brought out a sample of its rare and spooky items for the event. Patrons of the Advertising Collection brought out Martha Stewart's Halloween cover magazine and old Halloween candy advertisements. The History of Medicine collection was represented by a display old amputating saws and old books on amputation. Among the books was an amputation manual, published during the 1550s.
One of the novel items of the collection came from the Hartman Center Collection. It featured a "Jack the Ripper" board game and original Halloween editions of comic books.
Duke displayed its own haunted past.
The University Archives provided pictures of a cemetary, located on campus, and the documents for the "relocation" of the bodies of three patriarchs of the Duke family into the Duke Chapel. Also, they put on display a letter regarding a child, who was believed to be cursed by a "devil." The child turned out to be the subject of the hit movie, "The Exorcist."
According to the Duke website, The Rare Book Room focuses on seven major centers of documents and archives, and “holds rare books, manuscripts, audio recordings, moving images, artifacts, digital files, and other materials that together document over 20 centuries of human history.”
Laura Ingold, Curator for the History of Medicine Collection of the Rare Book Room, says the idea came about as a novelty. Ingold and the 40 workers at the Rare Book Room decided that the archives were the perfect source for scary items, and a Halloween showcase would be a great way to engage Duke.
“We found that the History of Medicine Collection has plenty of interesting items like eyeballs and amputating saws, and the other six collections also contain considerably spooky items,” Ingold said.
And students came away impressed, if not slightly spooked. Michael Mayo described the showcase as "macabre."
"It was creepy especially the eyeballs. The pictures were really scary, and I could feel the passage of time rising from the eerie dust," said junior Nairuo Zhu.
If the spooky artifacts were not enough for students, the Rare Book Room had candy available for Duke students and faculty.
Ingold and the Rare Book Room hope that this “trial run” Halloween event introduced Duke students and faculty to the Rare Book Room and that the “Haunted Library Screamfest” becomes an annual Rare Book Room open house.
“We put on this ‘Haunted Library Screamfest’ to display a small sampling of what the Rare Book Room has to offer Duke students and faculty,” Ingold also said.
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