John Y.W. McAllister’s account of seeing the ghost of Vincent Thomas Sternberg:
“As my lamp illuminated this passage, I saw apparently at the further end of it a man’s face. I instantly thought a thief had got into the library. This was by no means impossible, and the probability of it had occurred to me before. I turned back into my room, put down the books, and took a revolver from the safe, and, holding the lamp cautiously behind me, I made my way along the passage – which had a corner, behind which I thought my thief might be lying in wait – into the main room. Here I saw no one, but the room was large and encumbered with bookcases. I called out loudly to the intruder to show himself several times, more with the hope of attracting a passing policeman than of drawing the intruder. Then I saw a face looking round one of the bookcases. I say looking round, but it had an odd appearance as if the body were in the bookcase, as the face came so closely to the edge and I could see no body. The face was pallid and hairless, and the orbits of his eyes were very deep. I advanced towards it, and as I did so I saw an old man with high shoulders seem to rotate out of the end of the bookcase, and with his back towards me and with a shuffling gait walk rather quickly from the bookcase to the door of a small lavatory, which opened from the library and had no other access.
I heard no noise. I followed the man at once into the lavatory; and to my extreme surprise found no one there. I examined the window (about 14 ins. x 12 ins.), and found it closed and fastened. I opened it and looked out. It opened into a well, the bottom of which 10 feet below, was a sky-light, and the top open to the sky some 20 feet above. It was in the middle of the building and no one could have dropped into it without smashing the glass nor climbed out of it without a ladder – but no one was there. Nor had there been anything like time for a man to get out of the window, as I followed the intruder instantly. Completely mystified, I even looked into the little cupboard under the fixed basin. There was nowhere hiding for a child, and I confess I began to experience for the first time what novelists describe as an “eerie” feeling. I left the library and found I had missed my train.
Next morning, I mentioned what I had seen to the Rev. Charles Hargrove, a member of the library committee, who on hearing my description, said, “Why, that’s old Sternberg!” Soon after I saw a photograph (from a drawing) of Sternberg, and the resemblance was certainly striking. Sternberg had lost all his hair, eyebrows and all, from (I believe) a gunpowder accident. His walk was a peculiar, rapid, high-shouldered shuffle. Later inquiry proved that he had died at about the time of year at which I saw the figure.”
With Thanks To:
Digital: Safah Majid
Exhibition: Anna Goodridge
Bibliography:
The Mystery of the Leeds Library by Trevor H. Hall (1965) [text and ghost illustration]. All other images courtesy of The Leeds Library.