Text #3: 11th Floor Fear?
(i) Source:
Excerpt taken from informant David O’Rourke’s speech
Contributor: Jackie Faine
Informant(s): David O’Rourke
Semester/Year: Fall, 1996
IU Bloomington
Archival: Folklore of Student Life: Legends
f351jmcd.sitehost.iu.edu/legends.html.
(ii) Text:
It has occurred to me that none of my friends have ever been to the eleventh floor of the main library on campus. It had never occurred to me that there could be a reason for this, so I began researching this topic. I began asking friends why they had never gone up there. The most common response was because they had no academic reason to visit the top-most level of the stacks, but then a few told me it was because they heard it was haunted.
So I did what any curious person would do; I went to the eleventh floor. The first weird thing I noticed was that the elevator in the library only goes up to the tenth floor. So I inquired whether the eleventh floor was added many years after the library was initially built. Unfortunately, none of the librarians had answers for me.
I stopped at the tenth floor and then needed to take the stairwell up to the last level. Getting up there felt eerie- dead silent. I began walking around and it was creepy. I felt a strange sense of paranoia around me as I continued to walk through the mounds of books I passed.
Friends of mine have said they heard stories of ghosts on the eleventh floor, but nothing I have heard has been confirmed as fact or fiction. … anyhow, I think it’s cool to just let rumors stay alive by repeating them. Not everything needs to have an answer to be believed in.
(iii) Texture:
Here, David is able to strike a balance between skepticism and openness by neither confirming nor denying the supposed presence of supernatural goings-on up on the 11th floor of Wells Library. His tale is told in an engaging way, with his sense of trepidation and unease apparent throughout the telling. He isn’t merely restating something he heard and leaving it at that; rather, he goes in search of the legend himself, becoming the hero of the story. His many pauses also indicate to me that he was reliving his journey up to the 11th floor, at least in his head. It’s almost as though he is walking himself back through this memory, and its sense-heavy nature is apparent in his repeated usage of “felt.” Dramatic and/or frequent pausing is a strong sign that his story also kept his audience well interested throughout.
(iv) Context:
Who created/performed the text- freshman David O’Rourke
Members of the audience- students in his folklore class
Location/timing- folklore class, fall semester 1996
From the information given, we know that the storyteller is a freshman taking a folklore class and presenting his experience and investigations to the other students. The fact that he’s a freshman has the potential to add to the “intrepid explorer” vibe of his narrative, as freshmen are new to just about everything in a university, so they are all “explorers” in a way, though this is mere conjecture. This version of O’Rourke’s telling is oral, and he performs it in front of a formal, though hopefully none too daunting, audience, so he likely rehearsed it beforehand. Storytellers very often polish their tales to create a smoother experience for their audiences, and it isn’t much of a leap to suspect that some degree of polishing has also gone on here. I also wouldn’t be surprised if this unnamed folklore course had the word “student” somewhere in its title.
(v) Interpretation:
In contrast to Ms. Primrose, the ghost on the 11th floor of Wells Library seems to be a purely negative, if not entirely malevolent, spirit. It is devoid of comfort and presents itself as an invisible presence that seems to elicit a sense of being watched, even of paranoia. I believe this negative presence is more of a symbolic manifestation of stressed students’ emotions, though this may be overreaching (and a bit Freudian). Lonely, silent places by themselves can already foster a sense of unease in the people who cross through them, and they rarely stay in those spaces longer than is absolutely necessary. It is almost as though the 11th floor is constructed as a quasi-forbidden place, a place where the oppressive silence removes all distractions that otherwise help to keep baseline academic anxiety from reaching a critical level. The legend also endows the library with a sense of mystery, of liminality of the sort often associated with big collections of books, objects that carry within them the words of the dead, and other worlds within their pages, silently brimming with life. As guardians of such living, yet inanimate objects, even librarians can be connected to the “liminal.” Perhaps this legend conveys this seeming unease, making it more articulable to everyone who partakes in telling/hearing it.