I work in a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh's old town.
We buy books from people as well as selling them. We used to do it over the counter, but that changed due to Covid. Now we do it all over email, they'll send us pictures and descriptions of what they've got and we tell them what we'd offer etc. So this guy comes in one evening towards the end of my Friday shift, with a copy of The Rosicrucians: Their Rites and Mysteries by Hargrave Jennings. A first edition about this templar order and their weird beliefs. The book was in pretty bad shape, needed repaired before we could sell it, which of course affected the price we'd offer for it. So he hands it over to me, I dig out the email and say 'ok so we've offered £20 for this, that still ok?' the guy says 'actually I wondered if I could get a little more for it?' Fair enough question, but I explained to him as it was the owner who'd appraised the book in question and not me, I wasn't keen on over-riding his offer, plus as stated the book wasn't in the best shape. The guy immediately says 'that's fine, I'd rather just get rid of it.' Struck me as an odd statement, so, fool I am, I asked 'how come?' Without missing a beat the guy says 'that books haunted, man. Really bad energy, all kinds of weird things happened when it was in my house, I just want rid of it.' This, I wish I hadn'd heard. I get spooked real easy, and the shop is... a conducive environment for getting spooked if the conditions are right, for example: being told I'm holding a haunted book. Like, one time a woman came up to me and was like 'what's the deal with the old teddy bears in the shop?' I'm like 'oh I don't know, I think they belonged to one of the owner's when he was a kid' and she was like 'oh right. You see, I'm a psychic and there's the spirit of this little girl sitting down there in that corner...' I begged her to stop telling me. She would not. I got spooked. So yeah, anyway.
We bought the book off the guy, I stuck it in the back office awaiting repair. The following week I was in my other job (broadcasting), working cameras in the TV gallery, just chatting with the director, Pete. I told him the story, which he thought was cool. The next week, same deal I'm in the gallery again talking with Pete again and he was like 'you're not gonna believe it...' Pete has another job as well, he works for a charity which runs like a chill out space for people who're trying to get back on their feet. Somewhere they can come, hang out, use computers, talk etc. He had been chatting to a guy there who told him a story about a book he'd just sold. A haunted book. It took a few weeks of back and forth - Pete's only in there once a week - of me and the rest of the gallery crew demanding he get more information until we had a clearer picture. So this guy is apparently a 'sensitive', has been since he was a wee kid. He, like many other people in the area until the policy changed with covid, used to go around charity shops, looking for books to buy cheap and sell to us for slightly more. It was a decent deal which benefitted everyone, shame we don't do it any more. So he sees this book in a charity shop one day, looks it over and decides on balance not to buy it as its not in the best condition. The next day however, he finds himself back in the charity shop, in his words compelled, almost against his will, to buy the book. He buys it and brings it home where it sits on his coffee table. Like he told me, almost immediately weird things start happening in his house. odd vibes, seeing things out of the corner of his eye, just a general awareness that all is not well. Then his sister is round one day and notices the book. She apparently is a 'sensitive' as well. She picks up the book to have a look and drops it almost immediately. In his words (can't stress that enough), the book had burned her hands, like she had visible burns after handling it. So he decides he needs rid of it and that's when he contacts the bookshop about selling it, and I come into contact with it.
Over the few weeks that we'd been gathering this information through Pete, I'd been feeling a bit weird myself. Like seeing things in the corner of my eye, misplacing things, finding them in odd places. Nothing totally unexplainable, but I was just a bit off, a bit ill at ease. Then I started having dreams. Like a series of dreams about being possessed, or something trying to possess me. In the most memorable one there was this entity called 'The Maybe' which was trying to possess me, which I described in the dream as being 'like Dora the Explorer with sharpened teeth and missing all her skin.' So aye, I wasn't having the best time. After a while of this my partner spoke to her mum, who suggested a couple of things (sort of folk remedies and such, she's Spanish and there's a fairly strong line folk wisdom in her fam). In the end what we did was, one evening, in silence, placed four piles of salt, one in each corner of the bedroom, then took two pairs of finger cymbals I have and, again in silence, walked around the room chiming them, chiming them under the bed, in the window-seat storage, in the wardrobe, in all the little nooks and crannies. It was a really nice thing to do, felt really peaceful. After that I felt a lot better and the dreams went away (had a few more possession dreams since, but I'd say they're unrelated). Eventually the book got repaired, and we listed it online and it sold almost immediately to someone in America.
As a footnote, I spoke to one of the shop's owners about the book, the one who'd first appraised it and who repaired it. We were in the shop and I pointed it out to him and told him the story (by that point I was refraining from touching it), and he picked it up, leafed through it and said 'Nah, I don't think it's haunted' I asked how he could be so sure and he said 'my dad [former owner] used to hold seances in here, you sort of get a feel for that kind of thing.'
Fin.
submitted by /u/NikNakDoinCrack
[link] [comments]I work in a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh's old town. We buy books from people as well as selling them. We used to do it over the counter, but that changed due to Covid. Now we do it all over email, they'll send us pictures and descriptions of what they've got and we tell them what we'd offer etc. So this guy comes in one evening towards the end of my Friday shift, with a copy of The Rosicrucians: Their Rites and Mysteries by Hargrave Jennings. A first edition about this templar order and their weird beliefs. The book was in pretty bad shape, needed repaired before we could sell it, which of course affected the price we'd offer for it. So he hands it over to me, I dig out the email and say 'ok so we've offered £20 for this, that still ok?' the guy says 'actually I wondered if I could get a little more for it?' Fair enough question, but I explained to him as it was the owner who'd appraised the book in question and not me, I wasn't keen on over-riding his offer, plus as stated the book wasn't in the best shape. The guy immediately says 'that's fine, I'd rather just get rid of it.' Struck me as an odd statement, so, fool I am, I asked 'how come?' Without missing a beat the guy says 'that books haunted, man. Really bad energy, all kinds of weird things happened when it was in my house, I just want rid of it.' This, I wish I hadn'd heard. I get spooked real easy, and the shop is... a conducive environment for getting spooked if the conditions are right, for example: being told I'm holding a haunted book. Like, one time a woman came up to me and was like 'what's the deal with the old teddy bears in the shop?' I'm like 'oh I don't know, I think they belonged to one of the owner's when he was a kid' and she was like 'oh right. You see, I'm a psychic and there's the spirit of this little girl sitting down there in that corner...' I begged her to stop telling me. She would not. I got spooked. So yeah, anyway. We bought the book off the guy, I stuck it in the back office awaiting repair. The following week I was in my other job (broadcasting), working cameras in the TV gallery, just chatting with the director, Pete. I told him the story, which he thought was cool. The next week, same deal I'm in the gallery again talking with Pete again and he was like 'you're not gonna believe it...' Pete has another job as well, he works for a charity which runs like a chill out space for people who're trying to get back on their feet. Somewhere they can come, hang out, use computers, talk etc. He had been chatting to a guy there who told him a story about a book he'd just sold. A haunted book. It took a few weeks of back and forth - Pete's only in there once a week - of me and the rest of the gallery crew demanding he get more information until we had a clearer picture. So this guy is apparently a 'sensitive', has been since he was a wee kid. He, like many other people in the area until the policy changed with covid, used to go around charity shops, looking for books to buy cheap and sell to us for slightly more. It was a decent deal which benefitted everyone, shame we don't do it any more. So he sees this book in a charity shop one day, looks it over and decides on balance not to buy it as its not in the best condition. The next day however, he finds himself back in the charity shop, in his words compelled, almost against his will, to buy the book. He buys it and brings it home where it sits on his coffee table. Like he told me, almost immediately weird things start happening in his house. odd vibes, seeing things out of the corner of his eye, just a general awareness that all is not well. Then his sister is round one day and notices the book. She apparently is a 'sensitive' as well. She picks up the book to have a look and drops it almost immediately. In his words (can't stress that enough), the book had burned her hands, like she had visible burns after handling it. So he decides he needs rid of it and that's when he contacts the bookshop about selling it, and I come into contact with it. Over the few weeks that we'd been gathering this information through Pete, I'd been feeling a bit weird myself. Like seeing things in the corner of my eye, misplacing things, finding them in odd places. Nothing totally unexplainable, but I was just a bit off, a bit ill at ease. Then I started having dreams. Like a series of dreams about being possessed, or something trying to possess me. In the most memorable one there was this entity called 'The Maybe' which was trying to possess me, which I described in the dream as being 'like Dora the Explorer with sharpened teeth and missing all her skin.' So aye, I wasn't having the best time. After a while of this my partner spoke to her mum, who suggested a couple of things (sort of folk remedies and such, she's Spanish and there's a fairly strong line folk wisdom in her fam). In the end what we did was, one evening, in silence, placed four piles of salt, one in each corner of the bedroom, then took two pairs of finger cymbals I have and, again in silence, walked around the room chiming them, chiming them under the bed, in the window-seat storage, in the wardrobe, in all the little nooks and crannies. It was a really nice thing to do, felt really peaceful. After that I felt a lot better and the dreams went away (had a few more possession dreams since, but I'd say they're unrelated). Eventually the book got repaired, and we listed it online and it sold almost immediately to someone in America. As a footnote, I spoke to one of the shop's owners about the book, the one who'd first appraised it and who repaired it. We were in the shop and I pointed it out to him and told him the story (by that point I was refraining from touching it), and he picked it up, leafed through it and said 'Nah, I don't think it's haunted' I asked how he could be so sure and he said 'my dad [former owner] used to hold seances in here, you sort of get a feel for that kind of thing.' Fin. submitted by /u/NikNakDoinCrack [link] [comments]
