Tea Tree Gully Council, in Adelaide’s outer suburbs, called in a spiritual adviser to rid the building of sinister spirits – but the council insists it was not an exorcism.
Library staff told the Leader Messenger newspaper they felt “uncomfortable” at night when alone in the building.
“The discomfort they felt was related not to a security matter but to other less explainable things,” the council’s marketing manager Mark Horton said.
should’ve called GHI…
Oooh, wish they would’ve called Ghost Hunters International…that would make for some fun SciFi channel viewin’…
All Good Libraries
All good libraries, like all good theatres, have a ghost. As a former professional theatre tech and as a current library professional, I’ve been intimate with both.
Whether or not I believe in ghosts is kind of irrelevant to the things I’ve seen in both libraries and theatres. The best personal library ghost story involved being in an empty library on a holiday and hearing the sound of high heels click clacking across tile floor. Why is that strange? Because I was alone, and floor was carpeted. However, it used to be tile.
On stage, during a performance of the Nutcracker Suite the road manager got pissed at our local crew because the snow baffles were moving and dropping the fake snow on the wrong scene at the wrong time. We invited him to look across the stage and when he did, he noticed the ropes controlling the baffles were moving by themselves. Being a veteran of the stage, he said “Ohhhhh… you have one of those here too.” And the show went on.
Arguments from authority are unacceptable. ~Carl Sagan
Don’t be fooled!
You should all know that real problems a TTG library have nothing to do with ectoplasm. The spirits of malevolence are definately more corporeal. The full article says “Library managers, keen to ensure their staff remained happy and comfortable in their workplace, secured this service at their own expense, in their own time and with full support of library staff.“This open-minded and generous approach to staff concerns by library managers is clearly apparent in how they approached this situation.” This statement cannot be a true reflection of how the concerns of staff are treated since the previous week there was an article which said that the staff have lodged a complaint about “bullying”. The letter was signed by 30 staff members which is approximately 85% of the staff. This current article can only serve to divert attention from the real problem which I am sure is just what the council and library management in particular would like.
http://www.messengernorth.com
http://www.messengernorth.com.au/article/2008/03/04/4056_north_news.html
Bearing in mind the comments made in this article, and the article in the previous week’s Messenger newspaper, about bullying of staff at TTG, does anyone seriously think that staff would have been able to object to such a decision by their bullying managers?
I thoroughly agree with “Don’t be fooled” and their observation that this diversion will be just what the council and library mangers are looking for to draw attention way from their cruel behaviour.
This farcical situation has been used by the CEO and TTG managers to make the library staff look foolish and to diminish the weight of their claims of bullying. This is a reprehensible thing to do. Library staff do a wonderful job of working for the community they care so much about and deserve to be treated far better than council and managers are currently doing.
The Library managers should take note: this is being hotly debated within the library world, and the organisations you use to further your careers will start wondering why all your staff, and former staff, are moving against you. Not a wise career move by anyone’s standards, although clearly bullies have different standards to the rest of us.