Staff, customers say bookshop is home to several different spirits
Halloween is a time for hauntings, and when it comes to ghostly encounters, Browse Awhile Books in downtown Tipp City is well-known as one of the area’s most active haunted sites.
Located in the former McConnaughey & Young building, originally constructed in 1871, the bookshop has been featured in TV documentaries, including “Haunted Collector” on the Sci-Fi Channel and “My Ghost Story” on A&E’s Biography Channel. Hundreds of ghost-hunting investigations have been performed throughout the building, where staff and customers have reported a wide variety of other-worldly encounters, including moving objects, footsteps, strange noises, and sightings of shadow figures and apparitions.
The building’s owner, Bill Jones, said strange experiences are reported “most days” at the bookshop, which is also a popular destination for downtown shoppers, featuring one of the area’s largest collections of used books and magazines.
“It’s mostly downstairs, but also upstairs,” he said. “It’s grown dramatically because we’ve had so many investigations, and I think that’s pulled an interest from the other side.”
Staff and customers often report hearing voices or footsteps, and seeing shadow figures, doors opening and closing and books flying off the shelf.
“I’ve seen books fly off the shelf several times,” the store’s Manager, Amanda Carl, said.
“Occasionally, but not nearly as often, apparitions show up,” Jones said. “Typically, when you see them, you can’t tell they are an apparition.”
A former news editor at Amos Press, Jones purchased the McConnaughey & Young building in 1990, moving his business, Browse Awhile Books, to Tipp City from its original location in Sidney. The building features a main floor filled with books, apartment space upstairs, and additional books in the basement, which has been the building's most active area for strange encounters and experiences.
Constructed in 1871, the building originally served as the home of local harness manufacturer McConnaughey & Young, Carl said.
“It’s been a dry goods store, a hardware store, an insurance agency and a bakery,” she said. “It was an appliance store; there was a barbershop upstairs, at one point.”
Despite the building’s long history, Jones and Carl said they don’t think the spirits encountered there are tied to the building itself, but the books that are stored there. Several books are also kept locked in the office, due to their suspected connection to spirits.
“Spirits can attach themselves to items that people owned when they were alive, or things that meant something to them,” Carl said. “We’ve got three or four books with attachments.”
Jones said the books’ connection to the hauntings first emerged following a fire that destroyed a large part of the building in 2016. The books were temporarily moved to storage during the building’s restoration.
“The fire was pretty devastating,” Jones said. “It took us about a year to get back, but we got back.”
“We had a lot of people in here helping to clean up, and they were seeing apparitions and all kinds of stuff,” he said. “Then at a point it stopped; for the first time, the store felt empty, and we couldn’t figure it out.”
“Then about six months later, suddenly, they were back and more active than ever,”
Jones said. “It took us a couple of days to figure it out.”
“They went with the books,” Carl said.
“We moved out the books that we had salvaged,” Jones said. “Ginghamsburg Church had kindly let us store them over in their annex. When they came back, the ghosts came back.”
Customers at the bookshop have mixed reactions to the spirits’ presence, Jones said.
“It’s a wash,” he said. “Some people are attracted to that, and other people are put off by it.”
“There’s one lady who just started coming into the front area again,” Carl said. “She had an experience in the back room, where a book that she was looking for fell off the shelf.”
“It wasn’t anywhere near where it was supposed to be, but it was one she was looking for,” she said. “It’s taken her some time, but she’s starting to come back in.”
Jones and Carl said the encounters they have had in the bookshop have all been more friendly than frightening. The store also allows ghost-hunting investigations, as long as they are booked with management ahead of time.
“Everything we’ve encountered here has been friendly,” Carl said.
“They’re benign,” Jones said. “If anything, they’re protective.”