Eerie occurrences at naval museum attract ghost hunters

Books are flying off the shelves down at Columbus' National Civil War Naval Museum.

One hit a customer square in the back. Others from the museum gift shop’s rear bookshelves land up to 7 feet away — sometimes upright, as if someone set them there in a flash.

An invisible flash, that would be, because no one’s there to move them.

Jerry Franklin, the museum’s maintenance supervisor, said he was standing near the gift shop entrance one day when he saw a book shoot across an aisle and smack a woman in the back, right between the shoulder blades.

She spun around, saw no one there, then looked around the store until she made eye contact with Franklin. He shrugged.

This is the sort of eerie experience a team of ghost hunters will check out next weekend.

To workers who run the gift shop, this is common: “This happens all the time,” said Susan Ingram, the 1002 Victory Drive museum’s visitor service manager.

On average, a book shoots off the shelf every two weeks or so, sometimes more often, she said: “It kind of goes in cycles.”

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