Easton Area Public Library to hold several spooky spectacles for boos and ghouls of all ages

• Easton Area Public Library will hold a special Halloween event for children on Oct. 31
• The special event will feature spooky stories, trick or treating, a costume contest and arts and crafts
• Registration via phone or website is required

EASTON, Pa. — What better way to spend a happy Halloween than at the eerie Easton Area Public Library?

The scariest book depository on the East Coast will hold a Halloween party 5-6:30 p.m. Tuesday featuring spooky stories, a costume contest, trick or treating and crafts and activities.

The program is oriented toward children up to age 12, so it’s intended to be just spooky enough to entertain, but not enough to scare you too much.

Keep an eye out for library workers, who will be dressed up in costume for the event.

“I think what makes it really exciting is that you get to experience a library in a different way," the library's Youth Services Assistant Libby Ortiz said.

"Normally, people think you have to be quiet in here, and you just come in to get a book. But the Halloween party, it's a lot of fun. There's a lot of energy. It's just fun to engage the kids, especially in their costumes.”

Parents and guardians must register children for the event, and can do so by visiting the library’s website or calling it directly.

Literary Monster Hunt, Day of the Dead

Halloween also marks the final day of the Literary Monster Hunt, in which you can explore the library to find all the notorious monsters that have haunted literature for generations.

If you can locate all the spooky spectacles, you can win a prize.

Those looking to get a little cultural education also swing by the library from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 1 for Dia de los Muertos, in which everyone is welcome to explore the Day of the Dead thanks to a partnership with Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center.

Participants can explore an ofrenda — where offerings are placed on an alter for the ceremony — compare skulls and bones of wild animals, make a sugar skull and craft a glow-in-the-dark mask.

The library serves as a perfect place to hold such spooky spectacles, as it was built atop the German Reformed Cemetery in 1903.

While most of the 500 individuals buried at the cemetery were reclaimed by families, about 30 never were claimed, only to be moved to a mass burial plot on the library’s grounds in the 1980s.

Ghosts have been rumored to haunt the grounds, with several librarians stating they have witnessed filing cabinets opening and closing.

Just a few months prior to the opening of the library, eyewitnesses claimed to see an apparition of a woman floating around outside the building before she went inside to stand by a window.

There, the witnesses said, they saw her head glowing.

According to The Easton Daily Express, that might have been Elizabeth Bell Morgan, who was one of the folks reburied on the premises.