Sage Library

Paranormal accounts from Sage Library center on two distinct figures. The more frequently described is a young girl in a white dress whose face appears disfigured. The legend holds she contracted smallpox from a contaminated book borrowed from the library—a disease pathway that was medically possible before library sanitation protocols. Her apparition has been reported in the stacks and near the reading room by staff and after-hours investigators over multiple years.

Note on sensitivity: this legend involves a child victim and disfigurement. The account is reported here as documented local tradition; the smallpox-transmission claim has not been verified in historical health records.

The second figure is identified only as Jacob. During an investigation conducted by the Tri-City Ghost Hunters Society, a ghost-box session produced the name 'Jacob Beck,' which investigators later connected to a maintenance worker associated with the library in its early decades. The name appears consistent across multiple independent sessions according to published accounts. Standard attribution caution applies: ghost-box responses are not independently verifiable, and the connection to a historical individual named Jacob Beck was made by the investigators rather than corroborated by library records.

Additional phenomena reported by library staff include audible footsteps in empty sections of the building, cold spots in specific aisles, and books or objects moved from where staff left them. The Haunted Librarian, a blog documenting haunted public libraries nationally, covered Sage Library in December 2020, noting it as one of the more consistently reported haunted library sites in the Midwest.