Is it possible that Mary, Queen of Scotts, is haunting the Prescott Public Library?

Last January we received this frightening question from Dr. Leonard Henson of Prescott College. The picture he sent us was intriguing, and we wasted no time gathering our crack team from T.O.T. and heading out to the original capital of the Arizona Territory. One thing was for certain, if Mary, Queen of Scots, was indeed hanging out in the Prescott Public Library, that would account for a lot of their problems with the Dewey Decimal System.

Six days later we arrived and were greeted by Dr. Henson, Sarah Ferguson, the Librarian, Max Conner, town Sheriff, and two homeless guys. Sarah gave us a detailed tour of the library with its 438 books, told us of her resent encounters with the ghost. She also gave us each some crayons. Dr. Henson told us that Mary had been haunting the library ever since Seth Jackson shot his mule in a fit of rage outside The Palace Saloon in 1913. The Sheriff showed us his gun and demonstrated by shooting one of the homeless guys in the leg. Thus we were off to a great start.

Our Cameraman, Bran, and Soundman, Jake, stayed to setup some cameras and EPT recording devices around the strange staircase where Mary was photographed and inside the Men's Room for giggles. Norma, Brad and I headed over to the town Newspaper to look for past articles about the sightings. There we met with the Editor of The Prescott Valley News, Carl Clark. He was a nice man who offered us candy and showed us his bottlecap collection. We faked our impression and moved along to do some research. It wasn't long before Norma came across twelve different articles published between 1913 and 2006 about the sightings of Mary on the staircase. Ignoring the spelling errors and pee stains, each article told a similar story of how at sunset the figure of Mary would descend down the staircase to the main room and honk like a goose.

Finding all of this difficult to believe, and with Carl trying to show off his new Iron Man Timex, we were headed back to the library. By now it was nearly 5pm, and sunset was just minutes away. We needed to make sure everything was ready, and the homeless guy had received medical attention.

Bran and Jake had everything in place. Our plan was to focus our attention on the staircase and try to catch anything that was moving. Bran and I used Flir hand-held infrared cameras, Jake kept track of sound, Norma watched the computer cameras and Brad ate donuts. Sunset for the night was was 5:37pm, and we were ready to solve the mystery of this haunting.

Several hours past and Brad ran out of donuts. At 8:15pm both Flir cameras went down and Norma began to feels itchy. Around this same time one of the computer cameras began to pickup some strange lights on the staircase. Bran noticed it first and we all went silent, hoping that our other equipment would be as lucky. The light soon turned almost into a mist as it began to make its way down the stairs and into the main room. The smell in the room quickly became that of boiling Christmas Melons. As the mist settled I began to open my mouth in an attempt to communicate when suddenly a loud honking sound filled the air. Much like that of a goose or large duck type bird, we covered our ears and the mist had vanished.

Back in Burbank we were all anxious to see what evidence we had to solve this mystery. Although the Flir cameras and those on most of the computers had failed, we did capture one interesting image that's hard to explain.Jake easily captured the honking sounds and some grumbling which we later determined was Brad's stomach. Aside from that, we only had our own personal experiences to go on.

There is, without a doubt, something strange going on at the Prescott Public Library. In my expert opinion, I feel confident enough in the evidence and in my own experience to say that it is indeed a haunting. Is it Mary, Queen of Scots? This I cannot confirm, but an Animal Audio Expert, Dr. Alan Paine of Pepperdine University, did analyze the loud honking recording we made. His conclusion was that it was in fact a goose, and that the honking did contain a Scottish accent.