Join us as we explore the Cambridge bookshop visited by both the living and the dead
A small alleyway angles left off Kings Street, Cambridge, where the huge chapel looms. St. Edwards Passage is a quiet, shaded alleyway with two rows of buildings on each side dwarfing those that walk on the stone slab street below. Down this quaint nook, in the heart of Cambridge, is a bookshop with a peculiar history; The Haunted Bookshop.
In the world of quirky, independent bookshops like Shakespeare & co. in Paris and New York’s famous Strand, the Haunted Bookshop is nevertheless something of an oddity.
The 18th-century building has performed many functions from student housing to its current state as a home of old books and, through its industrious history, has been privy to many unexplained spectral sightings.
The Haunted Bookshop’s current proprietor, Sarah Key, acquired the property in 1994. The previous owner, who ran the store for 15 years, requested that they keep the iconic name since it had become a staple in the area.
Sarah drew our attention to The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (1917), which tells the tale of a man haunted by the characters from the books he’ll never be able to read; an idea familiar to Go With Me readers with ever-growing book piles.
Key, who runs the store with her husband Phil Salin, reported having seen a mysterious supernatural entity of her own soon after taking over the store.
“I saw something,” began Key, “I thought it was a customer walking upstairs and so I followed them but they disappeared.”
The apparition, a woman, wore a long white gown, something Key described as “floaty and indistinguishable” and hasn’t been seen in almost 25 years.
Little is known about the “pretty ancient” building whose narrow walls rise three stories from a basement which itself has seen its own share of supernatural sightings. The previous owner of The Haunted Bookshop reportedly saw the ghost of an old man in the basement during his tenure.
With a history as interesting as the books within its walls, The Haunted Bookshop continues to be one of the most fascinating purveyors of rare and used books in Britain.
If you visit Cambridge, you’re sure to pick up books that not only hold their own tales but also the stories of the several hands they’ve passed through over the decades.
When peering through the shelf perhaps you will see something hovering in your periphery, poised on the edge of the visible.
