Visit to the Library of Congress

On July 19, 2017 we traveled to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC to perform research on various historical theories and documents.   We also got our Library of Congress research (library) cards.

Our main goal of our trip was to go to the Library of Congress and obtained a research library card in order to request the viewing of the book that was modified by H. H. Holmes.  After speaking with several of the tour guides (5 in total) we were finally on the right track on how to obtain our research cards.  Most people do not realize that anyone in the United States can go to the Library of Congress and get these cards for free.  You have to have these cards in order to enter the research and reading rooms.  All of the entrances to these areas are blocked with the sign it says four employees and researchers only.  Well if you go down and obtain your research cards, you become a researcher and can enter those areas and request some of the collections.  Of course you should have some kind of topic that you want to research at a time.  We were successful in obtaining our research cards.

Our next stop was too the rare books collection room.  This is where the book that we wanted to view was cataloged according to the Library of Congress web site.  Of course you're not allowed photography in this area without prior permission which is why we do not have any photographs of our experience, so we are writing this transcript to help document our efforts and experience while we were at this location.

When we first requested the H.H. Holmes book, we were told that we were not able to view it since the book was in delicate condition and that we could view the book in its digital format online.  Of course we have already done that, and we wanted to see the original artifact.  At this point we believe that our second goal was not going to be achievable.

Click on the image below to view the book online.

There was another book on our list that we wanted to see which will talk about in a different post, and there were issues with them trying to find the book.  Feeling bad about our failed efforts, the curator gave us a great treat and brought out an original 1865 wanted poster for Booth, Surratt, and Harold that had original tin type photos attached to the top of the poster.  This was an excellent artifact, and we have never seen one of these type of posters before.  Again we wish we could have taken pictures to remember it in the future; however, photography was not allowed at that time.

Later on, the curator noticed that we were huge fans of historical documents and artifacts, and he brought out the original H.H. Homes book for us to view for about five minutes.   We were told not to tell anyone about this, so please do not share this story.   We will post a link to the digital copy of the book that we saw at the Library of Congress.

After going on a quest throughout the library of Congress speaking with a few different librarians we finally gave up on our third book that we were trying to view it went back out to the front or most of the public tourists were taking tours and viewing different displays throughout the building.

We visited the original collection of the books that belonged to Thomas Jefferson which she sold to the library of Congress after the fire and 1812.  This collection of books helped restart the national library of Congress and is a very impressive collection of books.  We found out on our tour of Monticello that although Jefferson reduced his personal library dramatically with this sale and he obtained much needed funds since he was so foreign debt, he began purchasing even more books for his personal library.

​At the time of our visit we were focused on viewing the books and documents that were on our research list and did not focus on any type of paranormal activity even though this location has several reported claims.  We even went through our photographs looking for anything abnormal or strange yet nothing was found.

Although we have perfected stealth techniques of paranormal investigation we believe that it would be very difficult to obtain any type of evidence at this location to two the number of people and visitors that are within the building on a daily basis.  It would be interesting to conduct interviews with guards or other employees who have access to the building after is closed to find out if they have ever had any experiences.

We definitely plan on returning to this location in the future to perform more research on different historical documents or even to try to capture some evidence to support and/or debunk the reported paranormal claims.

Update:  3/6/2020

We produced a video about our visit to the Library of Congress.   You can check that out below.

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