Previously: Dragon Lodge, Hong Kong.
Tucked away down a tiny passage in the city of Cambridge in the UK, there’s a haunted bookshop. That’s even what it’s actually called: The Haunted Bookshop. Located at no. 9 St. Edward’s Passage, the Haunted Bookshop has been drawing in bookworms in search of a good read, a good ghost story, or both for decades — although the building itself is older than that.
Much, much older.
Funny how the best ghost stories tend to pop up around the oldest of structures, isn’t it?
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St. Edward’s Passage itself dates back at least to the 13th century; a curiously Y-shaped path, it wraps around St. Edward’s Church, which itself features 13th century construction. However, as the 2016 Cambridge Historic Core Appraisal report notes, it’s possible that the current structure replaced an earlier one; the cult of Edward the Martyr, who lived for only 16 years (962 to 978 CE) — during three of which he was king — and became recognized as a saint shortly after death, was apparently popular in the 11th century, despite having been relegated to relative obscurity in the centuries since.
The connection between the current church’s dedication and its saint’s previous popularity suggests the area may have seen earlier worship within a different structure — as well as brings up the possibility that the passage itself may also date back to an earlier century.
Regardless, what’s there now was constructed largely in the 13th century and beyond. Indeed, the majority of the buildings along St. Edward’s Passage are newer still: Most of them were constructed in the 18th century. This includes no. 9, which is fronted by lime-washed brick bears a tiled roof atop its two stories. There is brick corbelling beneath the eaves, as well as two sliding sash windows, glazing bars on the first floor, and a six-paneled door with glazed upper panels.
Its door and windows are painted a bright, cheerful red — and, indeed, it appears to have been red for some time: In records from 1861 — at which time it was owned by a Thomas Hyde, who seemingly ran it as a pub — it is listed as the “Red House,” a designation that it has maintained through much of its time standing. (It was still referred to as the Red House in 1913, for instance, when it was the property of an Eliza Back.) It became a Grade II listed historic building on Nov. 2, 1972, where it forms a group with the other listed buildings — no. 3 and 4, 8, 10, and 12 through 15 — located within the passage.
Sometime around the late 1970s or early 1980s, the no. 9 began its life as a bookshop under the stewardship of Derek Gibbons. It’s not the only bookshop in St. Edward’s Passage; nor is it the longest-running: G. David, the antiquarian bookseller located at no. 16, has been in operation as such since 1896. But no. 9 is unique in that it is the only one of the two that claims a haunted reputation, and has since it first began its bookish trade.
When Sarah Key took over the space in 1993 — or 1994, as it’s sometimes reported (though possibly erroneously) — she did so with the intention of running her namesake bookselling business out of it. She kept that intention; begun in 1987, Sarah Key Books specializes in children’s literature and illustrated books — typically of the antiquarian variety, rather than the new — and remains the official business that operates out of no. 9 St. Edward’s Passage.
(Sarah Key Books also sells online these days, with digital storefronts accessible via Abe Books and the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association.)
But, at the behest of its previous owner, no. 9 also maintains its other moniker: The Haunted Bookshop. And if the Haunted Bookshop is, in fact, haunted, it is reportedly so not by one ghost, or even two, but perhaps three or more.
The most commonly cited one — the one that Sarah Key herself has spoken about the most — is a classic White Lady: The spectral form of a woman, dressed in white, who flits lightly up the stairs and vanishes, leaving the scent of violets behind. “I saw something,” Key told Cambridgeshire Live in 2019, describing the first time she spotted the White Lady shortly after taking over the shop. “I thought it was a customer walking upstairs and so I followed them, but they disappeared.”
Who the White Lady might be or why she may be haunting the shop remains unknown, although there’s plenty of speculation, of course; one oft-mentioned possibility ties her to the shop’s former identity as the pub known as the Red House. Still, though: The identity of the Haunted Bookshop’s alleged White Lady remains a mystery, as does much else about her — including the frequency of her appearances.
Indeed, despite the fact that she is the most spoken-about spirit who may or may not be on the premises, accounts of her are both scarce and irregular. According to some sources, she hasn’t been spotted at all for more than 25 years; according to others, however, she’s been seen at least twice during that time.
Before the White Lady made her first appearance to Sarah Key, though, no. 9’s previous owner, Derek Gibbons, reportedly saw a different ghost: That of an old man occupying the basement. Fewer details are available about this particular alleged ghost; indeed, that’s really all we know — that the spirit belonged to an elderly man, that he was spotted in the basement, and that he seemed to be somewhat grumpy — and we only know it from secondhand accounts: Key and her husband, Phil Salin, with whom she runs the shop, have mentioned it from time to time in interviews, though as far as I know, Gibbons himself never spoke to the press about it.
(He may also no longer be with us; in trying to track him down, I found record of a Derek Timothy Gibbons who died in Cambridgeshire in 1999 at the age of 82. Listed as retired at the time, he could very well have been the Derek Gibbons in question.)
And then, lastly, there’s this tiny little tidbit: According to at least one source, the “ghost of a fair-haired girl” may also be in residence at the shop. Reportedly first sighted in 1986, she has seemingly been the subject of a handful of stories about the Haunted Bookshop, including one collected in the 2000 volume The Cambridge Ghost Book by Alan Halliday and Robert Murdie, as well as one in an episode of The Why Files that aired in the late ‘90s.
(I say “seemingly” because unfortunately I haven’t been able to acquire either of these sources myself; The Cambridge Ghost Book appears to be out of print, and documentation of The Why Files — not to be confused with the much more recent YouTube series of the same name — is somewhat sparse.)
It’s worth noting, of course, that the bare-bones nature of all of these stories, combined with the lack of any sort of historical documentation, suggests that they might be just that: Stories. Additionally, Phil Salin told Varsity, the University of Cambridge’s independent newspaper, in 2023 that previous owner Derek Gibbons had named the shop after Christopher Morley’s 1919 novel The Haunted Bookshop — not after any actual or perceived ghosts. Furthermore, The Haunted Bookshop is not a supernatural novel; it’s a thriller, although it does seem to fall under a highly specific subgenre I usually think of as “books that start out looking like one genre, only to reveal themselves to be completely different genre by the end.”
But The Haunted Bookshop does get at something important, I think: the titular bookshop’s name refers to the way that all bookshops — and, I would argue, libraries, collections, and any other places that books tend to congregate — tend to be “haunted by the ghosts of great literature.”
In that sense, Cambridge’s Haunted Bookshop is just one in a long, long line of such places. And I can think of worse things to be haunted by than a good book.
The Haunted Bookshop is easy to visit, should you be so inclined; located at no. 9 St. Edward’s Passage, Cambridge CB2 3PJ, it’s open from 10am to 5pm every Monday through Saturday (barring some holidays).
Happy reading!
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[Photos via louisathomson, subherwal/Flickr, available under CC BY-ND 2.0 and CC BY 2.0 Creative Commons licenses; Jim Barton/Wikimedia Commons, available under a CC BY-SA 2.0 Creative Commons license; public domain/Wikimedia Commons]
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