Spooks, scares return as annual Haunted Library takes over Isle La Motte

ISLE LA MOTTE – Every autumn, a quiet library in Isle La Motte comes alive with spooks and scares.

Starting at the end of September, the volunteers overseeing the nonprofit Isle La Motte Free Public Library begin the library’s weeks-long conversion into Isle La Motte’s “Haunted Library,” an annual haunted houselike attraction blanketing the library’s grounds every October.

The event, which sees a skeleton crew of volunteers bring to life everything from bloodied butcher shops and haunted doll displays to decrepit morgues and darkened bat caves, is the brainchild of self-described Halloween fans Marjorie Bertram and Joyce Tuck.

The two sisters, who help manage the Isle La Motte Free Public Library, said they initially modeled their Haunted Library after a similar event in Connecticut, where Bertram lived before moving full-time to the Champlain Islands, and planned the event to provide something exciting for children on Isle La Motte with little else to do during the town’s quiet autumns.

“There wasn’t anything for kids around Halloween,” Bertram told The Islander. “The first year that we did it, we thought it’d be good for the kids here in town.”

“Isle La Motte has so few things for people to do, especially at this time of year,”

Bertram and Tuck have used every iteration of the Haunted Library to expand their trail, adding displays like the Area 51 room the sisters were excited to launch this October. This latest feature, inspired by the U.S. Air Force facility at the center of popular alien-related conspiracies, was introduced by a member of Bertram and Tuck’s family who will don an alien costume to guide visitors through the display.

“As the years have gone by, we’ve added more and more,” Bertram said. “This place will be packed.”

“We have ghosts and ghouls and witches,” Tuck added. “There’ll be a whole cemetery out here.”

While setup for the Haunted Library only began this week, residents in Isle La Motte have likely noticed the library’s leaders getting into the holiday spirit. At prominent locales like Isle La Motte’s town office and the local fire station, organizers have installed handmade cutouts of ghouls and monsters to help advertise the coming Haunted Library.

The library itself has also been dressed up for the October holiday, with decorations crowding its front lawn and the small library’s interior. Bertram and Tuck even have names for some of the decorations gracing their library’s shelves, including “Joan Bones” the skeletal rocker and “Champ,” the nonprofit library’s resident animatronic dragon.

“We’re big Halloween fans,” Bertram told The Islander. “This isn’t a ‘Cinderella goes to the party with the tooth fairies’ kind of thing.”

After more than a decade, the organizers for Isle La Motte’s Haunted Library said they have no plans for retiring their event. The sisters said they both enjoy it and, while he sometimes bemoans the amount of work required for the Haunted Library, their supporter and fellow library board member, Tuck’s husband Terry Tuck, said he likes the attention the event brings for Isle La Motte’s local library.

“I think it brings a lot of people in here,” Terry Tuck told The Islander. “We put in a lot of work, but it’s providing something for the kids.”

While they also appreciate the attention for the library, the sisters said they enjoy the scares, too. It was the parents in particular who always seemed more sensitive to the librarians’ Halloween trail, a fact that won a laugh from Bertram and Tuck.

“I enjoy seeing people’s reactions,” Joyce Tuck told The Islander. “We had one gentleman, with his wife and two kids, come in, and he got so scared that he ran down the hill, jumped in his car and left his wife and two little girls here.”

“We heard the door lock on his car,” added Bertram with a grin. “We like the scare factor.”

The Isle La Motte Haunted Library is planned for Oct. 3 at the Isle La Motte Free Public Library. According to the library, the event is entirely free and is scheduled to run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. that evening.

Anyone interested in helping the Isle La Motte Free Public Library prepare for their haunted trail is encouraged to reach out to the library over the next week. The library, the Isle La Motte Free Public Library’s organizers insisted, is “always looking for volunteers.”

“We look at it as our way of giving back to the community,” Bertram told The Islander. “We’re always looking for volunteers.”