Students uncover spooky Halloween mysteries at ‘Doheny After Dark’

Imagine standing in an ancient library on a chilly fall evening. Under the dim, soft lights, one can hear spooky music and low whispers coming from afar. Flip through the pages of a vintage book, decrypt the author’s handwritten message or uncover the tragedy that haunted the master of Rugby School in 1856. 

Co-hosted by the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Department of History and USC Libraries Thursday, Doheny After Dark was a Halloween-themed case-solving experience for history lovers and adventurers. The event took place at Doheny Memorial Library and offered participants a journey back in time to uncover the mysteries of the past.

During this journey, participants collaborated in teams and tried to solve eight cases, each tied to one or several vintage books or documents related to this year’s theme: witchcraft. Students could browse through different copies of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” or read about early writings regarding on the “Illusions of the Demons” or on “Spells and Poisons.” In another challenge, students needed to identify the owners of two locks of hair, which is often believed to have magical qualities and is often kept after death to hold onto the memory of those passed.

In order to find more evidence, students also need to find clues scattered across different places that are often inconspicuous in the library. One of these places was the “bookstacks,” which hold a majority of Doheny’s collections. Students can access this area through the doorway behind the front desk and take the elevator to go to different levels. However, unlike Doheny’s top study spaces, such as the Los Angeles Times Reference Room, the bookstacks remain largely unknown to many USC students.

Associate professor of history Lindsay O’Neill was one of the main organizers of the event, and mentioned that she had a set of students who didn’t know where the bookstacks were or that they existed. Therefore, she said that Doheny After Dark is “supposed to be fun, but it’s also supposed to be educational, and [help you] get to know your local library.”

The highlight of the event was the diversity of publications chosen from USC Special Collections. Besides books, film scripts and play scripts, an anthology of letters were also given to appeal to participants with a variety of interests. The texts were not all written in English either — some of the original works were presented in languages such as French, German and Latin. Although students were allowed to look up translations online, decrypting these different forms of writings and understanding different languages required the participants to be patient and precise. The process of identifying the language and locating clues in the texts also brought valuable practice to their attentiveness and focus on details. 

O’Neill hopes that the event will help students learn more about the resources available at Special Collections. According to the USC Libraries website, USC Special Collections “oversees the University’s primary source collections including archives, manuscripts, historic photographs, and rare books.” These materials can serve as primary sources for students, faculty, and others to carry out research and creative projects. O’Neill said that she and the supporters in Special Collections wanted to open up more parts of the Special Collections to students. 

“One of the Special Collections librarians is very interested in Halloween, and we were like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do a Halloween event?’” O’Neill said. “And so we decided that, instead of just pulling items and having a couple of items that relate to Halloween that students could look at, it’d be more interesting if we could turn it into a series of challenges and make it more interactive and fun.”

Student participants such as Bella Shahani also had a good experience at Doheny After Dark. Shahani, a junior majoring in history, learned about the event from both email and Instagram, enjoyed being in Special Collections and found the Halloween theme to be really interesting. 

“I think that’s fun! It’s a good way to meet new people,” Shahani said about the event and getting to collaborate with others during the challenge. 

Valeria Huerta, an undecided sophomore, expressed her fondness for the event, including figuring out what clues to look for and answering questions through looking at vintage books. Her favorite part was getting to explore other parts of the library. 

“I really liked when we have to look for the book, like we have the book here and we have to go to the bookstacks to find the book and find the note,” Huerta said. “I guess we really have to come together as a team.” 

This was the third year since Doheny After Dark started, and O’Neill hopes it will become an annual event and to expand the size of the challenge. 

“I like it when I can utilize the larger library more, so if I can find things, that’s cool… [the event] will probably remain relatively similar,” she said. “My big hope is that we can just keep offering [Doheny After Dark] year after year, so it becomes an annual event.”