Overview
The Liberty Memorial Building stands on the state capitol grounds in Bismarck, North Dakota, a classical 1924 memorial to the state's First World War dead that for decades housed the State Historical Society, archives and the state library. Its ghost is a piece of genuine institutional folklore: staff working alone in the deep stacks told for years of footsteps and whistling on empty floors, books sliding or found displaced, lift doors opening unbidden, and a fleeting figure, and they affectionately named the presence 'the Stack Monster'; the stories were traded among librarians and archivists and made the state's newspapers, though no one ever attached a documented death or identity to them. The collections have since moved to the modern Heritage Center nearby, and the building now houses state offices, taking its legend with it into quieter rooms. The record should present the Stack Monster as fond workplace folklore from a memorial building — charming, unverified, and part of North Dakota's small stock of famous hauntings. Public access is limited to normal government-office hours and areas.