MATTAPOISETT — Boo-reaucratic purgatory?

If you believe the TV shows, most ghosts live in huge cliff-side mansions or at the scenes of horrific crimes or at some other “Scooby-Doo” style haunt.

But ghosts were once people. And like people, they are creatures of habit. So wouldn’t it make more sense for them to haunt the places where they lived and worked?

Whatever the reason, there are many who believe there are ghosts living in Mattapoisett’s own municipal buildings, more specifically the Town Hall and Library.

It was late at night after some election long-past and the town clerk was just getting back to Mattapoisett Town Hall with the assistant clerks after cleaning up at the polling station.

Barbara Gaspar, a former assistant town clerk, was there with the others in the clerk’s office when they all heard footsteps coming down the hall.

She recounted how the whole group turned around to look, wondering who else would be wandering around the Town Hall after hours. Although the clerk’s flap was open, giving them all a clear view of the hallway, no one seemed to be there.

So the group watched and listened as the disembodied footsteps traipsed down the hall and then turned and walked up the stairs.

That was far from Gaspar’s only run in with the Town Hall ghost that most people call Abner.

Gaspar recalled that the following year, before the next election, she had worked late with the clerk getting absentee ballot packets ready. When they were finished, they stowed the couple-hundred ballots in a box and put them in the vault for safekeeping.

But when they came in the next day, the box was nowhere to be found.

“To my knowledge it never showed up,” she said. “We had to start all over again.”

After that, Gaspar said she was careful to always leave a note with important documents thanking Abner for his interest but asking him to please leave them be.

The name Abner refers to Abner Harlow, a former Mattapoisett Town Clerk who worked in town hall around the turn of the century, according to Gaspar.

“He was known to be a really nice guy, but he was never organized,” said Gaspar. “You’d ask him for a dog license and he’d come back five minutes later with a boating permit.”

Gaspar said that while she worked at Town Hall, it was not uncommon to find doors mysteriously unlocked, things moved from where they were left or papers strewn around, or to hear footsteps around the building.

“I’m here at night by myself a lot before people are here and I’ll tell you, a lot of stuff happens,” said Danny White, the town’s current informational media manager.

But Town Hall isn’t the only municipal building that is said to be haunted.

The Mattapoisett Free Public Library is also said to be inhabited by spirits of past employees. In fact, a group of ghost hunters called New England Ghost Researchers has been to the library twice for overnight lock-ins, according to Gaspar, who is also a Trustee of the library.

The first time, the ghost hunters spent the night in the building alone with special recording devices called spirit boxes that are intended to pick up audio from ghosts.

When the researchers came out the next morning, they had a voice recording.

“It said something like, ‘I belong here,’” said Gaspar. “He said his name was Calvin.”

Upon further research, Gaspar said that Calvin had been the name of a custodian who was hired after the library first opened.

When the ghost hunters came back, they held another lock-in but invited a few members of the community to attend, including Gaspar and Select Board Member Jodi Bauer.

The library, Gaspar said, had recently undergone much-needed renovations before the event was held. The renovations had been championed by the Library Director at the time, Judy Wallace, who died shortly after.

So when the group began discussing the renovations that night at the library and wondered why anyone would have opposed the restoration, Gaspar wasn’t surprised to hear the spirit box reply “dollars and cents.”

Later that evening, Gaspar recalled moving into the former office of Anne Lima, one of the last people to have an office on the second floor before structural issues with the floor became too dangerous to keep using it.

Though they didn’t hear anything while they were in the office, as soon as they went back downstairs, a friendship pin fell from the central rotunda and pinged off the floor in front of them.

“It was wicked creepy,” said Bauer. “People were screaming. Some people ran right out of the library.”