You never forget your first time seeing the Voynich, that's for sure.

There is something sort of magical about seeing an object that has generated so much controversy

and so much interest, actually seeing it in real life, it's very, it's very powerful.

It was the fall of 1988 when Lisa first laid eyes on the Voynich.

She was a grad student at Yale studying paleography, looking at medieval handwriting and trying

to understand based on the style of the handwriting when and where a manuscript was written.

And one day, sort of for kicks and giggles, her professor fished out the infamous manuscript

from its vault in the Baynichee Library Basement and brought it into class.

From the outside, it just looked like an old book.

It's not fancy, it doesn't have gold, it's not that fancy finding.

It's a very humble, messy, dirty object.

It was made to be used.

Inside though, there were hundreds of pages of text in some completely unknown language.

And these drawings, drawings that looked like they were pulled straight from a half-remembered dream.

These otherworldly plants, they were fooled out maps, these strange, bizarre anatomical drawings.

A intestine or a bladder with some liquid coming out, you know, it served a purpose.

And we just don't know yet what that purpose was.

To this day, no one knows what the heck the Voynich manuscript really means.

And that object generates more male, email phone calls, restraining orders than any other object in the library.

There are people who have showed up at the Baynichee Library demanding to see the manuscript

because they believe that the administration, the curators, are hiding all the secrets.

So yes, there are several people out there who are not allowed within 50 feet of the Baynichee Library.

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