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You kind of know whether a place is holy or not. Like Starla*, I'm mostly pagan if you ask me what my religion is. I believe in Love, Truth, and the spirits/energies of living things.
I remember Westminster Cathedral, in London. It was the first place that really spoke to me. I put my hand on the cold, clammy stone, and I had visions of the place as it used to be. And I felt this overwhelming sadness. People were using the old church as a moneymaking enterprise, and the old stones were mourning. It seemed like it wanted a friend, that old Cathedral, so I sat with it for a while. Then, as I was leaving, a boy's choir began to sing, and it was the most ethereal sound I have ever heard. The sounds fell from the top of the cathedral so lightly, yet they filled the whole space. I still get chills.
There are places sacred to me in Nature. Few church buildings feel sacred to me, but few feel evil, either.
Actually, to me, Libraries are a Holy Place.
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I agree about libraries, there are good libraries and bad libraries though.
Some are just creepy. There was an area of "stacks" in my University that were awful. They did like 3/4 floors with glass between them to let light in. Anyway maybe the books thought they were being disrespectful. It was a regular labyrinth and the University gossip was that several rapes had actually occured in there. Fortunately I only think I was in there maybe twice in my entire time, since Engineering had their own library.
Probably due to being exposed to so many churches growing up I feel at home in most protestant churches. Though they each have their own feel. I like the peacful ones, which tend to be older than a lot of the more "contemporary" designs. I do like some aesthetics and don't particularly like the corrugated prefab metal ones.
Catholic churches I like (after getting over an initial dislike that I was taught to have), and am much better with them than I used to be. When it is quiet it feels much more reverent than a Protestant church IMO. My uneasiness the first couple of times I was in one stemmed more from not knowing what to expect in the context of a service, than the actual church itself.
The one Mormon (non-temple of course) church service I attended, I felt very uneasy, simply because I heard my nagging mother over the shoulder. I was very surprised at similarites there were with a typical protestant service, but the differences kind of jarred as well. I really couldn't say about the building itself since, sadly I wasn't really "listening" for any sort of spiritual message because I was too worried about everything else.
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