HAUNTED WORKPLACES

 


Maybe you don’t really believe in ghosts or anything paranormal. And you may even go out of your way to avoid these types of things. No creepy thriller movies for you. You would never go near a Ouija board or spend the night in an authentic haunted house, either.

And maybe you are one of the few (yes, there are only a few) who cringe and tell me to stop when I try to talk about something related to the paranormal world you want no part of.

What if I told you that you can’t avoid it?

What if I said even your workplace could be haunted?

Several years ago, I worked in a specific department for a large well known retailer. The store was quite large and I had been told that before the current building was erected there, the site once housed a local grocery store. The department I worked in had large rolling doors on two ends of the sales floor, so that at the end of the night they could be closed and locked, keeping out customers (and shoplifters), as the rest of the store operated 24/7.

During my time there, the nature of the job required that a couple of graveyard shifts be suffered through for various reasons (a seasonal set up; a brand re-set, etc. I’m not gonna lie. It was a bitch every time). Of course, the rolling doors would be down and locked, with only me in the entire department so I could get the night’s work done. It got pretty quiet in there as the night wore on; midnight, two a.m., four a.m. But every so often, I could hear odd noises right around me.

“That’s just things “settling”, the naysayers pitifully try to explain.

Although not out of the question, as things can settle I suppose, the noises were more akin to the sounds people make when they move around, and the sounds that products and items for sale might make if they are being shifted around.

I recall standing there, as still as humanly possibly, looking for the source of these sounds. Nothing was obviously creating them.

It didn’t happen just the one night, either. It happened every single time I was scheduled to do it.

Naysayers: “You were just sleep deprived; it was 3 a.m.!”

Again, nice try. But I also recall it happening while I was still really wide awake, closer to the beginning of the shift.


When you work in a retail setting, ghosts, spirits and hauntings are generally the furthest thing from your mind. So although I was surprised to be hearing these weird sounds up and down the aisles of my department, “ghost” wasn’t automatically my go-to explanation.

In fact, it wasn’t until a co-worker who exclusively worked only the nightshift, told me she heard noises in there pretty much every night, after the big rolling doors were latched and locked and no one could possibly be inside. She would peer through the transparent panels on the door but could never see the entire department all at the same time, and therefore couldn’t get a good visual. But she constantly heard it.

Naysayers: “Mice! All stores have mice in them. That’s what you both heard.”

I agree stores have mice. But they are excluded as a reasonable explanation in this case for the following reason:

Some time afterward, two things occurred:

1.      I was mentioning to my other co-workers what went on in the locked up department when I worked the nightshift. One lady was not at all surprised and began to tell me how weirdo things have been happening in the department for years. Once, two employees stared in disbelief as a perfume bottle levitated off a shelf all by itself and then floated back to its original position. (Mice don’t do that). Incidentally, some of the evening shift workers also experienced unexplained noises when working during quieter periods.

 

2.     A photograph, which I still have a copy of somewhere, captured a disembodied head in the department. The photo was taken during a public event and several employees and a customer had their picture taken. After my encounter with the noises, the picture was given to me by an employee.

 ( I am still on the fence about the photo. Was an asshole employee trying to prank me with a doctored pic of a disembodied head floating throughout the department? It looks authentic to me, but would have taken some effort to produce a pic like that one. If it wasn’t a prank and the pic is real, then that is some damn good evidence to go along with the unexplained noises.)

 


As a teenager, one of my first jobs was working in a convenience store that had a deli in the back. The store was quite small and the deli section even smaller. But since it was at the very back, I had a perfect view of the only door the customers used. I remember one cold winter day, I just happened to be facing the door when it opened and a very old lady came in. She was wearing a long winter coat and she was carrying a purse. She started down one of the aisles towards the deli (and me) and came up to the counter and asked for something out of the show case. I sliced and wrapped whatever it was she wanted. When I turned to give it to her, she was gone. I assumed she went to gather other items so I grabbed the meat and looked down the aisles so I could take it to her. No one was in that store. I decided to do a thorough check, in case she had fallen (she was old) but there wasn’t a soul in the whole place.

I checked with the only other employee at the front cash who couldn’t provide an explanation.

I am calling ‘ghost’ on this one.


Retail places and stores can be haunted. These are two perfectly good eye-witness accounts.

 Naysayers: “But whyyyy? Why does a ghost want deli meat or perfume?”

I can’t answer that definitively. I have theories, the details of which are found elsewhere on this website. Please have a look for yourself. A good place to start is here: Classifying a Haunting (link)

Lastly, if you need further convincing, maybe you should check out this very short video of another locally haunted retail space.

Incidentally, I found myself in this very spot about two years ago in my beloved city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Nothing unusual happened while I was there but today when I stumbled across this video, I was not the least bit surprised to learn of what’s been going on in there.

A Halifax Haunted Work Place (link)




Nova Scotia Paranormal Events



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