Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I started managing a small retail store about six weeks ago. One night before closing I was in the stock room when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone, or something like a blur, rushing at me from the doorway of the adjoining utility room.  When I turned to look at it, it was gone.  Up until then, I had never felt uneasy or afraid to be in the store alone at night.

After this first experience, my feelings changed and seeing this “blur” became an everyday occurrence to me.  At first, I thought I was just seeing things, or that I was just tired and my eyes were playing tricks on me.  Then, I started seeing it every once in awhile during the day, even with other people around. I’ve never seen a face.  The only detailed portion of the blur appears to be an old fashioned type of hat.  It’s movements are usually the same – it appears to be rushing at me, in a menacing kind of way.  There has been a few times though where it appears to be stationary, almost as if it is sitting and watching me.

I’m not a person who is easily frightened, but twice now, it has appeared so rapidly and so close that I have actually let out a small scream.  I have resided or worked in places before where I could feel a presence, but none of those ever made me feel afraid.  This one scares me.  Its presence does not feel friendly.

I’ve also noticed too that this store tends to get messier than other stores I have worked at and that the angrier I become, the worse it gets.  Now I’m not talking normal messes that shoppers make.  I’m talking about things that seem to have been done maliciously or things that seem impossible for a customer to do without being noticed by the staff.  For example, we have a cup filled with collegiate pens that sit on the counter right next to the cashier.  They are watched because they are expensive.  Yesterday, I was finding these pens everywhere in the store, stuck behind things or underneath things.

Recently, I hired a young woman who use to work for me at a different store.  It was rumored that that store was haunted.  One day I looked up and thought I saw a man in jeans, and dark jacket and a baseball hat leaning on the counter like he wanted change.  In a split second he was gone.  I started to tell my clerk what I had just seen but before I could finish she said “….and he’s wearing a dark jacket, baseball hat and leaning on the counter like he wants change, right?”

When she agreed to work for me at this new store, I did not tell her what was going on.  I waited to see if she could feel or see it too.  After a week there, she mentioned she was noticing things, and her experiences were similar to mine.  She admits that it does not feel friendly, but to her, it feels aggravated, but not as hostile as it does towards me.

Several weeks have now passed and my clerk does not like to be there at closing time when I am there.  She said that the aggravation of the presence seems more intense when I am there, almost as if my presence disturbs it more than my staffs presence does.

Can anyone give me some information about what is possibly haunting my store?  I am severely understaffed and my store needs a lot of work.  Unfortunately, the best time for me to work extra hours is at night, but honestly, I am too afraid to be there alone now.  Why does this presence dislike me so much and not my staff?  Or is it that I am more sensitive to it, and therefore, it only feels more hostile to me?  I tried talking to it last night.  I told it to knock it off, that I had work to do and it wasn’t going to scare me away.  In the next aisle over, a boxed item hit the floor!  When I chuckled and said “You’ll have to do better than that!”, a few seconds later, I felt this tingling sensation that started in my feet and progressed slowly up my body!

Can someone tell me, what the heck is going on? Thanks!

Written by Kathleen Lyon, Copyright 2008