The Grocery Store Ghost

In August of 1994 I started working at a small mom and pop type grocery store in the small town where I live. After having worked there for little over a year, I was promoted to evening manager with the responsibility of making sure the store was cleaned and the register was cleared and counted, ready for the next day's business.

One evening in the spring of '96, I had an experience that I shall never forget. I had already locked up for the night (we closed at 9:00 pm), finished mopping and was in the office counting up the register when it started.

I first heard what sounded like a radio that was off-station turned up full blast. I left the office, thinking it was the intercom going haywire, but upon inspection found that it was turned off. I then proceeded to check out the stockroom and meat room. When I got at the meat room door that's when the moaning, wailing, crying and crazy laughing started, in addition the the static sound. I was starting to get a little spooked, not thinking spooks or anything but that maybe someone was inside the store trying to scare me or scare me off. I immediately went to the office and got the 357 magnum and made a thorough sweep of the store both inside and out and found absolutely nothing. Now I was scared, now I was thinking spooks.

All the time that I was checking, the sounds were still going on, I had isolated them to the meat room and I wanted someone else to hear them for my own sanity's sake. I called the day shift meat cutter and talked to his wife but he wasn't at home. By the time I hung the phone up and got back into the meat room the sounds stopped. I was standing in the meat room trying to comprehend what had just happened when, for the first time, I heard talking that I could understand. It was a man and a woman.

The woman said, "Do you think he's had enough," to which the man replied, "No, let's do it again..." It then started up all over again, even louder.

Even though I was scared, I wasn't going to let it run me out before I finished doing my job. My employer, whom I considered a friend as well, was counting on me and I wasn't going to let him down. I went back to the office and finished up, in record time I might add.

About the time I finished, the noise stopped and the phone rung. It was the butcher wanting to know what was wrong, his wife told him that I sounded like I was scared to death. I told him that I would tell him the next day, that I was going home.

The next day I told the butcher what happened and asked him to not tell the boss. Well he told him anyway and the next thing I knew I was called in the office to recount the whole story again. Oh great, now the boss will think that his evening manager is loony tunes. To my surprise he believed me and made me promise that if it happened again, to call him. He told me that he had heard stuff there too but not on this big a scale.

I have seen and heard other things in my nearly thirteen years working at that store but this was by far the most upsetting.

[note from the webmaster: the author of this story has informed us in november 3, 2016 that he was actually victim of a hoax]