Last month, the Silverburn Shopping Centre in Glasgow, Scotland hired a group of paranormal investigators after numerous sightings of a dark, shadowy figure lurking its aisles. According to The Daily Mail, the store, which opened in 2007, is reportedly home to the mysterious apparition of a woman dressed entirely in black.
Alleged ghost sightings in retail stores and supermarkets are fairly common. They usually involve objects popping off shelves, like what happened at an Adelaide IGA in 2012, or a Derbyshire Co-op in 2015.
But there’s one particular story, true or not, that always comes to mind when I hear about this sort of thing: The haunted Toys “R” Us of Sunnyvale, California.
Retail Terror
I first heard this story years ago on a miniseries called Real Ghosts, hosted by Leonard Nimoy. It dramatically recounted the tragic tale of Johnny Johnson, a lost soul who found himself the resident specter of an ordinary toy store in the 1970s.
Most of this information, by the way, was allegedly divined by the late Sylvia Brown, who appeared in both the episode of Real Ghosts in 1991 and a program called That’s Incredible in the early 1980s. Take that as you will.
At any rate, the story is a bit cliché: The Toys “R” Us in Sunnyvale, California sits on property that once belonged to a man named Martin Murphy. In the 1880s, it was a plantation, where he employed a preacher named Johnny (or Johan or Yonny) Johnson.
Now, Johnny suffered from encephalitis and was nicknamed “Crazy Johnny,” but he had a thing for Murphy’s daughter, Elizabeth. Let’s just say it was never meant to be.
One day, Johnny learned that Elizabeth was planning to leave and marry a lawyer. He didn’t take the news well. Later, while out angrily chopping wood, he missed and fatally wounded himself, bleeding to death.
Ever since, his restless spirit has wandered that same land, searching for Elizabeth. It just so happens that the old farmland is now home to a modern-day Toys “R” Us.
Unexplained Activity
His antics as a spirit were as you’d expect. Employees of the store complained about hearing their names called by a disembodied voice, or feeling touched by an invisible hand. Objects launched off shelves. Unexplained footsteps echoed through the aisles.
Even in the bathroom, doors seemed to open and close on their own, and the water would turn on and off by itself.
One incident, recreated in that episode of Real Ghosts, involved a mysterious voice whispering through the store’s PA system: “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away…”
They would also witness the occasional manifestation, the ghostly figure of a man in his 20s, dressed in old-fashioned clothing. Sometimes he’d be clear, other times he would appear as a shadow person.
The Séance
The Toys “R” Us employees eventually decided to hold a séance, during which photographer Bill Tidwell snapped photos. One of them, an infrared photograph, would seem to contain evidence that the haunting was real. The silhouette of a man leans against one of the shelves, surrounded by an intensely bright light.
Alleged photograph of Johnny Johnson, the ghost of the Sunnyvale, California Toys "R" Us. pic.twitter.com/vDb6PsT6dF
— Stranger Dimensions (@Dimentoid) July 4, 2016
The séance, led by Sylvia Brown, allegedly confirmed the story of Johnny Johnson. It revealed that he was stuck in a kind of time warp, still looking for Elizabeth, restless and unwilling (or unable) to move on to the other side. According to an article on Rense.com, a few of the employees heard a “buzzing sound or sensation” as Johnson allegedly replied to Brown’s questions.
Restless Spirits
Have the sightings and paranormal activity continued? I’ve seen conflicting reports.
Some claim they haven’t, that current employees aren’t even aware of the strange tale. Others, like one individual in a Reddit thread on the topic, said he worked at a PETCO in the same area, and it too suffered bizarre occurrences. “Weird stuff [does] happen,” he wrote, like “dog tennis balls rolling out of the racks and office papers thrown on the floor.” It would seem Johnny Johnson haunts the entire plantation area.
Like I said, this is a ghost story I often think about, probably because I was very young when I first saw it on television. I can’t say if it’s true or not, but it thoroughly freaked me out. The image of Johnny Johnson’s spirit engulfed in purple light as a psychic attempts to lead him home is seared into my brain.
Perhaps it was just the idea that even something as bright and colorful as a toy store could be haunted.
