Ghosts R Us

When Mysterious SF was a kid, back in the 1980s, "That's Incredible!" was one of his favorite shows. Not because he was a Fran Tarkenton fan, or because of that one memorable episode where Cathy Lee Crosby got her blouse wet on live television and had to frantically cover up. No, he enjoyed it because it covered subjects like those he covers here in his blog.

One of MSF's favorite episodes was one which amazed and delighted him so much that he remembers it to this day. It was the episode featuring the haunted Toys R US store in Sunnyvale. MSF was a frequent patron of Toys R Us back then, and saw occasional local TV news segments about the haunted Toys R Us on television. That's Incredible!, however, did a full treatment of the haunted Toys R Us, and even purported to photograph the ghost. Oh look,here's the photo!

Mysterious SF has...problems with Sylvia Brown. Actually, to be more accurate about it, he thinks she has a longstanding credibility problem. This may be the last article Mysterious SF is ever going to reprint with her associated with it, but only because he wishes to honor his childhood by including the haunted Toys R Us story. (sob).

Source: Koeppel, Dan, Adweek's Marketing Week, June 10 1991, v32, n24, p17(1)

 `ghost' tramps the aisles seeking his lost love

The children have left, and the din has subsided. Another hard day's shopping is history at the Sunnyvale, Calif. branch of Toys `R' Us. Yet there might be activity inside the vast, silent emporium this midnight, none of which has to do with the straightforward business of retailing.

Inside, it is said, toys topple from the their shelves. A skateboard rolls down an aisle, clanking aimlessly into a wall. But nobody is in this Toys `R' Us this midnight. Or anyway, nobody alive.

In the tony heart of high-tech Silicon Valley, could there really be such a thing as a haunted retail outlet?

"I'm a skeptical person," says Toys `R' Us assistant store director Jeff Linden. "But something's definitely happening here."

In the past few years, store management has tried to get to the bottom of several curious developments. Linden recounts stories of objects flying 20 feet through the air and hitting employees. Shelves left neat in a locked store have been found in disarray the next morning. And then there was the talking doll that cried "mama" over and over-but would only do so when put in a locked box.

If nothing else, it's attracting curiosity-seekers. "My daughter insisted we visit when she came here from Hawaii," said a woman (who declined to identify herself) at the local Chamber of Commerce.

But that doesn't mean that store workers laugh off the matter. "Some of our employees are spooked," Linden says. "They won't go into certain parts of the store alone." He hastens to add that the "ghost" hasn't affected day-to-day store operations in any tangible way. Yet the incidents were taken seriously enough that management let a local psychic visit the store.

"I thought they were seeing things," says `private psychic counselor' Sylvia Brown. I usually find ghosts in old houses. Not in a modern-day retail store." But Brown changed her mind when she walked into the store. "I felt something," she says. "Especially in the last aisle on the left."

It was in that supernatural aisle that Brown got permission to conduct a seance, a summoning of spirits.

Brown says the whole problem comes down to one scenario, namely that "Johnny is waiting for Beth." The ghost, she says, is one John Johnson, a circuit preacher who set up his tent in verdant Sunnyvale at the turn of the century. In those days, apples grew on the current site of the store. "Beth" is Elizabeth Yuba Murphy Tafee, daughter of a prominent rancher. But his love went unrequited. So poor Johnson-or "Yonny," as the employees have dubbed him-is doomed to tramp the aisles of the orchard qua toy store. He is reduced to bewailing his plight, searching for his lost love and occasionally beaning employees with a package of rubber ducks.

Of course, many observers consider the ghost about as real as a Ninja Turtle.

"My response is `Skeptics `R' Me,'" says James Randi, a prominent debunker of psychic phenomena. "There are lots of silly people who make all kinds of declarations."

But Brown can produce a photograph (see above) from the seance that she claims includes old Johnson. He is looming in the misty background, leaning against a store shelf. Brown says there was nobody in her group standing anywhere near that location during the seance.

Such "proof" doesn't cut much ice with Randi. And some of Brown's claims don't stand up too well when checked.

Brown says police are "constantly" responding to alarms at the store.

Lieutenant Andy Pate, of the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, says the store has "no more alarms than any other large retailer." But the stories persist. Local papers and TV have looked into the lovelorn spook.

"That's part of the hype," Randi says. "Why don't they install a video camera? Why don't they put the place under surveillance? Call me, and I'll get rid of the ghost in three days," says Randi. "Of course, I don't think they'd like that."

That may be the point. "Sales go up after reports of the ghost," says Linden. "A lot of people think this is a great thing."

So maybe nobody's in any great hurry to smoke out Old Yonny Johnson.

Publicly, Mysterious SF says: James Randi...what a buzzkill. 

Privately, Mysterious SF says: It''s hard to imagine an assistant director of a toy store trying to make "sales go up" with ghost stories. Children are frightened of ghosts and do not like them. That can only hurt sales. When Mysterious SF went to Toys R Us as a child and wondered if the one he was wandering was the haunted one, he wanted to know so he could GET OUT OF THERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.