Lighthouse Horror Podcast - I Work At A HAUNTED Grocery Store | Halloween Special

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

I had no idea the store was haunted when I first got the job... but now I know the truth.       Story from The Mind Of Mikey   Make sure to check out more of their work at u/MPZ1968     ��                          Original Post: The SuperMarket Memoirs - The Complete Series...So Far : r/TheMindOfMikey  Original YouTube link: I Work At A HAUNTED Grocery Store       For more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel: Lighthouse Horror | YouTube  Patreon: Lighthouse Horror | Patreon Merch: lighthousehorror.com  Sound Effects: Freesound Zapsplat  Music: Lucas King - YouTube Myuu - YouTube  Incompetech Thank you for listening to this scary story! If you enjoyed this Halloween creepypasta story, please check out some of my other horror stories. We'll be uploading new episodes every week, featuring ghost stories, haunted encounters, mysteries, true stories, creepypasta, and anything supernatural and paranormal. Don't miss out on the thrill and suspense that await you in each episode!

12 items or less, the express lane. That's where they stick all the newbies like me. My name is Marcus. I just got hired here at Barnabies as a cashier about a week ago. Places like this always hire seasonal help for the holidays, like now being it's Christmas and all. I was hoping they'd keep me on after the holidays, but after what happened today, I don't know if I even want to go back.

I just finished my training yesterday, and today was my first day going so long. I was excited, being this was my first job and all. I couldn't wait. The day started out pretty good. I arrived to work early like my dad always said to do. It makes a good impression, he said. I clocked in and got my till. For those of you that don't know what a till is, it's that little black box that holds

the money in the register. We have to get a fresh till at the beginning of our shift. By fresh, I mean $125 in coins and bills. Anyway, I walked over to the register, opened the drawer, put in my till, closed the drawer, announced the register was open, and began to ring up customers. Now, Barnabees is a very old store. We still have push-button cash registers. All the big-name stores have those UPC laser scan machines, not us.

We still have to hand key in the prices off a price sticker. We do have a conveyor belt system now. It looks like some kind of torture device with sharp, jagged, me. metal claws at the ends, like an escalator has, and the sensors that stop the belts only work when they want to. Anyway, it was about two hours into my shift. A middle-aged lady, wearing red pants, a green sweater with a white button-up shirt underneath, and what appeared to be a strand of miniature Christmas lights around her neck like a necklace. Dangling down almost to the top of her pants, walked into my line. I greeted her with

a hello, as we're trained to do. She put her items on the belt. I rang her up and told her the price. Then it happened. She bent over, handing me the money, her necklace hitting the conveyor belt. It started moving, fast. It caught her necklace, yanked her down, face first onto the belt, and dragged her into the metal claws. It happened so quick.

She screamed as the claws tore open her face, blood spewing. everywhere. She tried pulling herself free, but every time she did, the belt would pull her face back down into the claws. She was screaming, kicking, and thrashing her arms all around. Luckily, Jim, the meat manager, was behind her. He was involved in an incident last year, but that's a different story. He whipped out his box cutter and cut the woman's necklace, freeing her. She fell back into his arms. Her face mangled. Her left cheek ripped completely off. Her left eye was dangling out of its socket. Blood was pouring out of her face. I covered my mouth and forced the vomit back down my throat. There were pieces of flesh sticking out

of the claws on the conveyor belt, blood on the belt, the register, and the floor. Not to mention poor Jim, he was covered in blood as well. I was in shock. I'd never seen anything like that before, only in horror movies, but this was real life. She started shaking and twitching, gasping for air. Then she just passed out. Her body went limp. I thought she was dead. Several people vomited, as others fainted. Some were just standing there, videotaping on their phones. What the hell is wrong with these people? Someone must have called the cops because they showed up and shut the store down. The paramedics arrived and tended to the woman. They made sure she was still breathing, bandaged her up, and took her away.

The cops took our statements and left. We were all sent home after that. I sat in my car for about thirty minutes, staring out the windshield, trying to pull myself together to be able to drive home. I told my dad what happened. He said it was up to me if I wanted to go back or not. But then I thought about it after hearing Jim's story the other day. This could be a pretty cool place to work.

I'm definitely going back. I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow. Merry Christmas. Morning. Welcome to Barnabies. I've been saying for the last 35 years. Hi, I'm Pat. Pat Barnaby.

I own this place. I've seen some really strange and horrible things happen here, but before I get into that, let me give you a little bit of background on this place. Barnabees is a very old store. It's been in my family for many generations, going all the way back to my great, great, great grandfather back in 1929. He built this place. I try to keep it as original as possible with a few upgrades to keep up with the times.

Anyway, I've been told by various family members that he won this piece of land in a poker game. They say he won with aces and aides, the dead man's hand. For those of you that don't know why they call it the dead man's hand, that's the poker hand that Frontier Lawman, Wild Bill Hickok, was said to beholden when he was shot from behind and killed by Jack McCall. I don't know everything about the poker game story, but what I do know, through research, is that this piece of land was once occupied by Native Americans and used as a burial ground.

Some say this land is even cursed. That would explain everything. I didn't really believe in such things, but I do now. I've asked all my employees, past and present, to write down any horrible events or strange occurrences they have witnessed in story form and turn them into me. I've got a couple so far, so I thought I'd write my own This is why I started my research. It was about 4.30 in the morning, about two weeks ago. I was home and bed asleep. I got a call from our alarm company. They said that the motion detectors at our store were going off. So I got up, got dressed, and headed to the store. As soon as I pulled in, something felt off. I blew it off and parked the car. I got out and

immediately heard the sound of Indian war cries off in the distance. It's got to be the wind or something, I thought. I started walking to the store. The cries got louder and closer. I started hearing the sound of galloping horses along with the war cries. I started freaking out. I ran the rest of the way to the store, keys in my hand. The sounds were right behind me now. I got to the door, put the key in the lock, and as soon as I did, the sound stopped. Dead silence. Just then, two police cars pulled up. The alarm company apparently called them as well. They went in the store and did a walk through to make sure no one was in there. I went in, turned off the alarm, then waited outside for them to finish. They came out about 20 minutes later, said everything

was clear and left. It was about 5.30 at the start. point, so I figured might as well stay here since the store opens at 7. No sense going home just to turn around and come back an hour later, right? So I caught up on some paperwork, straightened up some displays, and opened the store at 7. Nothing really eventful happened that day. I got that uneasy feeling a couple times, and I kept seeing out of the corner of my eyes. What looked like Native Americans standing in the aisles, in the bathroom, even at the registers. But that was it. I left around 1.30, got to my car, and saw something that chilled me to the bone. A rock in the shape of an arrowhead was sitting in my passenger

seat. How the hell did that get there? I know my car was locked. I was afraid to touch it, so I left it there. I drove home trying not to look at it, but I couldn't help myself. It was like it was calling me. I got home and put it on my mantle over my fireplace. The next day, it was in my upstairs bathroom. The day after, my dining room. It showed up in a different room in my house every day since. I'm afraid to get rid of it because I don't know what'll happen. Last night, I dreamt there was a Native American standing at the foot of my bed. Today, I woke up with that arrowhead sitting on my chest. Vendor at the back door, vendor at the back door.

That's all I hear, all day long, well at least from seven to one. Hi, I'm Stuart. I'm the DSD receiver here at Barnabees. I've been here for the last 15 years. For those of you who don't know what DSD stands for, it stands for direct store delivery. Which means I'm in charge of receiving all products that's delivered to the store by outside companies, such as Tasty Cake, Frito, Lay, Little Debbie, all the soda and bread companies, things like that.

Also, any books and magazines you may see in the store. As you may already know, Barnabees is a very old store. We don't have any computers. Every bill invoice I get is physically checked in and verified by me, signed off by me, filed away in a large file cabinet in the office. We hold them for a year, then send them up to the main office. This place has a long history of weird and horrible events that happened here. Here's my story. It was January. Two years ago, a few days after New Year's. It had snowed the night before. Not bad, but bad enough. It was about 8.30 in the morning, I'd say. One of our bread

vendors was pushing a bread rack down the ramp and out to his truck when he slipped and fell on the ice and slid down the ramp, bounced off the side wall and right into the path of an 18-wheeler Pepsi truck backing up the deck for delivery. The driver tried to stop, but his wheels locked and the whole truck slid on the ice as well. It was too late. He screamed right before the truck ran him over. I've never heard anyone scream like that before. It's still So gives me nightmares. The wheels of the truck crushed his skull, then rolled over his body continuously, as the truck slid down the incline and slammed into the loading dock doors, the right front passenger-side tire,

stopping directly on his body. It was horrible. I threw up right there in the snow. It was blood, bones, and pieces of flesh smashed down into snow on the tires of the truck and the bread rack, severed body parts, and what looked like internal organs spread out all around the body. The worst part about it was that the truck had to run back over him to clear the crime scene once the cops and the coroner got there. I tried to wonder how long they cleaned up automobile accidents such as this, now I know. I'm sure they have a proper name for it, but to me it looked

like a giant snow shovel. They scraped up the remains and put them in a body back. They had to scrape it up about three or four times to get all of him. There was blood dripping off it, body parts hanging out of it. I almost puked again. Now, get this, they used two liter bottles of coke to clean up the blood off the pavement. No, seriously, Coca-Cola, the soda. Look it up if you don't believe me. Isn't it, I really. ironic that they used coke to clean up a crime scene involving a Pepsi truck. Sorry about that. Bad joke. Anyway, sometimes when I'm outside cleaning up where the trucks pull in, you know, sweeping, picking up the trash, that kind of stuff, I swear I can see him

standing there, right where he died, staring at me. It always freaks me out. But that's not the only ghost we have here. The owner, Pat, has seen a few Native American ghosts around the store, but that's a different story. You know, the driver of the truck wasn't charged with anything, as it was clearly an accident. The cops impounded the truck as evidence, took witness statements, then left. The corner left as soon as they finish removing the remains. I don't know where the driver went. I went home sick, obviously.

I just couldn't do it anymore. Hell, I'm getting nauseous just thinking about it. I'll never forget that day for as long as I live and I haven't used a snow shovel since. Clean up, Isle 12. Yeah, I'll never forget that day, but that's a different story. Hey there, I'm Stephen. I'm the QA here at Barnabees. For those of you to don't know what QA means, it's short for quality assurance. Yeah, it's just a glorified name for janitor.

Now, you have to understand that Barnabees is a very old store. We don't have one of those big, fancy floor scrubber machines like the big name stores do. Nope, I gotta carry a old 10-gallon pickle bucket from the deli around all day, filled with wind decks, paper towels, and other cleaning supplies and tools, then fill the same bucket up with hot soapy water with one of those mop squeezing things if I have to mop the floors. I don't really mind, though. It's easy money. I've been here about three years now, and I love it. There's never a dull moment around this place. With all I've seen and the stories I've heard, hell, I can't wait to come to work.

Well, as the only QA, my jobs include sweeping and mopping the floors, getting carts, cleaning the bathrooms. Oh yeah, by the way, you people are nasty. Okay, I sure hope your bathrooms at home don't look like that. Shameful. And another one of my jobs is taking out trash. Speaking of trash, have I got a story to tell you? Just last week, about 10.30 in the morning, I just get done cleaning those nasty bathrooms and began to gather the trash.

I went outside to check the can out there. It was full as usual. I realized that I hadn't brought out any trash bags, so I went back in to get some. bring out a cart to carry the bags in. When I came back out, I saw a large lawn and leaf bags sitting next to the trash can. I went over to it, tried to lift it into the cart. This thing was super heavy. Anyway, I saw my buddy Stewart, the DSD receiver. Yeah, he was outside having a smoke. He don't drink Coke anymore. Don't ask him why. Well, I called him over to help He agreed and together we tried.

The first attempt, we moved it a little, we dig down deep and gave it everything we had. The next attempt, we lifted it up and off the ground and then the bottom fell out. Now I don't think anyone could ever be prepared for what we saw come out of that bag. Human body parts. Better yet. Fresh human body parts. I'm not talking one or two, I'm talking 30, 40, maybe more. There were arms, legs, hands, feet, skulls, different sizes, different colors.

There was blood, pieces of bone, chunks of flesh, all covered by this white, gooey-looking stuff. The maggots were having a feast and smell. Oh my God did it smell. It was disgusting. Stewart and I both throw up on the pile. The customers stopped coming at that point. So I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. They said they'd send someone out in the coroner.

Stewart heard the word coroner and went inside. He's still traumatized, but that's a different story. A forensic team showed up about 30 later, took pictures, separated the body parts, and none of them matched. I watched the whole thing. It was cool as shit. Anyway, the coroner showed up and put each body part in a separate evidence bag, numbered each one, loaded them in the van and left.

I counted them. The forensic team finished up, cleaned the crime scene, and left. By the way, there was 52 bags. Gives a whole new meaning to the words, 52 pickup. Anyway. Fresh from the field, that's our slogan here in produce. produce. Hi, I'm Zeke, short for Ezekio. I'm the assistant produce manager here at Barnabees. Yeah, I know it sounds like an Amish name, right? Well, it is. I was raised Amish until my

16th birthday. When Rumspringer began, and when it was over, I decided to stay. For those of you that don't know what Rum Springer is, it's a period of time in which Amish teenagers, usually between the ages of 14 to 21, depending on the community, are allowed to act like the English normal people, so to speak. They're allowed to ride cars, listen to music, drink, smoke, have sex, anything the English can do. Then, on their 18th or 21st birthday, again, depending on the community, decide whether they want to live amongst the English for the rest of their lives or return to their Amish ways. I chose to stay. Being that I I was raised Amish and know a lot about farming, fruits and vegetables and things of that sort.

This is the perfect job for me, and I love it. One thing though, Barnabies is a very old store. We still get all our fruits and vegetables from local growers. Our customers seem to love it. I like my job and the people here, but there's something off about this place. It scares the crap out of me sometimes. I've heard all the stories, the fight over a turkey, the Indian burial ground thing. the incident with the Pepsi truck. I love Pepsi. As a matter of fact, I'm going to go get one

right now. Hold on a second. Damn, all out of Pepsi. All I wanted was a Pepsi, just a Pepsi. Yeah, most of you won't get that reference, but it's okay though. Some of you will. My jobs include ordering, price changes, setting up displays, anything the manager can do, simply because when she's not here, someone has to do it. All produce associates are responsible for filling the department, cleaning the shelves, bailing cardboard, and making bales, which leads me to my story. It was the end of March 2013, right before Easter. We were busy as hell.

People were buying everything. We were putting out products left and right, which created a lot of cardboard to be bailed. In case you haven't noticed, I like to talk. Anyway, I needed a break from all the craziness. After some old lady in one of those riding shopping cart things, I think they call it a mark card or something like that. I don't know. Anyway, she slammed that thing right into our giant diamond nut display, knocking it over,

spilling over 40 pounds of loose nuts all over the place. It was a nut-tastrophe. I just walked away. I went to the prep room, grabbed the cart of cardboard, and took it to the back room to bail it. The bailer was full, like usual, so I had to make a bail. Now, the bailer is a very dangerous piece of equipment. It's basically a large hydraulic press.

You throw the cardboard into the chamber below, close the safety gate, hit the down button, and a large metal press comes down and crushes the cardboard. When the chamber's full, you have to empty it. Hence the phrase, make a bail. I saw the QA guy, Steven, roaming around back there. I asked him to give me a hand. He didn't think it was funny, but that's a different story. Anyway, he agreed and grabbed a pallet to put the bail on.

I grabbed the bailing wire, started to wrap it around the bail. Now, bailing wire is a very thin piece of wire and have been known to break. We finished wrapping the bail, put the pallet in place, close the gate, hooked up the chains so the bail would eject and hit the up button. Stephen and I stepped to the side. who's worked in the grocery business for more than a week knows to stay clear of a bail being made. Well, apparently no one told Stephanie, the deli manager. She walked by, just as the bail was ejecting. One of the wires snapped and came back flying fast. It hit her directly on the side

of her face, right over her left eye and slicing her diagonally across it. She fell to the ground, screaming and grabbed her face, blood pouring out of her fingers. Stephen and I ran to help her. Now, I've seen many accidents like this when I was growing up, so it didn't phase me. But to add insult to injury, Stephen threw up on Stephanie's lap. That's so gross. Anyway, I moved her hands. It was a bloody mess, like something for a bad 80s horror movie. Her eye was hanging out of its socket, Her nose ripped completely off as well as her right cheek. The left side of her face was hanging down, exposing tissue bone and the empty eye socket. Most of her teeth were knocked out.

She was screaming frantically, kicking her legs all around. She nailed Stephen right in his man parts. I snickered a little bit. He was useless at that point. She started gasping for air. Her one eye rolled back in her head, and she peeped. passed out. Blood still gushing everywhere. I thought she was dead. I picked her up, ran out of the back rum, through the store and up to the front, completely covered in blood. I laid her on

a conveyor belt. Thank God it didn't move, and I called for an ambulance. Customers and employees were screaming, puking, and some even fainted. I saw some goth chick standing to the side, videotaping on her phone. Kids these days. Well, the ambulance showed up and made sure she was still alive. I didn't see how after losing all that blood, but she was. They put the left side of her face back in place, as well as her eye, then wrapped her entire head in gauze. She looked like a mummy. They loaded her into the ambulance and left. Stephen came staggering out shortly after. Pat made him clean up the mess. He wasn't too happy. I heard she's doing okay now. She quit. After that, I can't really blame her. We've had a couple deli managers since, but they didn't last too long

with all that happens here. We're looking for one now. So if you're interested, give us a call. 10.15 in progress, officers respond. We get that call at least once a week. There's always something going on at Barnabees. Hello. My name. Reggie, I'm the town sheriff. I've been for the last 20-something years. For those of you that don't know what 1015 means, that's the police code for civil disturbance. Now, first and foremost, Barnabies is a very old store. I remember my parents shopping there when I was a child as their parents shop there as well. My officers and I have responded to many calls to that store, such as fights, freak accidents, alleged intruders, among other things. Over the years, I've become

quite friendly with the owner Pat. He must have excellent insurance to cover all the incidents that have happened there. He mentioned a while back about stories he's collecting, so I thought I'd throw mine into the mix. Now I served as a Marine for a short period of time before becoming And Sheriff. As a Marine, I've seen my share of blood, guts, and death, both here in the US, as well as overseas, but nothing compares to what I encountered one early September morning at Barnabees. The last time I was there, before this, I ran into a guy I went to high school with, Steven something. He found a bag of body parts, but that's a different story. Well, I was working the graveyard shift, which I volunteered to do at least once a month.

This night just so happened to be my night. It's a night I will never forget. It was about 2 a.m. We'd gotten a noise complaint from a civilian in the neighboring housing development. They reported the loud sound of metal-to-metal coming from Barnabees. Dispatch announced the call. Here we go again, I said to myself. I notified dispatch that I would be handling the call, flipped on the red and blues, and made my way to the store. I radioed over to the other officer, working the shift with me and told him to meet me there. I arrived first. I did a quick pass around the outside of the building, per protocol, and discovered one of the large metal loading dock doors, moving up slowly, then dropping down fast, all on its

own, creating the sound that was reported. I parked my car directly in front of the them, my headlights shining on the door. The store was closed, so I knew no one should be in there. I informed dispatch that I was on scene and to stand by for further instruction. At which time the other officer pulled up beside me. We looked at each other. I gave him the ready-go signal and we exited our vehicles. The moment we did, we both heard the sound of tom-tom drums. It seemed to be surrounding us. We draw our weapons and proceeded to walk towards the doors. The sound was deafening. I'm sorry about all the details, but as a cop, details are very important. So we're about five feet away from the slamming doors

and I announced, Sheriff's Department, come out with your hands up. No response. The drumming stopped. Apparently, the similar thing happened to Pat a few months back, but that's a different story. So we reached the doors and decided to decided that we would have to jump and roll into the back room while the bay door was going up, calculating it perfectly. I went first. I holstered my weapon. The door went up halfway. I jumped and rolled into the darkened back room, drawing my weapon once again.

I motioned for the other officer to come in, a decision I would later regret. Unfortunately, he wasn't so lucky. The bay door went up about halfway. The officer attempted his jump, just as he landed on the concrete floor. The door slammed down with immense force, crushing his skull and his body underneath it. I knew he was dead. He left behind a wife and a four-year-old boy. I had to inform his wife.

I immediately contacted dispatch through my shoulder, Mike, and called an officer down in need of assistance. Now, in complete darkness, I drew out my flashlight, flicked it on, and I looked around at my surroundings. There was blood and brains splattered all over a stack of pallets, a pallet jack and the bay door. I said a prayer, then turned and walked slowly through the back room, shining my flashlight left and right. A few times I could have sworn I saw something move above the coolers. Suddenly, a blood-curdling scream. The ground starting to shake in every light coming on, flickering and buzzing in random patterns.

Palettes started flying through the air. Another scream. A phantom wind came and blew me hard against the back wall. Various sorts of debris and cardboard began flying through the air. Large pieces of machinery began levitating on their own. The drums began again. Louder this time. Two-liter bottles of soda began levitating, then smashing forcefully to the ground, repeatedly. Large shelving began tumbling over, smashing its contents all over. The drumming continued.

Every door began opening, then slamming shut, the office door, the cooler doors, even the loading dock doors, repeatedly slamming down on the officer's bloody mutilated carcass. I screamed, closed my eyes and unloaded my weapon, the full clip blindly in any direction. I felt a fear like I've never felt before, not even in the war. I knew I was going to die. I slid down the wall into a sitting position, opened my eyes, and saw a tomahawk appear out of thin air, whirling fast, coming directly at my head. I screamed once again, then lost consciousness. I was told days later, the members of the town's fire department and coroner team found me,

about 30 minutes later, shaking, sweating, and mumbling to myself, the entire back room, in complete shambles. I don't remember them finding me at all. First thing I remember is waking up in that hospital bed two days later. Doctors said that besides a few bumps and bruises, I was fine. I took a couple days off to try and get my head straight, but I still have the nightmares sometimes. I don't respond to calls at Barnabees anymore. Never again and never will. I'm not ashamed to say. That place scares the bejesus out of me, and I'm a cop. I'm sitting in my patrol car, writing this, at the don't. shop across the street from the store.

And I hear 1015 in progress, officers respond, can I try a slice of that? If I had a nickel for every time I've been asked that question, I could buy my own deli and be my own boss. Anyway, how are you doing today? I'm Melanie. I'm the new deli manager here at Barnabies. I've been here for about a week now. I called that 1-800 number that Zeke mentioned in his post, but that's the number that

That's a different story. Anyway, I came in for an interview and Pat, Mr. Barnaby, hired me on the spot just like that. I guess you liked my resume. You see, I've been working in delis all up and down the East Coast since I was 17. It's all I know. This is my first time being a manager though, let alone in a supermarket. This is on a much bigger level.

We have a full-size deli as well as a bakery, a hot bar and a cake-making station. that I'm responsible for. We also fried chicken. I didn't know this until I got hired here, but Barnabies is a very old store. We still have one of those old chicken fryers where you actually have to drop the chicken into the vat, then pull it out with tongs when it floats to the top. There's no basket, no temperature control, you just turn it on and hope it doesn't explode. It's going to be a challenge, because I've always worked at little mom-and-pop shops before this. For those of you that don't know what a mom-and-pop shop is. That's a small business, usually only one establishment owned by an

older couple. Usually. So far, the people that shop here are friendly, although you do get that one customer every now and then that makes you want to say bad words, sometimes even make up a few. I heard from a couple night crew guys that Mr. Barnaby is looking for stories about weird and horrible events that happen here. He was off the day this happened. A couple of A couple days ago, I arrived to work at 6.55 a.m., punched in, did my morning paperwork, then headed to the department. I turned on the lights, put the slicers back together, and started the ovens. I saw a note on the board from the closer saying that there was an order for 16-piece chicken meal to be picked up by noon. Okay, no problem. Other deli associates started

arriving as scheduled, and we opened the deli at 8. Everything was going good. 10 o'clock came I turned on the friar so it could heat up, hit the exhaust fan, and continued to wait on customers. About 20 minutes went by, and the friar started making a strange buzzing sound and shaking a little. I looked over to see that the grease was boiling like a pan of water on a stove. I yelled over to Tommy, my assistant, to turn off the friar and unplug it. Now, as I said, it's a very old friar. The controls are on the back panel, not on front like the new ones. So he reached over the frivet to turn it off and as soon as he did, the grease exploded upwards

directly in his face. He screamed, grabbed his face, stepped backwards, knocking over an empty cooling rack and falling to the floor. I've never heard anyone scream like that before. It was horrifying. Hot grease was dripping off the thick. fan and the ceiling, which started melting from the extreme temperatures. Tommy stopped screaming. Pieces of ceiling tiles started falling to the floor and on top of Tommy, who had passed out from

the pain at this point. At least that's what I thought. And smell, oh my God, did it smell. It smelled like burnt flesh and chicken. The customers just stood there watching and taking pictures. Freaks? Anyway, I ran over to him. Now, I probably shouldn't have done this, but I grabbed his wrist and moved his hands away from his face. His skin was melted together and looked like string cheese as I pulled them apart. I turned my head and threw up right on a tray of cherry turnovers. I glazed them up real good. I'm never eating cheese again, that's for sure. The blood was pouring everywhere, pieces of flesh started falling off his face as well as burnt muscle and tissue exposing his skeletal bones. His eyes completely burned away. I knew I was wrong. He wasn't

passed out. He was dead. One of the other associates ran and called the cops. They showed up and shut the store down. The sheriff didn't respond, but that's a different story. The coroner arrived, put Tommy in a body bag and took him away. I couldn't stop crying. I'm starting to tear up right now. The deli's been shut down for the last two days while the forensic team processes the scene. They say it should be open again by tomorrow. I haven't been able to sleep the last couple nights because of the nightmares. I call the therapist and I'm sitting in her waiting room right now writing this waiting to be seen. Oh yeah, by the way, the customer that ordered that chicken meal, they called as we were

all leaving. The order was canceled. You scream, I scream, we all scream for, you know the rest. Hey, what's up? I'm Tommy. No, not the same Tommy from the deli. That's a different story. Totally different, Tommy. I work ice cream here at Barnabees. It's only part-time, but sometimes better than no time, right? Besides, I'm going to college to be in. a nurse. Yeah, that's right, a nurse, don't judge. It's a noble profession. At least that's what my mom tells me. I've been here about a year and a half now. It's pretty cool. Get it? Cool, ice cream. Never mind. I'm bad at telling jokes. I moved out to LA a few years back and tried my

hand at stand up. Yeah, I ended up doing sit down. Forget it. I'm done. Anyway, I was sitting at home the other night, bored out of my mind, searching Reddit. I came across all these stories. set in a place called Barnabees, an old grocery store. I got to thinking, hey, I work at a place called Barnabees. I know a guy named Stewart, and I know a guy named Stephen. I remember when Zeke went running through the store with Stephanie. What? Mr. Barnaby's collecting stories. I didn't know anything about it. Man, nobody ever tells me anything. So check this story out. I'm going to turn it into the boss man tomorrow. It was last June, dead as summer, hot as hell. It was so hot that Satan called and wanted to borrow some of our heat. Yeah, I tried. Well, it was about 9 o'clock

in the morning. We just got our ice cream delivery. Stewart unloaded it and put it in the ice cream box. That's what we called the freezer a box. Now, if you've been reading all these stories like I have, then you know that Barnabees is a very old store. We still get a very old store. We still We'll get our ice cream and pallet igloos. Now for those of you who don't know what a pallet igloo is, it's a large blue insulated box that's mounted to the top of a pallet. Some have doors on them, others have those thick pieces of plastic hanging down. It helps to keep the ice cream frozen.

It kind of resembles one of those porta-potties like you'd see at an outdoor rock concert. I love rock music. Nickelback rules. Anyway, I grabbed a couple carts and started unloading the igloos. There were three of them. I unloaded the first one onto two separate cards, took them to the sales floor and worked them to the shelf. I put all my backstock away.

That's all the freight that wouldn't fit on the shelf. We stored in ice cream boxes in case we need it later. I started unloading the second one. I get about halfway down and saw what looked like a little piece of ice in the back of the box. Didn't think much of it. It's a freezer, so there's going to be ice, right? So I removed the next layer of ice cream and discovered that what I looked at what I was a little bit thought was ice was really a fingertip connected to a hand.

What the hell? Curiosity took over and I started flinging ice cream out of the box. Now I like to think of myself as a pretty tough guy. I can handle anything, nerves of steel and all that. But what I found in the back of that box made me scream like a little girl. It was a dead body, a frozen dead body. Better yet a frozen decapitated. mutilated dead body. There were frozen arms, frozen legs, hands, feet, ahead, all of it, all thrown into the back of the box. The blood had mixed with the ice and settled in the bottom of the box. There were ice crystals formed on the parts which were all frozen together. It looked like a sick game of twister. It was horrifying. I just stood there. Frozen in shock. No pun intended.

I didn't even notice that Marcus had walked into the back room till he started vomiting all over the place, repeatedly, breaking me out of my trance. Thank God none of the customers saw it. These weirdos would have probably taken selfies with the body. Sickos? Anyway, I ran into the back room and called 911 from the payphone. Old store, remember? Marcus went to the bathroom to clean himself up.

The cops, the coroner, and the forensic team showed up. It looked like a scene out of CSI Miami. I love that show. The cops took our statements while the forensic team used little space heaters from Isle and a handheld hammer and chisel to break apart the pieces. As the ice started melting, the pieces started falling out of the box, half frozen, bloody water spilling all over the floor mixing with the melted ice cream. Stevens had one hell of a mess to clean up.

The head fell out of the box and almost rolled through the. the double doors onto the sales floor, I yelled, heads up. Sorry, I can't help myself. The forensic team finished stalling out the pieces and arranged them accordingly on the backroom floor. They were all there. The skin was all clammy and wrinkled. The meat hanging out of them looked like soggy ground beef. I got the sudden craving for a hamburger. The smell was immense. To be honest, this is what made me decide to become a nurse, because after the initial shock, it was quite interesting. The coroner put them in bags, loaded up the truck and left.

The forensic team left as well. The cops took the aglux evidence. They had to open up one of the loading dock doors and loaded into a flatbed tow truck. It fell over twice. Oh crap, it's that late already. I gotta go. I'm late for class. See ya.

Back in the late 70s, my parents and I moved into a neighborhood in a town three states away from the state we lived in before. I was about 12 at the time. Our new house was a big two-story three bedroom house much larger than our previous one. The neighborhood was small, but the backyards were huge, plenty of room to plan. A few days after moving in, our new neighbors, the Robinsons, as well as their daughter, Tanya, stopped by to say hello. welcomed us to the neighborhood and informed my parents about a situation that has been occurring

throughout the town. Tanya and I were sent upstairs as this was adult talk and not to be heard by children. We secretly sat at the top of the stairs, listening though, as we all did as children. What they told my parents was that there have been multiple children that have went missing over the past few years. Law officials are baffled by the situation and to keep a close eye on their son. me, just like they do their daughter. Now let me tell you about Tanya.

Tanya was a unique child, a year younger than me. She was quiet, slightly introverted, a little off and totally infatuated with flowers. She had a giant flower bed in the Robinson's backyard. It was full of all kinds of big, beautiful flowers. Occasionally, actually, quite often, I would see her out of my bedroom window as I was was rocking out to the latest Kiss album. She would be playing duck-dug goose and other childhood games around the flower bed with some of the neighboring children. Well, I assumed they were from the neighborhood, as I didn't get out much. It was never the same kids twice, though.

The funny thing about it was, after every time she had friends over, I'd see her through the bedroom window late at night, tending to her flowers, singing songs, and dancing around the flower bed. I chalked it up to her uniqueness at first, then I started to notice that every morning after the visits, the flower bed got a little bigger, and soon after another big, beautiful flower appeared. I started to avoid Tanya at that point. This went on for about a year and a half until her flower bed practically consumed the whole backyard. I wanted to tell my parents, but I had no proof in Tanya for. freaked me out a lot. Then one day, the Robinson's and Tanya just disappeared, vanished. They left

behind their car, all their belongings, and even the flower bed. The house sat vacant for a couple of years after that. All of Tanya's big, beautiful flowers survived for a couple months, then died all together. I kind of felt bad. I watered them a couple times, but I really didn't know how to care for him, still don't. I guess the town took over ownership of the property eventually. Because one day I came home from school and saw a moving truck, several police cars, and a pool installation vehicle in the driveway. Apparently someone bought the house and planned to put a pool in where the flower bed was. A couple days later, newspaper articles revealed that the pool company began digging up the flower bed and discovered the skeleton.

remains of an adult male, an adult female, and over 50 remains of small children buried underneath the flower bed. DNA later identified the remains as those of David Robinson, adult male, Denise Robinson, adult female, and many of the children reported missing over the last five years. Tanya was never found, nor was she ever seen again. Well, my last statement isn't actually true. Hello, my name is Donovan Mitchell. I'm a long-time customer here at Barnabees. I've been shopping here for years.

Let me tell you, Barnabies is a very old store. I love it here. The prices are good and you get a nostalgic feeling just walking through the door. Not to brag or anything, but I just celebrated my 22nd anniversary with my wife, Gillian. a couple days ago, but that's not important. Anyway, I overheard a couple of the workers talking about strange and unusual things that have happened here and that the owner is looking for stories about such things. I don't know if this fits into that category.

Hell, I don't even know if I'm going to give it to him. What do you think? I woke up a couple days ago and found my honey-do list sitting on the counter in the kitchen. It's my day off, and my wife had to be at work at eight. So I got to run errands. For those of you that don't know what a honey-do list is, it's a list, usually given to the man by his wife, his girlfriend or significant other, whatever the case may be, of certain things that need to be completed that day.

I got my list, drank my coffee, drank more coffee, then decided to get started. The list wasn't that big. Shouldn't take me long, I thought, maybe an hour or two. I'd still have plenty of time to catch the highlights of the eagle. game last night. I changed the light bulb on the porch, mailed Aunt Betty's birthday present, and unclogged the drain in the bathroom. For as much hair as I pulled out of that drain, my wife should be bald by now. I completed my list, except for one thing, pick up a few things from the grocery store. I thought, what better place to go than Barnabees? So I hopped

in the car and headed over there. I started to gather the items, eggs, bread, and bread, and I started to bread, milk, among other things. I couldn't get the lunch meat because the deli was closed due to an accident that happened yesterday, but that's a different story. Being that my anniversary was the next day, I decided to pick up a vase of roses while I was shopping instead of going to the florist and paying some astronomical price. I figured I'd go over there real quick, get when I need, pay for my stuff, and be home in plenty of time to watch the highlights of the Eagles game. So I went to the floral section, found the roses, and was standing there deciding which one to choose, when, out of the blue, I heard a small female voice from

behind me say, Welcome to Barnabies. I'm new here. How may I help you? I turned around to see a middle-aged woman about five foot three, a little on the chubby side, long black hair and glasses. She looked vaguely familiar. It didn't hit me until I looked at her name tag. It read, Tanya. We cannot be held responsible for damages caused by shopping carts. That's what the sign says about the cart corral in the middle of the parking lot. I love that sign. That means I can hit stuff with the shopping carts. Nah, I'm just kidding. I'd never do anything like that. Hi, I'm Jimmy. Nice to meet you. I'm the cart-getter guy here at Barnabees. There's a real name for my job, but I can't remember it.

Anyway, I live in a beat-up mobile home in a trailer park not far from here, but that's not important. I've been here at Barnabees about three years now, doing the same thing every day that I work. I don't mind, though. I get to meet all kinds of interesting people and hear all kinds of interesting stories. Most people are nice, but sometimes you get the occasional butthead. I found all kinds of cool stuff that people leave behind in the shopping carts, wallets, purses, pacifiers, shoes, umbrellas, hell, one time, someone even left their kid in a cart. How the hell do you forget your kid?

They came back a few minutes later, picked up the kid like it was no big deal. I don't understand people at all. They gave me five bucks though for watching the little guy. But hey, don't tell Mr. Barnaby because we're not a lot of. allowed to accept tips. Well, all the important stuff I always turned into the office, but the little stuff, I take home with me. I got a huge collection in a big box in my closet, but that's not important. I'm sure I'm not the first to tell you. Barnabees is a very old store. Our shopping cards are still made of plastic, not metal like the new ones. They're all cracked

and missing pieces. Somebody's going to hurt themselves one day. I'm a huge animal lover. I love all animals, dogs, cats, fish, birds, etc. I'm not too big on bugs, though. Well, not too many people are. I volunteer at least 20 hours a week at the local ASPCA. Now, for those of you that don't know what ASPCA stands for, or even what it is, it stands for the American Society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. It's an organization that helps neglected, mistreated, and abused animals, and has for over 150 years. Well, Mr. Barnaby said he's looking for stories about horrible and weird events that happen here. This isn't weird or freaky or anything. Just horrible. It was last summer. The day after Tommy found that dead body and that ice cream thing, but that's a different story.

It was really hot that day. Now I always keep a bottle of water in my back pocket to drink so I don't get dehydrated and pass out. It was about 3 p.m. the end of my shift, I was gathering my last run of carts when I saw a group of people standing over by old beat-up Chevy. There was an older woman on her cell phone, a big burly trucker guy, and a young couple standing there looking into the car. The woman was obviously upset, as she was yelling at the person on the other side of the call, then hung up. I went over to see what was going on, the curious guy that I am. What I saw in the backseat of the car got my blood-boiling. I was mad as hell.

It was a little dog, a little fuzzy dog, passed out in the back seat. His tongue hanging out of his mouth and he was breathing really heavy. I knew he wasn't going to make it unless somebody did something. All the windows in the car were rolled up and the car was locked. It had to have been at least 120 degrees in there. What kind of moron does this to a dog? Everyone was just standing there talking about what to do. Well, I knew what to do.

Bust the damn window out. I took off my shirt, wrapped it around my fist, and I punched right through the back driver's side window. The shirt didn't really help, though, as the glass cut my hand and wrist pretty good. There was blood dripping everywhere, but I didn't care about that. I cleared the glass from around the window and reached in the car and grabbed the little guy. His body was limp. He was still breathing, though.

That was a good sign. His eyes were rolled back into his head and he was whining a little bit, but I knew I had to act fast. I laid him in the grass as it was cooler than the concrete. I took the bottle of water out of my back pocket and dumped it a little bit at a time on top of him, rubbing it into his fur to bring his body temperature back down. After a minute or so, he started to come back to life. I picked him up and was holding him as he licked my face.

Then I heard an angry voice from behind me say, What did you do to my car? The dog went from sweet and lovable to vicious and mean in two seconds flat. He was barking and growling, going crazy. I turned around to see a guy, about mid-thirties, wearing old dirty, nasty clothes. He looked like he hadn't bathed since Jesus walked the earth. And smell. Oh my God did he smell. He smelled like old sweat, dirt, and feet.

Without saying a word, the trucker guy just hauled off and punched the guy dead straight in his face, knocking him back a couple steps. He was bent over holding his face. The dog became calm at this point. As the guy stood up, I could see that his nose was completely broken. There was blood pouring out all over his mouth, his chin, and his clothes. He took a step forward and swung at the trucker guy. I later found out that his name was Dave.

The guy threw a punch and missed, and what happened next looked like something out of Monday Night Raw. I love wrestling. Dave hit him in the chest, scooped him up, and body slammed him straight through the windshield of his own car. It was great. The guy just laid there, spread all over his front seat, glass and blood was everywhere. Dave reached in, grabbed him by the shirt, and drug him back out of the windshield.

The broken glass cutting his arms and legs, he was kicking and screaming and cursing. Dave dragged him over to the back of his semi, opened the trailer door, punched him again, and threw him into the trailer. He locked the door and shouted, Now you're going to know what it feels like. The guy screamed and kicked on the trailer door for a few minutes and then stopped. Dead silence. Dave reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a cigarette, lit it and walked back to where we were all standing. The cops arrived about twenty minutes later and attempted to get our statements.

They asked what happened, we all played stupid. I don't know was the collective response. Dave walked over and let the guy out of the truck, and as he did, the guy fell face-first out of the trailer, landing hard on the concrete. He was bleeding, sweating, and gasping for air, and he deserved it. The cop took a look at the dog. the damaged car and the guy laying on the ground. He then looked at us, smiled, put his notepad back in his pocket, then walked away.

The paramedic showed up, tended to my hand, which wasn't that bad at all, just a couple minor cuts. They tended to the guy after the cops arrested him for cruelty to animals. They put him in the back of the ambulance. They accidentally, on purpose, hit his head a couple times on the top of the door frame. That was hilarious. They loaded him up and left. The cops left as well. Dave shook my hand, then hopped in his truck and rolled on.

The lady and the couple got in their cars and left as well, and I was left standing there, holding the dog. Since it was the end of my shift, I carried the little guy inside, punched out for the day, took him home with me. I introduced him to my other dog, Roscoe, but that's a totally different story. The two of them seemed to get along fine though. They just hang out and play in the yard. Well, the cop from that day came by the store a couple weeks later.

He said that the guy was found guilty of intentional animal cruelty, find $5,000 and is now serving three years in prison, serves him right. His car still sits in the parking lot. The birds now use it for target practice and they never miss. Thank you for stealing at Bonabees. That's what I tell all the shoplifters I catch, as the cops are putting them in their cars and taking them down to the station. You see, if they didn't try and steal stuff, I wouldn't have a job, so it's kind of like

job security for me. Anyway, I'm Winston. I'm the LP guy here at Barnabees. For those of you that don't know what LP stands for, well, unless you've been living under a rock your whole life, you already know what it stands for, but I'm going to tell you anyway. It stands for loss prevention, which means I keep an eye out for employee theft, customer theft, fraudulent coupons, over-billed invoices, things like that. Anything that would cause Bonabees to lose money in any way, shape, or form. Now, I'm sure you've been told this before,

but Bonnebys is a very old store. We don't have one of those 24-hour DVR recording systems like the big-name stores do. We still record everything on VHS tapes using an old VCR system. We have to change the tapes every eight hours and hope nothing happens during the time that we're changing the tapes. cameras throughout the store, actually 14 in total. One on each register, one in the cash office, one down the HBC aisle. That's the health and beauty care aisle, by the way, one on every exit door, two in the parking lot and one in my surveillance room. The cops always come by and review the tapes whenever something happens. Yeah, they've been here a lot. They came by a few days after

Jimmy saved that dog from dying in the car last summer. My tapes helped to convict that guy, but that's a different story. I've been here about 35 years now. Yes, I'm that old. I thought I'd seen it all, but I was wrong. Now, I know that Pat is collecting stories about weird and horrible things that have happened here, but this is more strange than anything.

I still can't figure this one out. This happened about 15 years ago and hasn't happened since, thank God. Well, it was way before Pat even took ownership of this place. Back then, it was owned by his father, David. He was a really cool guy, strict, but fair. He taught Pat everything he knows about the business. I remember Pat when he was just a little kid.

He would come into the store with his dad and I'd take them up in my watchtower. That's what I'd like to call my surveillance room. Yeah, I'm a huge Jimi Hendrix fan. Actually, it's a Bob Dylan song, but Jimmy did it better. Just my opinion. Well, that's way before your time. We'd sit up there and just watch people shop. now he owns the place. Wow, I've gotten way off track here. That's what happens when he get old.

All right, the story. Right, here we go. It was mid-afternoon on a Thursday. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in my watchtower looking out the window and all the shoppers. Actually, it's not a window, it's a two-way mirror, which means I can see out, but all the people down below see is a huge mirror on the wall. So if you ever in a store and you see a mirror on the wall that seems out of place. Yeah, that's the surveillance room and you're being watched. Anyway, nothing was really happening that day, just the regular customers in here buying their usual stuff. Kids reading the magazines as their parents shot, old folks hanging out in produce having a meet and greet session, the normal stuff. I noticed a person. I assumed it was a man dressed

in a long, black hooded cape that dragged down the ground standing in the barbecue section, which is the last aisle over, all the way against the wall. I couldn't see the face. He was putting packages of toothpicks inside the cape. Toothpicks. Of all things. I checked the VCR to make sure it was recording and made a B-line for that aisle. My first catch of the day? I walked into the aisle, said, Sir, can you please come with me? He immediately ran in the opposite direction, dropping the toothpicks in the process. Well, more like glided than ran. It was very well. Anyway, I gave chase. He nearly ran over an older lady pushing her car down the aisle. She

didn't even acknowledge what was going on. Just gave me a strange look as I ran past her. He reached the end of the aisle. I expected him to go right down the back aisle, but instead he went left, straight into a wall. I turned the corner, expecting to see him on the floor, but all I saw was a black cape lying on the floor against the wall. He just disappeared. into thin air. I stood there dumbfounded, scratching my head. What the H.E. double hockey stick. I slowly bent over, picked up the cape, and carried it back to my room. I hung it on the nail on the wall. I was sitting there, just staring at it, trying to figure out what was going on, when out of the corner of my eye. On camera number six, I saw another person in a black cape

standing in the middle of the parking lot. Their head was down, so again I couldn't see their face and their hands were cupped in front of him. I again ran down the stairs as fast as I could, ran through the store and out the front door. I got to the edge of the parking lot. I see this person begin to raise his head, but I was still too far away to see his face. He tilted his head back and raised his arms upward as if he was screaming at the sky. Suddenly, a black Like SUV came around the corner, heading toward him, driving faster than he should have been in a parking lot. I screamed, stop. Just as the SUV was about to hit him, the cape dropped to the asphalt as the SUV drove over top of it.

This thing just disappeared as well, just like the first one. I stood there screaming. Did you see that? Did anybody see that? Everybody just looked at me like I was crazy. Am I the only one seeing this thing? I thought to myself, man, I gotta stop drinking so much coffee. This caffeine's messing with my head. Well, I walked over, picked up that cape as well, and started to walk back toward the store.

People just stared at me as I walked past. I got back up to my room and I hung that cape on the wall as well. I sat down in my chair and I closed my eyes. My mind was going in circles. What is going on? What are these things? Where did they come from? Why can't anyone else see them? All these questions were going around in my head. Am I crazy?

Have I been drugged? Is this for real? Suddenly, I felt an intense burning on my shoulders and massive pressure holding me down in my chair. I opened my eyes and tried to scream, but nothing came out. All the monitors, all 14 of them, suddenly lost signal, then simultaneously came back on showing the same camera, It was the image from on my surveillance room camera.

There was a black hooded figure standing behind me, holding me down. My body was paralyzed. I couldn't move. The burning was growing intolerable. My head thrust backwards with the force of a thousand angry men. I started to hear a low guttural growl like something from the depths of hell. As the figure leaned its head forward, directly over. over mine, I should have been able to see its face, but it had no face.

What I did see was a dark blanket of nothingness. Then like a movie being played, I saw still-framed photos and short film bursts of Native Americans being brutally slaughtered and tortured, their dead bodies lying in huge bloody mounds and forgotten burial grounds. I've heard this place was built on ancient burial grounds, but I never expected this. It was like one of those brainwashing films that you see in spy movies. It was horrifying. The guttural growl intensified until it was almost deafening. The entire room started to shake. The mere burst outwards, fall into the sales

floor below and I screamed. The pain and fear then caused me to lose consciousness. I was awoken by David, pounding on the floor and screaming, Winston, what's the What's going on in there? Open the damn door. I rushed to my feet, opened the door and saw David stand in there. He said, oh my God, what happened to you? I just looked at him, confused and disoriented. I said, I don't know.

I shut the door and turned back into the room and noticed that the cameras had returned to normal. The mirror was back in place and the figure was gone. It's cape laying a ball behind my chair. I quickly stopped the tape and reviewed it. I was sure I caught something on there. But there was nothing. No figure stuffing toothpicks in his cape, just me running through the aisle and toothpicks

falling on the floor. No figure almost getting ran over by that SUV, just me running through the parking lot and screaming. No figure holding me down. Just me spasming in my chair. No, this can't be happening. I'm not crazy. It happened.

I know it did, I said to myself. I reviewed the tapes again, still nothing. I grabbed all the capes and the tape. I ran down the stairs, told David I was leaving, hopped in the car, and I left. I needed to get out of that fast for my own sanity. I threw the capes and the tape in the backseat and burned rubber out of that parking lot. I drove around aimlessly for about an hour trying to clear my head. But every time I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw the capes and it all came rushing

back to me. I saw the town church off in the distance. Now I was never a very religious man up to that point, but after the day I had, I knew I needed Jesus. I pulled into the church, went to grab the capes and the tape out of the back seat. The capes were gone, disappeared, just like the figures. I started to panic. I grabbed the tape and ran into the church, screaming for someone to help me. Everyone turned and just stared. An older gentleman approached me and introduced himself as Father Thomas, but that's a different story. Well, I told Father Thomas what had happened. I showed him the tape. He took me to his office, played the tape in his VCR, and there was nothing on it. Nothing but snow. Father Thomas suggested he performed a blessing on me, arranged for a baptism. I agreed. I was re-baptized two days later and have been a

active member of the church ever since. I returned to work the next day with no questions asked. David just shook my hand and said, I'm glad you're feeling better now get back to work. I really miss that, man. Well, that's my story. I hope you enjoyed it. May God be with you. There ain't no hive like rock and roll.

Yeah, I love that song. Helix did it back in 83. Canadian band. It's off there no rest for the Wicked album, in case you want to check it out. That's my motto. I don't need all that other crap to get high, no way, just give me a Fender guitar, a Marshall Stack, and hit it open chord and I'm there. Hi, my name's Ricky. Ricky Blaze. Well, that's my stage name. My real name is Richard Bellington, but that doesn't sound too rock and roll-and-rollish, now does it? My friends call me Ace, because my favorite guitarist, Ace Freely, from Kiss.

Whose Kiss? Are you kidding me? They're only the best theatrical rock band ever. I have all 31 of their albums, plus a few bootlegs, and I've seen them live in concert at least 15 times. Last time I went to see him, I went with Donovan. He's a customer here. He's definitely afraid of that girl that works in the floral section,

but that's a different story. Well, I play guitar in an 80s hard rock, heavy metal cover band called Blackened Image. Maybe you've heard of us? No. Oh. Okay, then. Moving on. Well, I work Derry here at Barnabies.

It's not the most glamorous job in the world, but hey, it pays the bills. I mess with the LP guy, Winston, a lot. He follows me around watching me. I guess he thinks I'm going to steal stuff because of my long hair and tattoos. I like to take stuff from one aisle, carry it around a little bit, and then drop it off in another aisle just to mess with him. I heard he had a breakdown or something years ago, but that's a different story. Now let me tell you, Barnaby's is a very old store.

The pallet jacks we use to unload the trucks are ancient. We don't have any of this multi-battery powered electric jacks that the big name stores do. Now away, we have manual pallet jacks. For those of you that don't know what a manual pallet jack is, it's a piece of machinery that's used to move pallets from one place to another. It has two metal forks on wheels, connected to a safety bar on wheels, connected to a metal crank handle with an adjustable lever attached to it. You have to manually roll it into the open end of a pallet, then push down the lever, then crank

it up by repeatedly pushing the handle up and down. This will raise the pallet. Then pull it to wherever you're going and hope you're strong enough to pull the 4,000 plus pound pallet that's on it, then push the lever up to lower it into place. It's really a pain in the butt. Anyway, a couple of guys have told me that they've turned stories into Mr. Barnaby about weird and strange things that have happened here. Now, this story is going to rock your socks off. I've never seen anything like this before. I even wrote a song about it, but that's a different story.

I tell you this, I cannot emphasize enough that I do not use drugs of any sort, and I gave up drinking 18 years ago. This was not a hallucination caused by either of the two. Now check this out. It was late August. Around 8 o'clock in the morning, there was a full moon the night before. Now everyone knows a full moon brings out the crazies and a lot of weird stuff happens during that time.

We just received our diary truck. Stewart let the driver in and then went out front for a smoke, leaving just me and the driver alone in the back room. Now, our contract with the supplier says that the driver must unload the pallets from the truck and place the pallets on the back room floor and the associates will pick them up when they need to go. It's a liability issue or something. I don't know.

Well, he opened the roll-up door to the truck and immediately we heard a low squeaking noise coming from inside the truck. I thought it was the refrigerator unit going bad, but I was way wrong. The driver and I put the large metal plank across the opening between the loading dock floor and the back of the truck. The driver then started to unload the pallets. After each pallet, the squeaking noise got louder. Four pallets of freight and three pallets of milk later, the noise was almost deafening.

All that remained at that point was a full pallet. pallet of eggs. The driver took the jack into the truck, went under the pallet, jacked it up and started to unload it from the truck. Apparently, he didn't have the pallet jacked up high enough because it hit the metal plank, causing it to shift and fall down into the opening. The front wheel of the pallet jack then fell into the opening as well. Momentum took over, causing the pallet to fall forward the safety bar giving way, and the pallet coming, crushing down upon the driver who fell backwards, slamming his head hard on the concrete floor. Blood and brains were pouring out of the back of his head as the massive weight of the pallet lay upon

him. I knew he was dead. I was standing over by the bailer when it happened. Tommy and Zeeke had just got done making it bail so the bailer was empty. I don't mess with that thing unless I absolutely have to. I heard about what happened to Stephanie, but that's a different story. Anyway, now brace yourself, because what happened next is something that nightmares are made of. As the pallet of eggs came crashing down on the driver, the eggs obviously broke. You would have expected egg whites and yolks to come pouring out of the boxes, but no, it was blood, lots of it. The squeaking noise, was it a fever pitch? Suddenly, the boxes began to shake, a scratching noise was heard as well. The boxes began to rip open and these things came flying and crawling out. Dead ones

fell out and just laid there on the floor until these things started to eat their bodies. It was so gross. Now let me tell you about these things. They They were little chicks, but they weren't normal little chicks. No, they were half bat, half chicks, like a vampire chick. I dated a goth chick once. It's kind of the same thing. Well, not really. Never mind.

Anyway, they just kept coming. They were everywhere. There had to be at least a hundred of them. They had little chick bodies with little bat wings, a chick head with a bat face and a beak. These things were cool looking, but mean as hell. I jumped in the bailer and closed the safety gate, afraid for my life, as some of them attacked the truck driver's dead carcass, while others completely annihilated the back room. They ripped at the driver's flesh.

They tore apart his arms, his neck, and his face, pulling the skin and tissue straight off the bone and eating it. They gouged out his eyes with their beaks and ate them too, like a eye. eyeball, meatball. Blood was everywhere. It was horrifying. Through the safety gate, I saw them finish off the driver until there was nothing left but skeletal remains. Meanwhile, the others were tearing open bags of sugar, boxes of cereal, cases of water, among other things, creating a huge mess all over the backroom floor. I pulled on my phone and I dialed 911. I didn't know how to explain what was going on, so I just told him there was an accident and to send out the

cops, the coroner, and animal control. I hung up on him, just on time to see one of these things fly into a two-liter bottle of coke. Its beak penetrated the bottle, and the pressure blew him and the soda straight across the back room slamming into the bay doors. That was hilarious. I had to hold back the laughter so they wouldn't find me hiding in the bailer. Anyway, the little guy was okay, though.

He got up, shook it off, and went back to eating stuff. The cops and animal control showed up about ten minutes later, sirens blaring. I guess the sirens hurt their ears, because they all stopped at the same time. They let out a blood-curdling squeak in unison. Some ran for the small opening between the fallen pallet and the bay door, trying to escape through the field beyond the store. ran through the double doors onto the sales floor. Horrific screams of terror could be heard soon after. I opened the safety gate and climbed out of the bailer. I ran to the bay door

and saw these things running in a pack, through the field and heading towards the neighboring housing development. There was nothing I could do. I turned around and headed for the sales floor. The screams were getting louder and more intense. I walked through the doors, turned the corner and saw what I can only describe as the attack scene from the birds, that old Alfred Hitchcock film. Groups of these things were attacking the customers and eating their flesh just like the truck driver. People were running and screaming, jumping over the dead bodies as these things tore at the hair and close until they succumbed to their attack and fell to their death. I hid behind a huge velvita cheese display so they couldn't see me.

Suddenly, multiple gunshots could be heard, many large metal canisters came flying from the front of the store, smashing into walls, displays in the floor, releasing what I assume was tranquilizer gas into the air. I began to cough violently, and I passed out. I woke up about a half an hour later, in the back of an ambulance. The doors were wide open, and from my point of view, I could see multiple ambulances and coroner vehicles. EMTs and coroner personnel were loading dead bodies into the back of them.

Animal control personnel were pushing huge boxes that read hazardous waste on the side. They loaded it into the back of a flatbed truck, then left, the ambulances and coroners as well. The cops came and took my statement, and then they left too. I was released from the ambulance as there was nothing physically wrong with me. I stood there in the parking lot with the other survivors, some employees, some customers. People were crying, shaking, and talking about what happened. I was just glad to be alive. For some strange reason, the cops didn't shut the store down this time.

They told Pat it was safe to go back to work, which was odd. Pat did shut down the store for a little while, though. He made Stephen and the rest of us clean up the mess on the sales floor on the back room, then opened the store back up about an hour later. By this time, it was about 12.30. I was getting hungry, so I decided to take my lunch. After all that, you wouldn't think I'd be hungry, but I've got a stomach of steel. I watched too many horror movies for stuff like that to affect me. Well, I went in the cooler and grabbed my lunch bag. Ironically, my girlfriend made me a chicken salad sandwich with some chips. I know, right? Anyway, I went in the cooler.

I sat down at the break room table, started to eat. Suddenly I heard a little squeaking noise coming from behind the trash can. I thought to myself, oh crap, not again. I grabbed somebody's umbrella that was sitting by the wall and prepared to beat the living crap out of this thing if it tried to attack me. I gently moved the trash can away to find a little chick, a normal little chick, just sitting there, shaking and chirping. like it was scared. I picked him up and fed him some of my sandwich. If he only knew, I guess he was hungry, because he stopped chirping at that point. I kept him in my jacket pocket till the end of my shift, then took him home with me. I brought him to all our band practices,

and we're thinking about making him the band mascot. What do you think? It took me a while to come up with a name for him. Then I thought about it. I decided to name him. Gizmo. Have you seen Bob? What about Lisa? I must say that to my cashiers at least 50 times a day. Now you have to understand that B-O-B and L-I-S-A are not real people. Their acronyms. For those of you that don't know what an acronym is, it's a word or a name, sometimes it's just a bunch of letters that's created from taking the first letter, sometimes two letters of a word and a phrase and putting them together, in order creating the acronym, such as Bob, which stands for a bottom of basket or Lisa, which means look inside always. Get it? Anyways,

it's just something that companies do to make themselves sound cool, I guess. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The weirdest acronym I've seen at a grocery store was D-Y-F-E-Y-W-L-F-E-Y-L-W-L-F. I saw it at one of those big name stores about a year ago, took me a while to figure out what it meant, and I've been doing this for over 15 years. You got any ideas? Go ahead, give it a try. You may have a future in the grocery business. I'll tell you what it means at the end of the story.

Anyway, hi, I'm Candy short for Candice. I'm the ACSSM here at Barnabies. Look at that. Another acronym. It stands for Assistant Customer Service and Sales Manager, which means I'm a C. I'm in charge of customer service, obviously, as well as all the cashiers, the office people, and any money, checks, WIC vouchers, and food stamp purchases that come from the register. My friends call me bubbles because of my happy and chipper disposition.

It annoys some people, especially in the morning if they haven't had enough coffee yet. I don't drink coffee, I'm more of an energy drink kind of person. Now I'm sure you all know. Barnabees is a very old store. We don't have any of those cash counting machines or a change weighing machine like the big name stores do. No, we have to count all the money by hand, then write it down on a log sheet and file it away in a large file cabinet in the office.

Anyway, another one of my jobs, which I volunteered for, is employee relations. That means try to keep the employee as happy as possible. With all the horrible things that happened here, it's not a very very very very very important. easy job to do. We offer a 10% discount on all employee purchases except tobacco and alcohol. We offer free coffee and have casual Friday every week, among other things. Most of the employees like wearing their own clothes to work instead of this boring uniform. However, some customers have complained about all those ugly heavy metal t-shirts that Ricky wears every week, but that's a different story. Oh, hold on a second, the phone's ringing. Good

afternoon, thank you for choosing Barnabees. How may I help you? Yes, ma'am, we're open. Yes, ma'am, we do sell milk. Uh, no, ma'am, we can't change the oil in your car. You would need a mechanic for that, not a grocery store. Okay, thanks for calling. Have a good day. Bye, bye. You can't even imagine all the stupid questions I get asked by these customers. It is ridiculous. The best part of my job is planning. Employee Appreciation Day. You see, There's a carnival that comes to town for about a week every summer and uses the large field behind the store to set up shop. Pat lets them use the field for free in exchange for allowing employees and their families

to get in for free and ride all the rides for free with proper identification, of course. Everyone has a great time. Well, they did. Until this past summer. It was mid-June, about eight months ago. brought in temps from the temp agency to cover the boost in sales we get during this week. I was on call in case something major happened. It was a bright, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky.

The carnival had rolled into town a few days earlier, complete with their food stands, kid rides, adult rides, game booths, a petting zoo, and various other carnivore rides and animal attractions. This year, they even had a huge ferris wheel. This thing must have been about 400 feet tall. It was monstrous. I've never seen one that big. It was about two in the afternoon.

Everything was going great. People were smiling, laughing, having a good time. Jim and his family were enjoying a funnel cake under the big oak tree. Marcus and his girlfriend were walking hand in hand down the midway. Stewart, Stephen, and Zeke were standing in line together to ride that pirate ship ride. volunteered himself for that dunk your boss game. He was soaking wet. It was hilarious. Anyway, Reggie, the town sheriff, still hasn't stepped foot on the property. He was hanging out in his patrol car, eating donuts. Melanie and her girlfriend were chowing down on some chicken

by the merry-go-round. Tommy and his girlfriend were enjoying an ice cream cone together. It looked like that scene from Lady in the Tramp. Tanya was off on the side of the building, talking to the flowers or talking to herself. You never know with her. Jimmy was hanging out with the kids over at the petting zoo. He truly loves animals. Winston was videotaping everything because that's what he does. Ricky and one of our regular customers were walking around with headphones on, playing air guitar and air drums. They looked ridiculous. Ricky had that little chick he found on a leash. It was waddling behind him, but that's a different story. Various other employees were scattered around enjoying the festivities.

There were kids walking around, with huge stuffed animals, young lovers holding hands eating cotton candy, old folks sitting on benches watching the crowd, while the carnival jingles and animal noises echoed in the background. It was truly magical. I was in the merchandising booth. Pat, being the entrepreneur that he is, decided to have t-shirts, baseball caps, coffee cups, key chains, things of that sort, printed up and we'd sell them for five bucks a shot. They said things like Barnaby careful. I survived Barnabees. And Barnaby's shop till you drop.

That was our biggest seller. People were buying these things left and right. We could hardly keep up. We did so well with it that Pat decided to sell them in the store on a regular basis. Come on buy and pick yours up today. As I said, Everything was going great. Suddenly, all the animals started acting strangely, like they knew something was going to happen. All the horses at the pony ride started jumping around and kicking, bucking the riders off their backs. Then they took off, running through the field on a frenzy. One lady's foot got caught in the stirrups, and she was dragged about 50 yards. She was a bloody mess, But she was okay, though. The cows all laid down and began mooing wildly. The bulls began snorting like demons ready to strike. The chicken were running around like their heads were cut off. They were all going crazy. It was quite disturbing. Everyone just stopped and stared at the barns. Suddenly, we heard what sounded like a sonic boom. You know, the sound a plane makes when it breaks the sound barrier. The vibration.

from the sound was so intense that it shook the ground violently, causing several people to fall to the ground, several tents and small buildings collapsing as well, crushing the people inside. The sky turned dark gray, as the wind picked up drastically, growing more intense with every passing moment, dust and debris flying everywhere. The carnival workers tried desperately to stop the rides and remove the riding, the riders, the on-the-ground rides were somewhat successful, only a few injuries there. But the off-the-ground rides weren't so lucky. As the wind blew harder, I can only describe it as the force of a tornado.

The pirate ship ride was caught in full swing and was ripped completely off its base and sent soaring into the sky. The screams of the passengers still haunt me in my sleep. It came crashing down upon the ground, crushing and killing all the passengers aboard and injuring many people on the ground. It was horrifying. People were running and screaming, heading to their cars or into the store. They were jumping over the injured people and dead bodies to save themselves.

The wind was blowing so hard that it launched several people into the air and slammed into trees, carnival rides and the back of the store. Lightning bolts began to hit the ground as the thunder roared. It never rained, though, which was odd. Anyway, I hid behind an old propane tank connected to the building next door. Thank God it wasn't struck by lightning. Now that I think about it, there were no animals injured or killed during all of this. The wind never touched the barns or the petting zoo.

All the animals were alive and accounted for, which, was very odd, but a good thing, nonetheless. From my point of view, I could see that the midway was totally demolished, dead bodies lay amidst the twisted metal and bloody stuffed animals. The merry-go-round began spinning extremely fast from the wind. It broke free from its axle and was launched into the sky, soaring through the air like a frisbee. I heard they found it smashed into an old abandoned house out on Chestnut Street, but that's a different story. The Ferris wheel began to sway back and forth. People in the top carriages began climbing down the wheel in an attempt to get to safety, but that attempt was useless. A lightning bolt

then struck the base of the Ferris wheel, causing it to break free. The wind then pushed it over, and it came crashing down on the back of the store. Barnabies had been severely damaged, and just like that, it was all over. The wind stopped, the sky was clear again, the sun came out, like nothing ever happened. I crawled out from behind the propane tank and took a look around. The carnage was devastating. There were bodies everywhere, not just dead bodies, but bloody severed pieces of bodies, some with chunks of metal sticking out of them.

I didn't even look inside the store. People were bleeding, people were crying. I nearly broke down and cried myself. I pulled myself together and called 911. They said they already had a few reports of what was going on, and ambulances and EMTs were on their way. As I was walking around, helping people up, I noticed something really strange. There was no damage done to any of the surrounding buildings and property, just barreness.

Barnabees. It was like the storm's full intention was to destroy this place. The ambulances and EMT showed up shortly after and tended to the survivors. The cops showed up, except for Reggie, and taped off the property with that yellow tape of theirs. The coroner showed up and gathered up all the dead bodies as well as the pieces with that snow shovel-looking thing. Then they all left. I heard later that the body count was in the hundreds. We lost seven employees that day, as well as a few temps. After everyone had left, I was walking around looking at the damage when I noticed Pat down on his knees, staring at the store and crying.

That's the first time I ever saw that man cry. I went to console him, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little Native American boy, standing at the edge of the property. I turned to Fasen. He bent down and tapped the ground three times, then stood up and disappeared. I just walked away. Maybe now is not a good time, but I promise that I would tell you what that acronym meant at the beginning of the story. It stands for, did you find everything you were looking for? Well, I drove by the store the next day and saw Pat out there boarding up the front window. On one of the boards was a sign that read, For Sale by Owner. A wave of emotion came over me. I pulled my car into an abandoned parking lot and just sat

there, thinking about everything that has happened at that store. Some were good, some were bad. But it was always eventful. There was never a dull moment. Two weeks later, I drove by on my way to a job interview and saw the front window boarded up. But I didn't see the first sale sign, however. I did see another sign on the front grass. It read, Coming Soon, Cartwright Cinema. There's nothing in the dark that's not there in the light. That's what I always believed, until I bought that place. I never believed in ghost spirits, weird energies, or anything paranormal. But I do now. Hello, I'm Catherine, Catherine Cartwright.

I bought the property where a place called Barnaby's, an old grocery store, used to be, until a freak storm hit, but that's a different story. I'm originally from Southern California, yep, SoCal. My friends call me Kitty Cat, you know, as in meow. Plus I sometimes make a purring sound when I breathe. It's a medical condition I've had since I was younger. Well, I moved here about eight years ago. I used to work at my father's metal building company, but I've always had an interest in movies.

I love movies, any kind of movie. Action, adventure, comedy, drama, romance, you name it. I've always wanted to own my own theater. So I moved out here to pursue that dream and I did it. I now own Cartwright Cinema. We're a small multiplex movie theater company. I own a small theater, a few towns over. and I was thinking of branching out.

When I saw that property was up for sale, I thought it would be the perfect location for another theater, and it was the perfect location, but not the perfect property. Part of the agreement I made with Mr. Barnaby, when we signed the contract, was if that any weird or strange things happened, I would write it down and give it to him. When he asked me to do this, I thought, why not? Nothing's going to happen. That stuff's not real. Boy, was I wrong.

Let me start from the very beginning. As I said earlier, I was thinking of branching out. So I grabbed my laptop one day and started to search properties for sale throughout the state. I came across that property. As a result of a computer glitch, I started to type properties for sale, and before I could even get out the word property, the listing popped up. That was odd, I thought. I never even knew that place existed. The property was in a good location, the middle of town, a high traffic area and had an extremely low price.

It was a developer's dream. Yes, the building was damaged, and the grounds were tore up, but since it was old and an all-brick building, it was nothing that a mason and a landscaping team couldn't fix. I called the realtor at the number listed in the ad and agreed to pay the asking price without even seeing the place first. Well, besides the pictures in the ad, That was a bad idea. The realtor called me back a couple days later and said that the owner has accepted my offer

and asked if it was possible that we all meet and sign the contract the next day. I agreed. Actually, it's called a land contract. For those of you that don't know what a land contract is, it's a contract that's drawn up, usually by a realtor or attorney, sometimes just between the buyer and the seller, that details agreements and conditions for purchasing a certain piece of property. Well, the next day came. We all decided to meet up at noon and an old gas station in the next town over, but that's a different story. I arrived first and went inside to get an energy drink. The cashier kind of creeped me out

a little bit, so I got out of there as fast as I could. The realtor arrived next in his shiny, new Cadillac Escalade. Must be nice. I'm still rolling around and I'm still rolling around and I'm 98 Dodge Caravan. Mr. Barnaby was the last to arrive. He said to call him Pat, but it's a respect issue, so I prefer to call him Mr. Barnaby. He came rolling up in an old bright purple short bus that he converted into his own personal RV. It looked like a big Barney bus. I wonder if his color choice had anything to do with his last name. You know, Barney, Barnaby, I don't know. Anyway, he let me check it out after we signed the contract and said he was going to do some traveling just to get away from everything. If I knew then what I know now, I would have went with him. We discussed the

conditions and agreements, made a few changes, which included a 48-hour return clause, which meant I could return the property to Mr. Barnaby within 48 hours of purchase if I chose to do so. It was his idea, because in his words, you have no idea what you have no idea what you were dealing with. I just blew it off. We finally agreed on a contract right there in the middle of a parking lot. The price never changed, though. We both signed the contract on the side of the bus. The realtor witnessed it. I gave him my cashier's check and he gave me the deed to the property. The deal was done. The realtor gave us each a copy of the contract, then got in his car and left. Mr. Barnaby and I talked for a while. He's a really nice guy.

We talked for about a half an hour as he explained everything he'd done to the bus. He'd taken out all the seats, put plywood down as a floor, and then put a yellow carpet on top of that. He framed the whole interior with two-by-fours, put installation between the wood, and covered the walls and ceiling with drywall and painted it mint green. That wouldn't have been my color of choice, but it's his bus, so okay. He left the windows and rear exit door exposed. He put a wall behind the driver's seat that went all the way across the bus and put a house door, painted orange, in the middle leading into the back of the bus. He had red curtains on the windows, a gray futon bed, a long black dresser with a light blue coffee pot, a white microwave,

and a little 13-inch brown television set with a VCR hooked to it on top, a small black refrigerator on the side of that, and a small white potty chair in the corner. That's kind of gross, but whatever works for him. Yeah, it looked like a box of crayons exploded in there. But I'm getting off track. Back to the story. After saying our goodbyes and exchanging cell phone numbers, in a friendly gesture, Mr. Barnaby hopped in his bus and headed south.

I jumped in my van, headed north, and made a bee line for my new property. I was so excited. I arrived at the address about 20 minutes later, and I must have. say, the picture in the ad must have been taken right after the storm happened, because it didn't look anything like that picture. It was far worse. The winter months had not been nice to the building. There was some sort of black fuzzy stuff growing on the side of it. The whole entire roof was caved in, as well as the top part of the building. There was no way to fix that place, I thought. I'm going to have to tear this whole place down. Now, for some strange reason,

Something told me to go inside. I don't know what it was, but I just felt I had to. That was a decision I would later regret. I opened the door, which was still in pristine condition, which was very odd to me. I opened it and stepped inside, and as soon as I did, it was like I stepped into a time capsule or something. The store was in full operation, fully intact and open for business. What the what? I stood there in shock. There were people in there shopping, employees everywhere. The roof was back on.

The lights were on as well. As 80s top 40s hits played over the radio, it was business as usual. How could that be possible? I don't know how long I stood there, just watching. I saw something then out of the corner of my eye. I saw an old Native American medicine man dancing around and chanting. I don't know what he was saying, but he started making a pushing motion with his arms in my direction. After each time he did this, he would slap the front of his thighs and then do the pushing thing again.

I'm starting to freak out at this point. He did this about three or four times. Then I suddenly began to feel lightheaded, really lightheaded. And eventually, I passed out. I woke up, half submerged in this wretched-smelling, fungus-infested, freezing cold water. I opened my eyes to see five Native Americans in a circle staring down at me. I closed my eyes and scream as loud as I can. I opened my eyes once again, and they were gone.

And so were all the people in a beautifully pristine store. What the hell just happened? What the hell is going on here? I lay there on the floor, which was covered in about a foot of this nasty, wretched water, staring up at the sky. The roof was no longer there. I sat up to see the interior of the building totally demolished and falling down around me, light fixtures hanging by their wires off of steel beams, twisted chunks of metal laying in front of me, being only what I can assume, were cash registers, pieces of wood shelving floating in the water, cans and bags of all kinds of different product, floating in the water as well. I felt something hit my ripe thigh. I looked down

and saw it was a severed hand. I jumped to my feet, screamed like I was losing my mind, and I ran out of the door soaking wet. Two boys that looked like they were about 12 or 13 were riding their bikes past the building as I came out screaming. They crashed into each other as they stared at me, running in my soaking wet white t-shirt and jeans. Well, I hopped in my van, called Mr. Barnaby, told him what happened, and that I was invoking the 48-hour clause. The deal is off. I wanted my money back, and he could keep that place. I swear I could hear the corners of his mouth rising up to form a smile as he nonchalantly said, Okay, I thought you would.

We agreed to meet at the Realtors' office the next day, where I handed him back the deed to the property, and he gave me back my check. We shook hands, and I left. I'm done with that place. I did decide to honor that agreement about writing down anything weird and strange that happened, because I feel this story should be told.

About two weeks later, Curiosity got the best of me. I decided to make the drive back down there. I wanted to take a selfie with a place that changed my whole attitude about the paranormal. I'm no longer a skeptic. That stuff is real. I drove down there and stood on the sidewalk across the street with my back to the building. I pulled out my cell phone from my pocket, turned on my camera app, reverse the camera shoot,

and took a picture of me with that dilapidated building in the back. background. I put my phone back in my pocket, hopped in the van, and drove home. After about two hours, I finally got the nerve to look at the picture. What I saw terrified me to the point of tears. Yes, it was a picture of me with a building in the background, but on the grass surrounding it were transparent images of Native Americans. They were everywhere. I quickly deleted that picture from my phone. That was about six months ago. Today, right before I started writing this, I received a call from Mr. Barnaby. We talk every now and then. He said that someone made him an offer that he couldn't refuse and that he wanted to invite me to the re-grand opening of Barnaby's

happening next week. Who knows? Maybe I'll go. Hey, all you creatures of the night out there, This is Mike on the Mike, coming to you live from WRPM, your best choice for 80s rock, pop, and metal. Get it? RPM. Rock pop metal. Well, it's Metal Monday here on WRPM. You know what that means? All metal all day.

That's right. Our next 20-minute continuous rock block is brought to you by Barnaby's grocery store. Barnaby's shop till you drop. You'll hear headbanging hits from bands like Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron, Maiden and Manawar. We're going to start things off with a little bit of Slayer, Rain in Blood. Okay, I'm not really a DJ. There is no WRPM, and there's no music playing. It's just something I do to entertain myself. Hi, I'm Mike. I'm the new grocery manager here at Barnabees. Unfortunately, the previous manager was killed in that freak storm a couple months ago,

But that's a different story. May he rest in peace? Well, my dream job is to be a radio DJ. No, not the kind of DJ you see in clubs at parties or at wedding receptions, an actual radio DJ. I know, with today's modern technology in apps like Pandora, I Heart Radio, and Google Play, you can be your own DJ. But still, that's what I want to do. As I said, I'm new here. I just got hired on, just as they were getting ready to restock the shells for the re-grand opening. I used to work at one of those big-name grocery stores, but I got tired of being a trained monkey. They would tell us what product to put where, what displays to build, when to take them down, and what time you had to get it all done by. It was way too micromanaged.

But here at Barnabies, I get to think for myself, use my brain a little. I like that. I'm not the only newbie here. There's Ryan, he replaced Tommy, who finally got his RN license, and is now working full-time plus at the local hospital, so I've heard. There's Justin, he replaced Jimmy, who finally got his dream job of working at ASPCA full-time like he always wanted. Stewart told me that. There's a bunch of new deli workers, cashiers, produce help, stock crew, we were all in orientation

together. That was the most boring five hours of my life. Then there's the new assistant manager, Catherine. She says to call her kitty, but that's a different story. Stephen told me that the old assistant manager fell in love with one of the carnies from the carnival last year and ran off to join the circus. Now, let me tell you, the new assistant manager could manage me any day. Yes, ma'am. Wait, what? Did I say that out loud? Never mind. Please don't call HR. Well, apparently she's real good friends with Mr. Barnaby, and he is one lucky man. I think she's the previous owner of this property, but that's a different story. I was talking to her the other day while trying not to drool on myself, and she said that

since she had people to run her theater, she thought she would help Mr. Barnaby out for a little while, even though the whole Indian Burial Ground thing still freaks her out. What Indian Burial Ground thing? I thought. With just one look at this place, you can tell that Barnabees is a very old store. We don't have any of those big metal gondolas to display our product like big name stores do. Now, for those of you that don't know what a gondola is, it's a large metal fixture with adjustable shelving on both sides that's used in grocery stores.

department stores, well, basically any store that has product to be displayed for sale. They're usually placed side by side in rows about 10 feet apart, bolted together, as well as being bolted to the floor, thus creating aisle one, aisle two, and so on, like you would see in stores. Like I said, we don't have any of those. We have large freestanding bookcases placed back to back and side to side creating our aisles. They're bolted together, but not to the floor, which makes no sense to me. Well, let me tell you what happened a few days ago at the re-grand opening. I'll pass this on to Mr. Barnaby the next time I see him.

Now, this place was looking sharp thanks to the new investors. They completely funded the project to rebuild this place back to the way it was, including all the antique registers, cold cases, freezers, lighting, floors, all of it. That's what Winston told me. He's a church guy, so I don't think he'd lie. Well, there's a pair of brothers from New York, I believe their last name is Marconi, Macaroni, Rigatoni, something Italian, I don't know. Don't tell them I said that. They have a bunch of associates that follow them everywhere. They built a rather large room off the back of the store with a private entrance on the side and a door in the back room. No one. And I mean no one

that works here, not even Mr. Barnaby. is allowed in that room, unless you know the password, and there's always the same big fat refrigerator-looking guy with no neck standing at the door. Yeah, the kind of guy that you wouldn't want to meet alone in a dark alley. I have an idea as to what they're doing back there. I'm not stupid. I've seen Scarface a million times. So yeah, say hello to my little friend. I love that movie. Well, back to the story. Like I said, this place was looking sharp. The floors were shining. The shelves were full. At least they looked like they were. It's something that people in the grocery business called fronning.

But that's not important. We had a huge banner hanging right above the front entrance with the words re-grand opening on it. Obviously. Candy was in the merchandising booth outside, giving away free t-shirts and keychains to the first 500 customers. We even had an actual radio DJ broadcasting the live event. I was so jealous. He let me do a live commercial spot and said he'd talk to the station manager about me. So, that was cool. It's a country station, but you got to start somewhere, right? Well, there were balloons and streamers everywhere.

Deli and produce were giving out free samples, and Jim from the meat room was outside grilling up hamburgers and hot dogs to sell to the customers. Briars even donated 300 gallons of ice cream. They had a huge refrigerator truck set up on the side of the store. door, giving free ice cream away. It was mid-July, about 90 degrees outside. This place was packed. Mr. Barnaby was standing just inside the front door, greeting customers as they walked in, like a Walmart greeter would do. I was walking around asking customers if I could help them find anything, as was the rest of my crew. The Macarena brothers, or whatever the hell their name is,

they weren't even there. Mr. Barnaby said they went to New York to pick up supplies. Right. Everyone was having a great time until all the lights went out. There were a few seconds of total darkness before the security lights came on. Little kids started screaming and crying as their parents tried desperately to calm them down and leave the store. There was barely enough light to see your hand in front of your face. Mr. Barnaby, myself and other employees started moving the customers up to the front of the store for checkout before the back of the backup generators lost power as well. I checked the bathrooms for any lingering customers.

That was a bad idea. I walked in and saw an old Native American guy in full headdress staring at the side wall in the handicapped stall. He was glowing. What the hell? I said to myself. He turned to look at me. Our eyes met and my vision started to get real blurry.

I shook my head and blinked a couple of times. And he was gone, vanished, into thin air. What just happened, I thought? My mind raced back to the conversation I'd had with Catherine, where she mentioned the Indian burial ground thing. I started freaking out. You mean this place is haunted? I screamed like a little girl and ran out of the bathroom. And as I did, a foul stench hit the air.

It hit my nose and stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to count backwards from ten, just to count. to stop myself from throwing up. In the dim lighting, I could see several employees and customers begin to vomit on each other. Several fights broke out. People were throwing punches and vomiting at the same time. It was so disgusting, but in a cool way. It looked like a cross between Rocky and the Exorcist. I love that movie. When Linda Blair's character pukes that green stuff on that priest, yeah, that's the best part. Well, I stood there watching the fights. We're trained not to interfere, so I just stood there. After

about ten minutes, I couldn't stand the smell any longer and started to walk fast towards the front doors, trying not to get hit or puked on in the process. I soon realized I was walking in water. Oh man, I just paid fifty bucks for these shoes, I thought. But seriously, I looked down. It wasn't just water. It was this nasty brown, slimy liquid. it with chunks of sludge and what looked like, well, crap, to be honest. And it was literally crap. That must be where the smells coming from. The sewage pipes must have burst, and it's now seeping up through the floor.

I raised my head to see it quickly raising up through the tiles. All the fighting stopped, as customers and employees realized what was happening and started screaming and running to the front door. They began slipping and falling in this mess. They were covered in sludge and slime and little pieces of toilet paper. You can call me a sick person if you want to, but I thought it was hilarious. Suddenly, we heard a low rumbling that intensified with every second that passed. The floor began to shake violently, knocking over the bookcases and causing them to fall like

dominoes crushing the people that were in the aisles. A loud bang could be heard as the floor burst open, under what was Isle 6, sending this foul brown liquid gushing into the air, like a water fountain and pieces of broken shelving flying through the air like torpedoes. One guy got hit with a chunk of wood right between the eyes. He kind of looked like a unicorn. Yes, my friends, it was raining crap, soaking everyone and everything in sight. Myself and a few others finally made it out of the front door, completely soaked. Mr. Barnaby was the last one out. He said a captain never leaves his crew behind.

The cops, the EMTs, the coroner, and the hazardous waste team were just arriving. At the same time, which was very odd. They had to wait until the fountain of crap died down to enter the building. The sewage was coming out from under the front door and out into the street. The hazardous waste team began pushing it back with large brums. They made everyone that survived take one of those chemical-killing shower thingies. I think they're called de-con showers. I'm really not sure.

The cops taped off the area as the EMTs tended to the injured. The hazardous waste team suited up in their hazmat suits and went inside to look for survivors. There weren't any. The hazmat team started carrying out bodies in special hazardous waste bodies. bags. There were nine of them. The coroner loaded up the bodies and left. So did the EMTs. The cops take our statements, and they started their investigation. Mr. Barnaby, myself, and a few employees and customers hung around to see them clean it up. The hazmat team called in their tanker truck to suck up all the sewage. They had this long hose-like thing connected to the truck. One guy was in

charge of walking around in his suit and sucking it all up. Man, they couldn't pay me enough to do that crap. That was a failed attempt at a joke. Anyway, they get it all cleaned up, then began to rip out everything within the store that had come in contact with that mess, which was every single thing. The floors, the walls, the ceiling, all the cases, the bookshelves, everything down to the frame. Barnabees had been completely gutted. All the things, all the cases, the bookshelves, All the packaged foods and fresh products were thrown away. The canned goods were donated to the local food bank. We had to take the labels off, of course, and write on the can in black sharpie what it was.

It took four days to complete everything. My brother-in-law, Chris, is a plumber. Mr. Barnaby hired him to fix the pipes. He did it for free and made me help him. That was so disgusting. Well, Chris found two reasons why the pipes got clogged and caused the eruption. One, when the Macintosh brothers rebuilt this place, they used three-inch piping instead of continuing to use six-inch pipe that was used in the original build. They put the two pipes together using a six-by-three coupling just to save money, the idiots.

Two, there were about 20 human fingers, toes and ears, stuck at the base of the coupling, like someone had cut them off and flushed them down the toilet. To get rid of evidence, maybe? I wonder who that could have been. Yeah. Well, anyway, before I forget, the Mac and Cheese brothers were busted by the feds just outside of Brooklyn, with 10,000 pounds of supplies in the trunk of their car. They're now serving 25 to life in federal prison. Anyway, Mr. Barnaby started a donation fund to help raise the money to rebuild the store.

We already have close to $50,000 raised. If you like to make a donation, no amount is too small. Oh, yeah, the DJ we had covering the re-grand opening did a live play-by-play as it all went down. He got promoted to the Big League station in Cincinnati because of that. But you can't guess which one. Well, the station manager just called me. And guess who's replacing him?

That's right. Me. I start tomorrow. So this is Mike on the Mike signing off. In closing, I'd like to remind you that two wrongs do not make a right. but three rights does make a left. Think about it. Good night, everybody. There is no death, only a change of worlds. That's an old Native American quote that my grandmother taught me back when I was a child. I don't remember who said it, but that's what got me interested in ghost, spirits,

and things of that sort. My grandmother on my mother's side is a very spiritual woman, always holding seances, talking with the spirits, burning candles, things like that. I learned most of what I know about the spirit world from her. She turned 92 this year and has more energy than most 20-year-olds I know. That scares me sometimes. Hi, my name's Lily. Lily Sweetwater, and yes, I am Native American, half Cherokee on my father's side. My father, DeWitty, meaning David in English, is a 100-broseph,

percent full-blooded Native American. My mother, Shannon, meaning Shannon in English, is a 100% full-blooded African American. That's a family joke. It's okay if you don't get it. I have a brother, Samis, meaning Thomas, in English. He's a few years older than me, six to be exact. He chose to stay and live on the reservation along with my parents about an hour away from where I live now. He's a deputy on the reservation's police force. They have a saying, What happens on the res, stays on the res, and they mean it. The laws are different there.

Now, for those of you that don't know what a reservation is, a reservation is a piece of land managed by a federally recognized Native American tribe, such as Cherokee, Cheyenne, etc. Rather than being managed by the state for which it's located in. There are about 326 reservations in the United States, give or take, mostly located in the western part of the country. The reservation I am from is a Cherokee reservation. Well, back to the story.

Where was I? Oh yeah. When I turned 18, I'm 32 now. I decided that I wanted to see what life was like off the reservation. So I went to my parents and asked their permission to leave the reservation and live on my own. They agreed under one condition that I don't leave the state. That seemed kind of odd, but it's a fairly big state, so okay. I agreed to the condition.

I'd been saving my tips and wages, working as a waitress at the Red Horse Bar. That's a bar on the reservation. I had a pretty good amount saved up. I packed up what little belongings I had and moved out. I had to quit my job since I was moving off the reservation, therefore I couldn't work there anymore. Reservation Law says, If you don't live here, you can't work here. Well, my brother gave me a ride. We drove for a while, till I saw a sign that said room for rent.

He stopped, and I got out to speak to the homeowner. I rented a small basement apartment from a nice lady named Candy, and I've lived there ever since. You remember Candy, right? She has a very friendly and very big dog named Buster, but that's a different story. Candy and I get along great. When I first moved in, she knew I was looking for a job and offered me a cashier position at the grocery store she worked at. Well, when it opened back up, that is.

Some place called Barnaby's a very old store, as she put it. Apparently, they had a sewer pipe break a while ago and the whole place had to be gutted, but that's a different story. I gladly accepted the job. She said that they just about had it finished and that it should be open in about a month or two. She also said I'd have to meet the owner, Pat, as he likes to meet all the new hires personally. She called Pat and set up a meeting for the next day at 1 p.m. That meeting would change my life and Barnabees forever.

Well, the next day came, I got up, showered and got dressed in a nice pair of jeans and a blouse, ready for the meeting with Pat. We hopped in her van as I didn't have a car yet and made our way to the store. I asked her if we could stop the coffee shop across the street from the store for some coffee, real coffee, not that mocha, choka, frapa, coppa crap, actually brewed coffee. I told her that I'd buy and she agreed. Candy got an energy drink and I got an extra large black coffee. You see, growing up on the reservation, we couldn't really afford such luxuries as cream and sugar, so I learned to drink black. The cashier really creeped me out. She had these really weird-looking

green eyes, but that's a different story. We got our drinks and got the heck out of there. We arrived at the store shortly after. Now, Candy was not kidding when she said that Barnabees is a very old store. It's a decent size, all-brick building. There's no big glass picture window in the front of the store, like the big-name stores have. There are, what looks like, two house windows on either side of a wooden door, painted white with the paint peeling off. There are no other windows in the whole place, however, there is a rather large room off the back of the store with its own entrance door. You can tell that it's an add-on, as it has aluminum siding rather than being brick. We walked inside. The air was thick and heavy. I could tell something was going on there.

An older gentleman walked up to Candy and gave her a hug. They talked for a few minutes about everything that was going on with the store. I overheard him say that one of their regular customers, a man called Donovan Mitchell, but that's a different story. Apparently he works for the governor of the state and he convinced him to declare Barnabees a historical landmark because of its history and all. Therefore, it could never be torn down. Barnabees will live for ever, I heard him say. He also said that the state pitched in the rest of the money that it would take to complete the renovation. A loud bang was then heard throughout the store, Candy, the old man, and everyone else turned to look in the direction of the sound. Not again, I heard him whisper

to himself. Suddenly, one of the guys up on the scaffold doing drywall yelled out, It's okay, everyone. I just dropped my drill, nothing to worry about. Everyone sighed in relief. I just stood there confused. Candy then introduced me to the man. Lily, this is Pat, Pat Lily. He extended his hand as a greeting. I extended mine to meet his. As my hand touched his, I suddenly became very lightheaded and dizzy. I started to hear various war cries of Native Americans preparing for battle all at the same time. It was like they were trying to tell me something. I quickly pulled my hand back and covered my ears to drown out the noise, dropping my coffee in the process. Speaking of coffee, I'm going to go make some right now. Hold on a sec. Okay, coffee's going back to the story.

I began to shake and thrust my head all around, my long hair hitting pat and candy directly in the face. I began screaming like a lunatic as I ran out of the store. Once outside, the voices stopped. I put my hands down to my side, turned and gave a what the freak stare at the building. Both Candy and Pat came running to my side, asking if I was okay, shaken, and a little distraught. I asked Pat if anything weird ever happened here, and if he knew anything about this land. He laughed. you're not going to believe it, laugh.

He then invited Candy and I to have a seat in his bus so we could talk. That was the craziest-looking thing I've ever seen in my life, but that's a different story. Candy and I sat on the futon while Pat in the doorway. He proceeded to tell me

about every single thing that happened here, as much as he could remember, that is, the chicken friar incident, the body parts in the trash, that freak storm, the black shadows, something to do with a Pepsi truck, and many other things. He also said that he had a ghost hunting team investigate the store

about six months ago. He's still waiting to find out what happened. Then, to top it all off, he told me this place is built on Indian burial grounds. I was in shock, horrified. Indian burial grounds, I thought to myself. Do you know how disrespectful that is? I was furious. I contemplated walking out right then and there, but a job's a job and I really needed one. I thought of my grandmother, and that quote she taught me many years ago, I decided that I may be able to help. I told Pat that I wasn't too happy with the store being built on Indian burial grounds, given the fact that I'm Native American. He apologized, saying he didn't know. I accepted his apology and asked if it would be all right if I contacted my grandmother and asked her to come to the property, and ask her to come to the property

and perform a seance, to hopefully figure out why the spirits are so restless, besides the obvious, of course. He smiled and graciously said yes. I contacted my grandmother and told her what was happening. She agreed to hold the seance the next Friday, Friday the 13th. I love those movies. I have all 107 of them. I'm exaggerating a lot. There's so many of them. Well, Friday came, Candy and I drove to pick up my grandmother. My grandmother explained as I loaded her equipment in the van that she didn't know if the seance would work given the language barrier, but she was willing to give it a try. This should be interesting, I thought. We arrived back at the store, about 11 p.m. Pat was already there. My brother showed up, unannounced and offered to join us as a translator as he is fluent in

English and Cherokee. My father taught him when he was younger. How he knew about what we were doing, I don't know, but he did. Maybe the spirits told him. Oh, wait, the coffee pot just beat. I'll be right back. Ah, there's nothing like a fresh hot cup of coffee on a cold winter's morning. Candy got me hooked on pumpkin spice. It's amazing.

She bought a ton of it last October. Anyway, where did I leave off? Oh, yeah, so we unloaded the van and set up. up in the field behind the store. We set up the table first. It was round and had strange writings in it. So did the chairs. It was really creepy. We used the security light on the back of the store so we could see. My grandmother then put a homemade load of bread in the center of the table. I'm not sure why. She then surrounded the bread with three white candles, forming a perfect triangle, and lit them. She said that the spirit world is cold.

The heat from the candles will draw the spirits closer, as the spirits will seek out warmth from the flames. She also instructed us to turn off our cell phones to avoid distractions. Then she explained our duties for the seance. She said that she will act as the medium, meaning she will invite the spirits to join us and allow them to communicate through her. If they choose to, she will also be the one to close the session when it's completed. My brother, as I said earlier, will translate the answers if there are any.

Also read a list of questions on Cherokee that he wrote down earlier in English. Candy, Pat and I were there as witnesses. We all joined hands around the table and began the seance. My grandmother began by saying, O great spirits that inhabit this land, we invite you to join us tonight. We offer you the gift of heat from these candles that sit before us. we offer you this bread to nourish your hunger for this world. Please come and speak to us. As she finished her invite, the wind suddenly stopped blowing. The crickets stopped cricketing,

and the air became cold and heavy. After a few moments, she repeated her invite once again. This time, the flames from all the candles burst up about an inch, like a flamethrower when you squeeze and release the trigger. Then they went back to the fire. to normal. Candy screamed and began to shake. They're here. Be quiet. My grandmother said, ask the first question. For the sake of this story, I will tell you the questions that were asked in English, but when all this happened, it was spoken in Cherokee. My brother asked, how long have you been here? Suddenly, we heard rustling in the trees. We all turned our heads to look.

look. The wind started blowing again, hard, so hard that it thrusted our heads all around. We were all fighting to stay upright. Somehow the candle stayed lit, but the list of questions blew away. Through the whistling of the wind, we heard a disembodied voice saying, Moni Mooney's. Many moons, my brother said. That means many moons. Holy crap. Um, Candy began crying at this point. I can't do this. I'm scared. She whined.

Calm down, my grandmother said. We're safe as long as we hold the circle. She was wrong. Suddenly, an enormous gust of wind came through, blowing Pat's toupee completely off his head, blowing the candles out, then picking the table up and slamming it directly into Pat's my brother's face, knocking them backwards out of their chairs, and pulling candy, my grandmother and myself, out of our chairs and directly on top of them. Blood was gushing out of Pat's nose like a water faucet as he laid there unconscious. My brother's head was bleeding as well. He was

awake and moaning. Do not break the circle, my grandmother yelled. The chairs and tables that were lying on the ground, began to levitate in the air, took flight, and slammed hard into the back of the store and the security light, causing it to explode. Sparks went everywhere. We were now in total darkness. Candy was screaming at the top of her lungs. Shut up, I yelled at her. She finally stopped and began whimpering like a wounded animal. Just then, a dim yellow light began to rise from the ground, through the grass, covering the entire field and the five of us as well. The sound of tom-tom drums began echoing through the night, getting louder as each second passed. The ground started to shake, and transparent images of Native Americans began to rise from the ground.

There were men, women, and children, slowly rising from the dirt and grass. I got the feeling like I just walked through a spider web as I actually watched a spirit rise directly through my body. I watched as they rose through all of us. I will never forget that moment for as long as I live. My grandmother then screamed, louder than I've ever heard her scream. What do you want? My brother mumbled the translation. Just as he finished his sentence, everything stopped.

No more wind, no more drums, no more spirits rising on the ground. They were all standing around us now. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. Suddenly, we heard another several disembodied voices saying, Wesugetti, over and over again at the same time. My brother began mumbling something that sounded like a word, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. What, Somas? I can't understand you. He took a deep breath and said it once again,

Respect. They want respect, he said in a groggy voice. My grandmother then said, I close this circle of communication and thank you all for joining us tonight. You may now break the circle. I immediately grabbed my phone out of my pocket, turned on the flashlight, and went to go check on Pat. I shook him a couple times, and he woke up. completely unaware of the events that happened. Dazed and confused, he sat up slowly, blood caked to his face. My grandmother and my brother both sat up and said they were okay.

Candy, however, was lying in the fetal position, crying and shaking uncontrollably. I called 911 and said that there had been an accident and to send an ambulance. The ambulance arrived and attended to Pat. They called the second one for Candy. They gave Candy a mild sedative, loaded her into the back of it, and took her to the hospital for an overnight stay. She was released the following morning. Pat, however, was treated for severe head trauma, taken to the hospital, and stayed there for a week and a half.

My brother had to drive my grandmother and I back home. Candy picked up her van a few days later. Once Pat got out of the hospital, I called him and told him a week. exactly what happened that night. I also asked if it would be possible to use that room off the back of the store as a memorial or tribute to the Native American community for which I would have full control over. He graciously agreed. I contacted several people from my old reservation about donating items to the memorial, books, old Indian arrowheads, clothing, things of that sort. The response was overwhelming. I got a ton of stuff. They finally finished the store, as well

as my memorial room, and the store opened back up soon after. The activity has died down a lot, so I've heard. You still see an occasional sighting or two around the store, but nothing too serious. I got my room organized, my mom helped me decorate, and I opened up soon after that. I hired one of the waitresses from the bar I used to work at to cover the night shifts. She's a friend of mine, so that works out well. My father and my brother, and several older people from the reservation often make random trips here to donate their time, taking pictures or answering questions that anyone might have. So, if you want to know more about the Native American culture, please stop by any time.

We're open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through 7. Saturday. There's no charge to enter, but donations are accepted. Oh yeah, we never did find Pat's toupee. My name is Jack Higgins. I never believed in ghosts until I came toe-to-to-toe with one. So I set out on a journey to record what I once witnessed on a video, along with my good friend Rick Cough and a guy we met at Taco Bell, Darren Baldwin. Together we will travel to the most creepiest, craziest, and spookiest. places in the state in an attempt to capture evidence of the paranormal. These are our Ghost Ventures.

That was the intro to our Ghost Hunting Web series. Yeah, I know. It sounds a lot like that other ghost hunting show on that cable network, but that's strictly coincidental. It's a good show. Well, at least it used to be. Hi. My name is Jack.

I was the lead investigator for the Ghost Ventures crew. And if you noticed, I said was. was, we don't ghost hunt anymore. Hell, we don't even talk anymore, and I'll tell you why. Let me sum it all up in one word, and that word is Barnabies. Yeah, that place is off the charts. I mean, anyone that would step foot in that place, willingly, needs to have their head examined twice. We've done investigations at abandoned schools, run down churches, a couple cemeteries, and even falling down dilapidated buildings. We've caught EVPs, felt phantom cool spots, and had some personal experiences, but nothing like we experienced at Barnaby's.

Now, as part of the agreement we made with Mr. Barnaby when we investigated that place, was that if any weird or strange things happened, we would write them down in story form and give it to him in exchange for letting us investigate the store for free. That place messed my head up so much that it took me three years and lots of therapy just to be able to even write this. But I will remember that night, vividly, until the day I die. So here it goes. I'll mail it to him later. Well, I first found out about that place through a conversation with my neighbor. my neighbor's daughter's ex-boyfriend's sister, got a dog from a guy that worked at the ASPCA and Barnabies as well, but that's a different story. Well, they became friends and he told her all about

the crazy stuff that happened at Barnabees. She told her brother. He told my neighbor's daughter. My neighbor's daughter told her father and her father told me. Did you follow all that? Good. I did some research and found out that, yes, there was a very old grocery store called Barnabies, a few towns over. Newspaper articles revealed that all kinds of horrible events and freak accidents happened at that store, and the store was built on Indian burial grounds. That's what got me interested in investigating that place. Sure, we've investigated cemeteries before, but Indian burial grounds, that's on a whole

different level. I looked the place up on Google Maps, got a phone number, and the directions to the store. I called the phone number and talked to a very nice man named Pat, who graciously agreed to let us come and investigate his store that Saturday night at 9. Pat agreed to meet us Saturday afternoon to do some interviews and to get some pictures to use in the show. I called Rick and Darren and told them that I found an old grocery store to investigate. I didn't mention Indian burial ground thing. They were excited and looking forward to going. Anyway, Saturday came, Darren borrowed his aunt's minivan as he always did, since none of us had a car. He picked up Rick, and we all met back at my house before heading to the store. Now, we were in no way a professional

ghost hunting team. We didn't have any real equipment like the big name teams do. We used our old iPhone fives as cameras using a night vision app and also used it it to capture EVPs. That's it. For those of you that don't know what an EVP is, it stands for electronic voice phenomenon. It's believed to be voices of spirits, speaking to the living unintentionally, meaning a random word or phrase spoken for no apparent reason, or intentionally, such as someone asking a question and the spirit responds with an answer. But be careful. Some spirits are not nice. in the van and made the hour drive to Barnabys. Just as we were pulling into the parking lot out of the corner of my eye, I saw three little Native American boys, about eight or nine years

old standing on the sidewalk outside the store. I turned around and told Rick to get a shot of that. He replied, A shot of what? I turned back around and they were gone. No freaking way. They were right there, I said, pointing to the side of the side. sidewalk. Who? Darren asked. I just shook my head. We parked the van and got out.

If I knew then, what I know now, I would have gotten back in that van and never stepped foot in that store. I walked over to the spot where I saw the kids and found three small eagle feathers on the ground. I was totally freaked out at this point. I just left them there. Rick and Darren went to knock on the door soon after. And an older man emerged from inside the store and introduced himself as Pat.

We all shook hands and introduced ourselves. I told Pat about the three kids that I saw, and he started tapping his toe and clapping his hands and said, One little, two, little, three little Indians. You know, that old children's nursery rhyme. Then he chuckled to himself. Okay, then, I thought to myself, this guy's a few sandwiches short of a picnic. We conducted our interview and he told us about all the crazy things that happened there and gave us some history on the place. He also told us that the store was being remodeled

and to be careful of hanging wires, loose floorboards and things like that, also that the electric had been shut off since it was the weekend and that the construction crews would not be back till Monday. He offered to let us go inside and look around to get familiar with the place, but we wanted to wait until our investigation, the element. of surprise and all. We ended the interview about 5 p.m. and he handed me a key to the store just in case. We still had a couple hours before it was time for us to investigate. We decided to go see a movie. We passed a movie theater on the way to the store and we decided to head there. The new Stephen King movie was out. I am a huge Stephen King fan. I have all his movies, most of his books, and lots of

his short stories on audiobook. Anyway, we met a very nice and very attractive. lady named Catherine at the movie theater. We told her that we were investigating Barnabees that night and asked if she knew anything about the place. She told us that she was the previous owner of the property, but that's a different story, and that now she was the assistant manager, well, as soon as it opens back up again. We offered to have her come and investigate with us, but she declined, saying she didn't want to spend any more time in that place than she had to. Now, I understand why. When the movie was over, it was a great movie, by the way, I'll have to add it to my DVD collection when it comes out.

We then headed back to the store for our investigation. We arrived back at the store just as the thunderstorm was fast approaching. Pat was nowhere to be found. I found that odd. We found a note on the door saying he had to tend to an issue at a property he just sold. The note also said it was okay to start investigating. I pulled the key out of my pocket, took the note down, unlocked the door, turned the night vision apps on, and went to enter the building. Just as I opened the door, a loud lightning crash hit, lighting up the sky and scaring the hell out of the three of us. Heavy rain started falling soon after. We practically pushed each other into the store.

Once inside, that place was creepy as hell. The air was thick and heavy, almost suffocating. The floor cracked every time you stepped on it. Half the walls were put up. The other half was just wooden beams, wires hanging from the ceiling and construction equipment laying everywhere. We walked around together for about an hour, just filming and getting a feel for the place. Nothing really happened. We found out that there were three main parts to the building, the sales floor, the back room, and a little room off the back room. The bathrooms were boarded up, so we couldn't even get in there. So, we decided that since there were three areas and there were three of us, that we would investigate each area by ourselves. We did rock, paper, scissors, to figure out

who went where. Darren got the little room, Rick got the back room, and I got the sales floor. All right, guys, I said, let's do this. We fist-bumped each other and went to our designated areas. I began walking around the sales floor, filming and asking questions. I could hear Rick in the back room doing the same. This went on for about a half hour, when suddenly another lightning strike, just as we heard Darren screaming at the top of his lungs, then the loud thumping of his workboots as he ran through the back room and out to the sales floor. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, he said loudly.

Darren, Darren, stop. I yelled. What happened? Rick came running out shortly after. What the hell, man? Rick said. You almost ran me over. Darren turned to look at Rick. You could tell that he was scared. What happened? I said again. I was in there asking questions and panning the camera around the room when I saw an old Indian guy standing in the corner. I focused the camera on him and asked, Who are you? He raised a tomahawk and charged. at me. I thought he was going to kill me. I dropped my phone and I got the hell out of there.

He then stormed out of the front door. I looked at Rick and he looked at me. Just then, another loud lightning crash. I'll go get the phone, Rick said as he ran off towards the back room. He returned shortly after and handed me the phone. It was still recording. Luckily it wasn't broken. I stopped the recording and we reviewed the video and sure enough, and sure enough, Enough, there was an old Indian in the corner who charged at the camera. The phone then fell to the floor, face down with a camera shooting upward. The same man was seen leaning over the lens, staring into the camera, then just disappeared. Yeah, maybe I should have mentioned this earlier, I said, but this place is built on Indian

burial grounds. What? he asked. Are you crazy? Cemetery's are one thing, but I ain't messing with no Indian spirits. Here's my phone. I'm out. He said. Fine.

I said. I'll do it myself. The slamming of a door was heard soon after. I put both phones in my pocket and began to walk around asking questions. I did this for about 15 minutes when another lightning strike hit and all the security lights came on blinding me through the night vision. There's no electric in this place. I thought, what the hell's going on? The lights began to flash like a strobe light on crack. The

entire building began to shake, causing me to fall back against a large piece of machinery. A low humming sound could be heard that soon turned into what sounded like drumming. I began to hear Indian war cries in my head, not my ears, but my head. I grabbed my head and screamed. I'm not afraid of you. Suddenly, through the walls and the floor came transparent images of about 25 Native Americans on horses screaming and swinging tomahawks at me. Okay. Now I'm afraid.

I thought. They're trying to kill me. I could feel the breeze from the tomahawk swings as they barely missed my head. I screamed like a scared little schoolgirl and started running towards the door. I slipped on one of those loose floorboards and fell face. first to the ground, knocking myself unconscious. I woke up about three hours later, on the sidewalk somehow, drenched from all the rain. It was 3.17 in the morning, the witching hour. The clock at the bank across the street told me that. I slowly get to my feet, looked over to my right, and saw

the same three little Indian boys standing there, just like before. They were completely dry, even in the pouring rain. I screamed again and ran to the side of the building to get in the van, but it was gone. They left me there, and I never saw those guys again. In retrospect, I don't blame them. Another lightning strike scared me half to death so much that I began to run screaming down the middle of the road. Thankfully, there were no cars out that late. I finally stopped running, and screaming and called my neighbor. He was kind of upset, but he agreed to come get me. I waited across the street at the bank until he showed up. That was a fun ride home. Anyway, I mailed the key back to Pat. Now, after that night, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. All I kept thinking about

was those Indians attacking me. I saw them everywhere I went, out of the corner of my eye, at work, at the gym, even in my own house. I called the therapist about it a week later, and I've been seeing her three times a week for the past three years. I don't even look at any of the footage. I just threw all the phones away, and I never ghost hunted again. I just couldn't do it after that. I heard that Darren got a job as a camera operator for the UFC and is making a pretty good living at it. I heard that Rick took up plumbing, continued to ghost hunt. put on another team investigation and got a sweet television deal on a cable network good for him and me well i just moved into my new apartment my neighbor's name is nick but that's a different story

ladies and gentlemen boys and girls children of all ages barnabes is proud to present from us to you the one and only Santa Claus that's right Santa Claus will be here at Barnaby's December 21st through the 24th from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. So stop on by and visit Santa's Little Workshop located in the field behind the store and take home your free. That's right, free picture of your child or yourself with Santa Claus. Bring yourselves, bring your kids, bring your letters, and bring your lists. As always, we thank you for shopping at Barnabees. Have a safe and happy holiday. What's up, y'all?

I'm Darrell. I work frozen food here at Barnabies. I've been here for almost a year now. I got hired on the same day that lady's necklace got caught in the conveyor belt, but that's a different story. I'm also part of Splatt. It's something that Pat came up with. It stands for Sales and Promotions Live Announcement Team.

There are three of us on the team, Mike, the Grocery Manager, Ricky from the Dairy Department and myself. we're all comfortable speaking on the microphone. Here's how it works. Every day that each one is scheduled to work, we have to take turns standing up at the front of the store and making announcements every 15 minutes for any products that are on sale that week or any special promotions that are going on within the store. Now Barnabies is a very old store, and I'm sure you all know that.

We don't have one of those big fancy PA systems like the big name store do. We do have a stand up front by the registers with a megaphone and we make our announcements that way. It scares the little kids sometimes. Anyway, I used to live in New York City. I moved out there about 10 years ago and tried to make it as a rap artist, but no one wants to hear an old school rapper like me nowadays. It's all that gangster crap. Anyway, the other day, I was sitting in my car on break, listening to bring the noise by anthrax and public enemy. I love that song. I like it better than the original. Anyway, Ricky apparently heard me playing that song.

He came over and started stomping in place and head-banging, screaming, knot-knit-night right in front of my car. I just looked at him like he was crazy. What the hell is this fool doing, I thought. I got out of my car, mid-December freezing my butt off and yelled, Ricky. Ricky, stop. What the hell are you doing? Man, I love anthrax, he said.

My band covers some of their songs in our set. Played again, man. Okay, I said, but don't do that anymore. It's scary. Get in the car, it's cold out here. He got in, and we started talking. As the song played and come to find out, he plays guitar in a heavy metal cover band, but that's a different story. Anyway, I told him that I was a rapper, and he suggested that I meet the band and said that we should do our own rap metal song and make it about Barnabees. I'm down with that. I said, I just started writing my rap part of the song. You want to hear it? Okay, it goes a little something like this. B to the A, R-N-A to the B to the Y.

My friend, we're at Barnaby's grocery store. You'll pay less and get a whole lot more. You never know what's going to happen. That's what makes it so exciting, you know, what we say about us being haunted, cursed, and all that stuff. Well, it's true, but what are you going to do we're the only store in town and you got to have food. That's all I got so far. It's kind of whack, but it's a work in progress. Anyway, enough about me on with the story. Now, Pat is big on Christmas, and when I say big, I mean really, really big. Last year, and every year before so I've heard, he would dress up like Santa Claus and hand out candy canes, take pictures with the kids and their parents in his little workshop out back. He also made everyone that worked here

at the time, dress up like elves, complete with the hat, red and white striped leggings, the vest and little bell booties. Well, except for Catherine, the assistant manager, she dressed up like Mrs. Claus. Yeah, those two are like pencil and paper, if you know what I mean. They try to keep it on the downed lobe, but it's obvious to everybody. Now, not everyone looks good in an elf I, for one, look like Homie the elf, and homie don't play that. But a job's job and Pat pays me bank, so I did what I had to do. On the other hand, some people look really, really good in an elf suit, like Lily, the Native American woman that runs that memorial place out back, but that's a different story.

Yeah, I'd like to find her under my Christmas tree. Anyway, Pat had to have been collecting Christmas decorations since the 1940s or something. It was off the hook how much stuff he had. Plastic Santa Claus's, giant nutcrackers, blow up reindeer's on the roof, icicle lights, candy cane fences, snowmen that dance, and about 25 Christmas trees, all with different colored lights and ornaments, among many other things. If you named it, he's probably had it. There was stuff everywhere, outside and inside the store.

There were Reese hanging from the ceiling, garland draped all over the registers, and Christmas bows on all the shopping carts. It was crazy. One of the former employees named Jimmy, who works at the ASPCA, but that's a different story. Anyway, he knew a guy that knew a guy that ran a reindeer farm. He brought down eight tiny reindeer and a little guy with a plastic red nose for the kids to pet and take pictures with. They were set up in a fenced-end area next to the workshop, and they slept there all night. Jimmy slept with him. Now I'm an animal lover myself, but that guy is on a whole different level. There was even a huge life-size nativity scene on the other side of the workshop. After all, that is the real reason for the season. Anyway, Pat would start the day

after Thanksgiving and spend the next month sending it all up. He kept it all in four huge storage units down the street. That's how much stuff he had. He asked for volunteers, but most but most people volunteered before he even asked. Some people from town volunteered as well. I helped decorate the inside of the store. Those reindeer really cripped me out. They kept looking at me funny, like I was there dinner or something. Oh no, no, homie's got to go, I said to myself. I did find out later that reindeer's love fruitcake, but that's a different story. Pat and the crew spent every day and night putting it all together in time for the big reveal. You could see the statues and decorations in the daytime, but wouldn't see the inflatables or the lights until

then. He even had several of those artificial snow-making machines for the first time last year. He said he found them on the curb in somebody's trash. He fixed them up and put them on top of the roof pointing different directions so it would snow when the lights came on. There were wires and extension cords running everywhere, all connected to this huge industrial-sized surge protector, with a long red and green, striped hand. with a plastic snowball on top, which was plugged into an outside electric socket. Now, the rest of the Splat team and I spent the entire month of December making announcements that the official lighting of Barnabees would be December 23rd at 8 p.m. Everyone was truly excited.

Revealed they came. Many customers, people from town as well as the neighboring town, showed up for the event. It was mandatory for all the Barnaby's employees to be out in our elf soon. suits, so I was, along with everyone else. There were husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, girlfriends and girlfriends and boyfriends. A lot of people even brought their dog, dressed as reindeer's no less. And there were kids everywhere. So many people showed up that Reggie, the town sheriff, had to block off the entire street. There were people standing in the road, on the grass and neighboring buildings on the roof of their

cars and hanging out the windows. It was insane. Candy was selling coffee and hot chocolate in Little Barnaby's coffee cups for $5 a shot, as well as Barnaby's hat, gloves, and scarf sets for $7 a shot. Ricky and his band were playing Christmas songs on the back of a flatbed semi-truck. Lily was handing out plastic candy canes that read Muwi Kowisdemades. That's Cherokee for Merry Christmas, by the way. People were singing along and holding their lighters in the air and having a great time. I haven't seen anything like that since the one time I went to Times Square to watch the ball drop on New Year's Eve. Anyway, 8 o'clock came, Mr. and Mrs. Claus came out of the front door of the store.

Santa quieted everyone down using the megaphone. Quiet, quiet everyone, he said. The band stopped playing and a hush fell over the crowd. Mrs. Claus and I would like to thank each and every one of you for showing up here to He continued. We especially want to thank all the wonderful volunteers who helped make tonight happen. We ho, hope you like it. Are you ready, Mrs. Claus?

He asked. Ready, Santa, she replied. Ten-nine, he started. The crowd joined in, eight-seven. The drummer then joined unbeat. As everyone continued, six, five, four, three, two, one. Mrs. Claus then pulled the handle. Oh, crap, I got to make another announcement.

Give me a minute. Now where's that megaphone? Got it. Attention, Barnaby's shoppers. Let me ask you something. Everyone knows to leave milk and cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, but what about Rudolph and the rest of the gang? I'm sure they'll be hungry too. Now you may ask yourself, hey, self, what do reindeer's eat? Well, here at Barnabees, we have the answer. It's corn. No, not that 90s rock band, corn. They won't taste very good. It's fresh, delicious, wholesome corn on the cob.

That's why, right now in our produce department, you can take home five ears of corn for just one dollar. That's right. Not three, not four, but five ears of corn for just one dollar. Man, you can't even buy a decent cup of coffee for a dollar anymore. So, stop on by and pick yours up the day and make Rudolph and the rest of the gang very happy. or they might just leave some unwanted presents on your front lawn, and you don't want that. I'm going to go get mine right now. I'll see you over there.

As always, we thank you for shopping at Barnabies. Have a safe and happy holiday. Okay, now that that's over with, back to the story. Anyway, Mrs. Claus pulled the handle. Barnaby's lit up so bright that I swear you could see it from space. People began shielding their eyes from the light. it was that bright. Seconds later, they removed their hands from their eyes and started clapping and chanting Barnabees, Barnabees, Barnabees, Barnabees. Merry Christmas, everyone,

Santa said. The crowd began pointing and smiling at all the different decorations as they began filtering out of the property, amazed at the sights as the snow machines created snow that filled the air. They were blinking multicolored lights, bored in the entire building, as well as the doors and windows, even the candy cane fence, the reindeer pen, and the nativity scene. A giant blow-up Santa and reindeer team on the roof, mechanical snowmen, various size decorated Christmas trees, and even a film projector showing the Claymation classics on the west wall of the building, among many other things. Ricky and the band began playing more Christmas songs as Santa and Mrs. Claus began mingling

with the crowd. It was quite a presentation. I was impressed, and I don't impress easily. Everything was going great. Until suddenly, several loud bangs were heard, one right after the other, hushing the crowd and stopping everyone in their tracks. Thick black smoke and sparks began to pour out of snow machines as they began to shake and shoot large chunks of eyes directly into the crowd.

People began running for their lives and screaming. Ricky and the band hopped. in the cab of the truck to take cover. Jimmy let the reindeer out of the pen, and I kid you not, they all began to fly through the air and landed on the roof of the bank across the street. Jimmy ran into the woods behind the store. Candy hid behind the empty propane tank at the back of the building next door. I hid behind Pat's big Barney bus and peeked my head around to see what was going on. Several people got hit in the head and face with the ice chunks, causing them to fall to the ground, dead, as the crowd trampled over their bodies, blood pouring from their skulls.

Several teenagers grabbed the large candy canes and began to play baseball, hitting the ice chunks in all different directions. What the hell's wrong with these people, I thought? The baseball game was short-lived, though, as the speed of the chunks rapidly increased and overtook the players. They quickly ran for cover. Just then, every single snow machine exploded at the same time, shooting large pieces of burning hot metal and flames into the air. The metal pieces came soaring through the sky, like frisbee's on speed, slicing, cutting, and severing people's arms, legs, and heads. Mangled bodies, severed body parts, and blood was everywhere. One guy got hit

directly between the eyes, cutting halfway through his skull. He looked like something out of a punk rock concert. Blood began pouring out of his skull as he fell face first to the ground, knocking over a mechanical reindeer and driving the piece of metal completely through his skull. It was so disgusting. The flames caught the blow up Santa on fire, as well as all the other decorations on the roof. I started yelling the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don't need no water, let the, you know the rest, well, maybe you don't. The decorations began falling from the roof, landed on the ones on the ground, catching them on fire as well.

The fire spread quickly until every decoration, ornament, and tree was engulfed in flames, as well as the dead bodies that lay in the ground. Let me tell you, the smell almost made you want to puke, and some people did. The smell of burning plastic and burning flesh is a smell you will never forget. The fire consumed everything. Except for the nativity scene, the fire seemed to go completely around it, like it was protected by an invisible shield or something. And maybe it was.

Someone, somewhere must have called the fire department as they showed up and put the fire out before it could reach the woods out back. It took them about 45 minutes to do so. The police arrived to help control the crowd, take statements, and send everyone home. The ambulances arrived and tended to the injured, and the coroner came to remove the dead bodies and body parts. 27 people died that night. Thankfully, all the employees, Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and all the reindeer were accounted for. They had to get a large crane from the construction site down the street, and a large animal harness from a neighbor and farm to

get the reindeer off the roof. Why didn't they just fly down, I thought? Things that make you go, hmm. Ricky and the band landed out of the cab of the truck and stared at all the damage. Ricky screamed out, rock and roll. Everyone just stared at him as he slowly walked away. Candy climbed out from under the propane tank, found Lily, and they just left. Jimmy ran back from the woods and helped remove the reindeer from the roof. I went to the bar in my elf suit and I had a drink. I'm lying. I had a lot of drinks. Anyway, the following morning, Christmas Eve, Pat, Catherine, Candy, Ricky Lily, and myself, as well as many other employees and townspeople, came to the store to assess the damage and clean up the mess. Pat just stood there in shock, mumbling to himself. I kind of felt

bad for him. We all gave him a group hug and that brought him back to senses. Now, to everyone's surprise except Pat's, the store was fully intacted. Everything except the doors and windows. The inside of the store was, for the most part, untouched. Pat then explained that there's a reason he decided to leave the store of an all-brick building with a flame-retardant roof and flame-resistant siding on Lily's Memorial Room. Bricks don't burn. We replaced the windows and the doors in no time. Thanks to Bob from the hardware store down the street. He came in on Christmas Eve to help out with any supplies that were needed. Thanks, Bob. Anyway, we cleaned up the trash and debris around the property, put it all in heavy-duty trash bags and tossed it in the dumpster next door with permission,

of course. Pat then sent everyone home to spend time with their families and reopen the store December 26th at 7 a.m. This year, several employees, including myself, and many of the townspeople, gave some of our Christmas decoration to Pat to help rebuild his collection. It's nowhere near what he used to have, but you've got to start somewhere. So, if you'd like to donate any of your Christmas ornaments and decorations to the store, please send them to Barnaby's 666 Dead Man's Lane, Nowhere, USA. Dang, it's time for another announcement. I gotta go, y'all.

Merry Christmas. I can fix it. I can fix anything. Even if I can't. That's what I tell myself, and everyone else is a matter of fact. Hi, I'm Bill. I'm the maintenance guy here at Barnabees. I used to be a fire marshal, a few towns over, but I resigned shortly after investigating

a fire that happened here years ago, two days before Christmas, but that's, uh, never mind. You get the idea? I became totally obsessed with this place after that. I would purposely drive out of my way, on my way to work, just to drive by here. On my days off, I would park my car in the parking lot of the bank across the street and just stare at this building for hours. I'd even dream about it at night. It was really bizarre. Anyway, when I was growing up, I wanted to be a professional dance skater, you know, like the people you see in old school rap videos from the 70s or on street corners dancing on roller skates. Yeah, I wanted to do that for a living, but sometimes life has other plans.

Now, I just hang out at the local roller rink every weekend, Monday and Tuesday nights as well as Friday nights. The music nowadays kind of sucks, but at least you can dance to it. Kind of. Anyway, let me tell you something. I decided to stop by the store one day for some band-aids, gauze pads, and peroxide. Some say I'm accident-prone. I don't really see it, though. I talked to Pat, the owner, and he said he was looking at.

looking for a maintenance guy. I thought, here's my opportunity. As I am fully trained in plumbing and electrical. Yeah, Ray. I have no idea what I'm doing. I just wing it most days. Don't tell Pat. Pat agreed to hire me on, and I resigned from the fire marshal position the same day. It's a lot less money, but there's something about this place. It's like I belong here. Now, as the maintenance guy, I'm responsible for making sure all the cooler cases, lighting units, roll-up doors, deli-slicers, ovens and friars, among many other things, are all in working condition. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. What about the chicken friar incident?

That was not my fault. If that guy hadn't have accidentally dropped his fountain drink full of ice into the friar when he was turning it off, that would not have happened. Melanie didn't tell you that in her story, did she? What was he doing with a fountain drink by the friar in the first place? We're not allowed to eat or drink in prep areas. Anyway, I'm not supposed to mess with the heating units, the air conditioning systems, or the ventilation systems, because I'm not HVAC certified. But that doesn't stop me.

I like to push a few buttons every now and then, just to see what happens. Now, for those of you that don't know what HVAC stands for, wait a minute, I don't even know what it stands for. Give me a minute. I'm going to look it up on my phone. Okay, I got it. It stands for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Apparently, you have to be trained to work on those things. Yeah. Yeah, right.

I ain't got time for all that. Anyway, let me tell you something. Barnabees is a very old store. We don't have one of those nice, fancy, digital temperature-controlled water heaters like the big name stores do. No? We still have a boiler. That's right.

A boiler. In the basement. Yes. There's a basement. It's not a full-size basement, though. More like a 10 by 20 foot room below the store. The entrance to the basement is between both bathroom doors by the cash office at the front of the store.

Now for those of you that don't know the difference between a water heater and boiler, you're going to have to look it up for yourself. I got a story to tell. Now the basement is off limits to the normal employees, but not me. I've never been normal and I like it that way. But seriously, only Pat, myself and the HVA. sea guys are allowed down there. Now, let me tell you something. The basement is creepy as hell. I love it. It's cold, dark, musty, noisy, and smells like decaying mice and foot sweat.

I told you I wasn't normal. The walls are made of cinder blocks. The floor is made of exposed concrete, and the ceiling is made of metal, with various sized water pipes running along it that leak on occasion. There's the boiler, all the compressors, fuse boxes, and a fold-out cot down there. Why a fold-out cot, you ask? Well, you see, I live in the basement. It's really not that bad, once you got used to the noise and the smell. I have electric and heat. There's a laundry tub with a working water faucet for when I need to wash up and a five-gallon bucket with a lid on it.

For when I have to use the bathroom late at night when the store's closed and the alarms. are on. I've got a microwave, a coffee pot, a CD player, and a portable DVD player. Plus, I live at a grocery store, so I've got all kinds of food whenever I want, as long as I pay for it on payday. Anyway, it was about five years ago, on a Tuesday, the end of August, around 2.30 p.m. I was down in the basement, on break, crocheting a blanket for my mom. Don't you laugh at me. Rosie Greer does needlepoint and he was the fiercest linebacker in the NFL at one point. You wouldn't laugh at him, would you? I was crocheting the blanket and boogeying down to Time Life's greatest disco hits of the 70s.

I love disco music. Casey and the Sunshine Band, the Bee Gees, Donna Summers, the village people, just to name a few. Disco is going to make a comeback one day. Just wait and see. My favorite disco song ever is Disco Duck by Rick Dees. I'm listening to it right now. Go ahead. Look it up.

It's on YouTube. Well, I was down in the basement, getting down, when suddenly I heard several loud bangs that sounded like metal slamming against concrete. I looked behind me, and I saw the boiler dancing across the floor. Holy jumping Jesus on the dance floor, I said. It's going to blow. I throw the blanket and ran up the same. stairs as fast as I could. I burst through the basement door onto the sales floor and I said,

The boiler's going to blow. Everybody, run. People began screaming and running for their lives. Some lumberjack-looking guy came hopping out of the bathroom as he tried to pull his pants up. He had pink, lacy women's underwear on, with little hearts on them. Wow, you don't see that every day. Anyway, I knew the boiler was going to blow at any second and the front door was blocked by people trying to leave, so I ran as fast as I could and did a safe at third slide to register 8, then crawled underneath to try and shield myself from the blast. I could see through a small crack in the metal. I watched as both bathrooms and the cash office exploded as the boiler exploded upwards

from below, knocking out the power and sending the store into complete darkness. The security lights came on seconds later. They run off a generator out back, scalding hot boiling water, bricks, pieces of toilets, sinks, urinals, and large chunks of metal and wood flew through the air, as well as all the money in the cash office. The sound of car alarms and blood-curdling screams were heard soon after. Luckily, Candy, Catherine, and Pat were all on a coffee run at the time, so the office was empty. You see, we didn't have a safe at the time. We kept all the money locked up in a large wooden cabinet. Yeah, we got one now, though. Well, several people were hit by the explosion, sending their severely burned mutilated bodies and body parts

through the air as well, landing on displays, shelving, and the floor. The large pieces of wood and metal slamming down onto their bodies, killing those. They weren't dead already. As the scalding hot boiling water poured down, several others began to reach and dive for the falling money. They began to scream in pain as they fell victim to their greed. The water landed on their faces, hands and clothing. Their skin began to bubble and liquefy as they fell to the floor dead. Their Their clothes melting to their bodies until there was nothing left but a mound of colored goo and blood on the floor. That vision will forever haunt me in my dreams.

I can still hear their screams, even in the daytime. Now, let me tell you something. I've seen a lot of burn victims as a member of the fire department, but I never seen anything like this before. Twenty-three people died that day. Luckily, all the employees were accounted for. As the water shower slowly diminished, I crawled out from under the register, unharmed. I'm not going to lie.

I grabbed a few handfuls of cash as I stood to check for any survivors. I used it to buy a new pair of roller skates and a couple outfits like Tony Minero wore in my all-time favorite movie Saturday Night Fever. You know, John Travolta's character. No? Oh, come on. Work with me here, people. Anyway, as I stood up, I saw about twenty people, including several employees standing

there, staring at the damage. I turned to my left and saw directly out into the street. The whole left corner of the building was gone and there was a huge gaping hole in the floor, sunlight pouring in from outside. Through the opening, I could see damaged cars, dead bodies and body parts laying on the grass, sidewalk and in the road. One guy's body was up in a tree with a toilet seat cover covering his face. That's a real crappy way to go, I thought. Dust and debris were everywhere. People were screaming and crying as the car alarms blared away. I walked out of the front door, which was still intact,

the explosion missing it by mere inches. Some customers walked out with me, others went to tend to the injured in the store. Now, what I saw out in that street looked like a war zone, cars turned over on their sides, windows blown out, large pieces of metal and wood, as well as what used to be toilets, sinks, and urinals embedded in the road, the sidewalk, and the landscape, some with body parts sticking out of them. The entire roof section of the store was hanging off the side of the roof of the bank across the street. More bodies lay scattered all around. Some alive. Some dead. People were actually fighting. Well, more like pushing and shoving each other to get to the remaining money on the ground. It was devastating. Pat, Catherine, and Candy were just

returning from their coffee run. I ran over to Pat. I told him what happened. He just stood there in shock for a while. He finally stabbed out of it, and we all went to help the injured. Pat started grabbing all the money he could off the ground as he made his way there. Someone, somewhere, must have called the police, as they showed up minutes later with the fire department, several ambulances, and the coroner. Reggie blocked off the street. The EMTs tended to the injured, as I and several members of the fire Department went to check the structural stability of the building. Yeah, I know. Normally I wouldn't be allowed to go inside a damaged building since I'm not part of the fire department anymore, but they let me go for old time's sake. Once they decided the building was safe, the coroner then

removed all the bodies and the body parts in the store and on the street, then left. The ambulances loaded up as many of the seriously injured people as they could. then left for the nearest hospital, then came back for the less injured. After we exchanged a few high-fives and had some small talk, the fire department left as well. Reggie and his deputies took our statements, and they left too. Pat and the rest of the employees, including myself, spent the next seven hours cleaning up what was left of the store as best we could. Pat said Catherine to get several huge tarps and rope from one of his storage units, units down the street to cover the hole in the building.

Now, let me tell you something. It took four days for the town's cleanup crew to clean up all the debris, blood and water, and damaged vehicles from the street. It took six months and almost $100,000 to repair the damages to the store, the sidewalks, the road, and the landscape. Thanks to Barnaby's being a historical landmark, Pat didn't have to pay anything. The town took care of it all. But that's a, you know.

Bob from the hardware store came by the next day and built a security wall within the store so no one would fall in the hole and so repair crews could work and the store could be open at the same time. Thanks Bob. We had two porta-potties out back to use restrooms. Produce, deli, and the meat room all washed their trays and pans at the funeral home next door. They were nice enough to let us use their cleaning facilities. Yuck.

Anyway, although Pat did decide to get a huge steel safe, you would think that he would have put it in one of those fancy water heaters as well. But no. I want to keep this place as original as possible, he said. Now, I don't know where he found this thing, but you guessed it. He put in another boiler. So here I sit, down in the basement. with this creepy boiler lurking over my shoulder, listening to disco, crocheting my mom another blanket,

and telling you this story. Hey, what time is it? Oh, Mama Mia in a short bus. I gotta get dressed. Where's my suit? Where's my skates? I gotta go, people. It's disco night at the roller rink. Time to get my boogie on. Later, Tater. We're live in three, two... Hello everyone, we interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you this special news bulletin. This is Stanley Stuckup, coming to you live from the newsroom. Another violent, horrific event has happened at Barnaby's grocery store.

Joining us now is Barbara, our field reporter, to give you an update as to what happened. Hello, Barbara, are you there? Barbara. We can see you, Barbara. Quit fixing your hair and pick up the microphone. Oh, are we live? Yes, Barbara, we're live. We have been for the last 15 seconds.

Don't get snippy with me, Stanley, just cause the baby's yours. Uh. Anyway, hi, this is Barbara Bubblehead, reporting live from Barnaby's grocery store. Excuse me, can I get an interview? Am I on TV? Yes, we're live. Hi, Mom. Can you tell us your name?

I'm Sam, short for Samantha. I'm the scan analyst here. at Barnabies. So you work here? No, I just put on this ugly uniform and hang around the store all day just for fun. Yes, I work here. Oh, did you see what happened? See it? I was part of it. Wow, can you tell us what happened? Oh, I think my water just broke. I gotta go. Take the microphone, look into the camera and tell us everything. Um, okay, here goes. As I said, my name is Sam. I'm the scan analyst here at Barnabees. For those of you that don't know what a scan analyst is, it's just a glorified name for price checker. I'm in charge of making sure that all the pricing

for all the items in the store are correct. I'm in charge of grocery, HBA, frozen food, dairy, front end candy, tobacco, plus all the vendor items. I have to make sure that the little white price stickers that the employees put on the items match the price in my price book that Pat gives me every week and that they both match the little white sticker on the shelf. Now, I just want to say that Barnabees is a very old store. We don't have one of those fancy laser tag printing machines like the big name stores do. No, I have to hand write all the prices on all the tags for all the items. My hands hurt so bad by the end of the day.

Anyway, when I was little, I wanted to be a marine biologist. But as I grew up, I developed ichthyophobia, which is the fear of fish. The way they swim underwater, with no arms or legs, and those beady little eyes. I can't even go into the fish section of a pet store without freaking out. Hell, I had trouble watching Finding Nemo for God's sake. That's a cartoon. But anyway, you don't care about that. Let me tell you what happened.

It was about 5.45 this morning. Pat and I met at the coffee shop across the street, like we always do. We take turns buying coffee for each other. I take mine with cream and sugar. He takes his black. That's disgusting. Well, we got our coffee and made our way to the store around 6 o'clock. Now I know what you're thinking.

Why are they heading to the store at 6 if it doesn't open until 7? Well, the store doesn't open to the public until 7. Pat and I usually go in early to get a head start on things we have to do for the day. He does paperwork and payroll while I start my price checks. Sometimes other employees come in early as well for cleaning or to get a head start during holidays or days we know are going to be busy. Today was a normal day. Well, it was supposed to be. We arrived at the store, got out of our cars, and started walking towards the building. From out of nowhere came this guy, about six feet tall, dressed in all black with a black

ski mask covering his face. I gasped and stood there frozen in fear. He walked up to Pat, who didn't seem phased at all, and asked, What time do you open?" Seven o'clock, Pat said. Then, with lightning speed, the guy pulled a handgun out of the waistband of his pants and put it to the back of Pat's head and said, You're open now. Get inside both of you and lock the door. I was shaking, crying, and scared to death at that point.

Shut up! He screamed at me. We walked in the store with only the security lights to see by. The motion detectors kicked on and turned all the lights on and turned the security lights off, startling all of us. Get on your knees and don't move, he ordered. We did what we were told. Waving the gun back and forth between the both of us, he screamed, where's the money?

The cash office. It's in the cash office, Pat said nonchalantly. Get up, he told Pat. Let's go and don't you move, he said. looking at me. Or I'll put a bullet in his head. I stayed right where I was. They walked back to the cash office, went inside, and came back out a few minutes later. The guy was holding a blue bank deposit bag, which I assume was the money, still holding the gun to Pat's head. Turn around, he told Pat. Pat turned, and as he did, the guy stepped back, raised the gun,

and said, Have a nice day. Then bang, bang, bang, three shots fired directly into Pat's chest. Pat stumbled back, hitting the wall and sliding down into a sitting position, then falling over to his right. Blood pouring out of his chest and all over the floor

as he struggled to breathe. I screamed as he took his last breath. Pat was dead. The guy ran. to go out the front door, but slammed headfirst into it. He ran head first into a locked door. What an idiot. Well, he stumbled back holding his head. Just then, Lily, the Native American woman that runs that place out back, she came in early too, apparently, because she came out of the back room and screamed. The guy turned and fired two more shots in her direction. Luckily, he missed.

Lily began screaming, Halloween, Halloween, which I later found out is Cherokee for help. Anyway, all of a sudden, every single light in the store went out. A sudden gunshot and the clicking of an empty gun was heard soon after. Clicking, I thought, he's out of bullets. I went to get up, but quickly changed my mind. Because just then, the sound of TomTom drums filled the air as an intensity. densely bright white ball of light began to glow above Pat's dead body and illuminated the area where we were as well.

What the hell? I heard the guy say. He throws the gun, screaming like a little girl repeatedly as he fumbled with the lock trying to get it open. A dim yellow light began to rise from the ground behind him. The light quickly spread to cover the entire floor as transparent images of native Americans stomping in places and clapping rose from it. The drums were getting louder as the chanting began. The sound was nearly deafening. Lily screamed that same word over and over again.

The guy's entire body then began to convulse. Several whoishing sounds were heard as arrows from all directions suddenly appeared out of thin air and shot directly into the guy's chest, stomach, arms and legs, one right after the other. A few arrows hid his groin area, as well as his face, through both eye sockets, in his mouth as he screamed, blood oozing from every hole. His bloody arrow-covered body then fell face-first to the ground, driving the arrows completely through his body and out the other side. He looked like a human pin cushion. The Native American images stopped stomping all at once and just stood there. The drumming stopped.

The chanting stopped. And it was dead silent. The bright white ball of light then began to pulsate very fast like a turn signal about to blow. It then shot directly into Pat's blood-soaked body. His body lit up so brightly I had to cover my eyes to shield them from the light. After a few seconds, a loud bang was heard, like the sound of a sonic boom, causing the entire floor to shake, knocking over displays, and the green M&M stand-up cardboard cut out that we had by the front registers. You know, the girl M&M. I love Eminems. The way they melt in your mouth,

not in your hands. It's mind-blowing. Anyway, after the shaking stopped, every light in the store came back on and the images disappeared. I sat there with my eyes. hands covering my face, shaking and crying. Lily came running out from the back room to make sure I was okay. She helped me up, and we made our way to the front door. I put my hand at the right side of my face, blocking my vision, so I wouldn't have to see Pat's dead body. We had no choice but to step in the blood of the guy as we got to the front door, unlocked

it, and prepared to leave. Just as we were about to walk out the door, we heard a love. moaning sound. We looked to our right and saw Pat. He was moving. He was alive. No bullet holes, no blood, no nothing. Like it never happened. He sat up and began to pat his chest, then looked at us in total confusion. We both ran and hugged him and helped him up off the floor. What happened? He said. I'll explain it later. Let's get the hell out. out of here, I said. We unlocked the door, Pat accidentally on purpose, kicked the guy in the head as he grabbed the bloody bank bag, and we all stepped outside. There were customers waiting

for the store to open. I'm sorry, folks, Barnabees is closed today, he said. The crowd dispersed, as Lily called the police from her cell phone. We walked over to the coffee shop across the street, and I bought Pat the biggest cup of coffee they had. After what he'd been through, he deserved it. The cop showed up about 20 minutes later, with a couple ambulances and a coroner. We walked back to the store when they arrived. The EMTs tended to Pat, Lily, and myself, and found nothing physically wrong with any of us. Pat was physically dead less than an hour ago, from three gunshot wounds to the chest,

and now he's perfectly fine. The Native Americans saved his life. The coroner loaded up the guy's body, arrows and all, and they left. The cops took our statements and left, so did the EMTs. Pat called Stephen to come in and clean up the mess. He's waiting inside for him to show up. Lily went to go open her place, and I was walking to my car so I can leave as well when that blonde lady asked to talk to me.

So, that's what happened. Back to you, Stanley. Stanley? Are you there, Stanley? Yes, I'm here. I was on the phone with Barbara. We're having a boy. I gotta get to the hospital. I gotta go. Goodbye, everyone. And we're out.