This Paranormal Life - #173 Holding a Seance Inside a Haunted Toys R Us

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Your local toy shop should be a place of safety and joy for children. Sadly for the residents of Sunnyvale California, this is not the case. This Toys R Us store has been haunted by a spirit with a dark past for over 50 years. Time for Kit and Rory to investigate.Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if planet Earth is just the escape pod from an even bigger planet? Why can't I reheat rice? All these questions you can find the answer to on This Paranormal Life! Yo! Hey! Welcome to another episode of This Paranormal Life, the weekly comedy podcast where every week we investigate a different paranormal tale, case, or claim and try and get to the bottom of whether it's truly paranormal or not.

As always, you are joined by myself, Mr. Kit Grumel-Venna, this guy across from me, Mr. Rory Pars. How are you doing today, Rory? I'm doing just great, Kit. Good to be back. We had a little hiatus where, like Bruno himself, I went to the Dark Land. And I didn't learn a lot. I'll be honest with you. But it is very nice to

be back in the uh the paranormal studios and i'm ready i'm ready to to dive back into the world of spooky creatures and cryptids but that's right we are back and as always we have a brand new investigation to dive right into so thank you right off the top to sam wood for sending this one in to this paranormal life podcast at gmail.com i knew sam would you did you sorry knew i knew i knew he would send it in i thought you meant like you knew him as a person well i also knew him as a person and i knew that he would do it because right before i pulled the trigger i said make sure you send the email he's dead he is dead yeah i knew him and i knew that he would die this was his last words like it actually says in the email here tell my wife and kids that i love them and here's a dope tip for an episode thank you thank you our story

today takes us to sunnyvale california in what might be our first This Paranormal Life investigation in Silicon Valley. Ooh. Which, let's face it, is long overdue. You know those tech nerds behind all that Woody Allen shit are secretly developing alien technologies. Oh, hell yeah. We've talked about haunted film sets before. It's only a matter of time where you track the trail of ectoplasm and find the source. Exactly. You trying to tell me that you're going to sell your company for a billion dollars

and you're not going to try and like reanimate ancient Egyptian mummies or some shit? Of course. You're going to try and put that money to good use. So we're in Sunnyvale, California, although today we're not here to talk about Silicon valley it's 2007 and lucy rogers is up early she's up even before her alarm clock because today is important it's her first day at her new job at the toys r us store on el camino real oh all right so she drives over there and parks outside excited to meet everyone and put in a great first day. And when she goes inside, she meets her new boss. Hi, you must be Mark. I'm Lucy, the new sales assistant.

Ah, yes. You must be the fresh blood. Ah, yeah, nice to meet you too. Is there somewhere I can leave my things? I heard there's a uniform. So young and full of life. This job changes you, know lucy well yeah i mean i'm from from unemployed to employed for sure that's a great start sure but other changes too look around you lucy you see greg over there yeah he used to be full of life and joyful like you. Can I just... Is there like a station?

He's blind in one eye. So do I... Am I like in toys or games? Because it seems like it's broken down into departments. It's all a game, really, Lucy. All of this. Everything you see in front of you. Are you my boss?

Me? Oh, God, no, no, no. I'll go get him now. I'm just here to pick up a super soaker for my my daughter yes of course i'm your boss lucy jesus there's a cloakroom over there leave your things and get to work so a little weirded out but fine lucy learned some of the ropes and got to work she's stocking some dolls in one aisle specifically those weird dolls that can piss do you remember these dolls yeah she's my real baby born good morning baby born let's go on your potty oops she poops there was a weird porn in history where people were borderline obsessed

with creating the most realistic dolls to the point where it was almost it was borderline not fun anymore i had a i had a doll that that pissed and you had to feed it as berries as well like every 30 minutes or it cried where did the berries go that's what i want to know 20 years later i don't know they kind of like they kind of nailed it with Furbies. Right. Because they were like wacky. Yeah, they required some attention, but you could also kind of like chuck them in a closet. Yeah.

Shut that thing up. And it was fine. Yeah. On some level, the Furby knew it was a Furby, whereas these dolls were kind of like in the uncanny valley territory. Yeah. At one point, it was just borderline a secret operation to create artificial babies. I think they shit at one point. I think there was one that had like a diaper.

I remember the pissing baby, but I don't remember the shitting baby. I'm going to Google. That might be too far, but I'm going to Google. Well, yeah. What's the... Gotta be careful. Yeah. Freaking hell. Baby alive. Whoopsie doll do whoopsie doll oh my god feed this amazing lifelike doll that eats and shits see the thing like i remember this this is a mortal this is a

mortal being at what point is it not alive They're just shipping children that need adopted to other children's homes. If it looks, look, this is Roy Bower's golden rule, all right? If it looks like a human and it eats and shits like a human, it's a human, folks. You are now legally responsible to raise that child. I need to know Rory's silver and bronze rules. That's the golden one. The f***ed up thing is i remember being a kid and those dolls ads being on tv and i remember even as a kid being like this is pretty messed up why does

anyone need a doll that that pisses and shits it's really strange isn't it i think there's just an obsession with some people at a young age to just like be a grown-up that's quite grown-up thing to do is have a baby listen i'd love to be out there playing in the yard with my mom and dad but listen i got a young one here and they're pissing and shitting every five minutes it's not normal and you know some of those baby dolls were defective and they whoopsie dude in the store before anyone bought them uh here's a pretty great three-star review uh by k cole for the what did i call this the whoopsie do the baby alive whoopsie do doll k cole 29th of january 2010 can't get her to poop

k cole wrote this is a cute doll and fun my seven-year-old likes her a lot but she doesn't poop it's gross that's a good thing you've got the golden child he says it's gross and i know it's gross but that's why my daughter wanted it she will pee for you all day long but even with the special juice we've never been able to make her poop i really hope that the special juice is something that comes with the doll and it's not something that's not something that they drink is that just coffee it makes coffee the special juice don't feed a baby special juice i mean it's worryingly close to uh special brew which is a beer that pretty much exclusively only homeless people drink. Even with a venti cup of special juice, this baby will not shit.

A Trenti ice special juice. This baby's like a basketball of ice coffee at this point and it can't poop. It's like crying latte. She's sooner going to explode than poop a single nug. Before it learns to poop, it can learn to talk. To say, please, no more special juice. Dolls were weird, man. Dolls were weird.

Which is what Lucy realized as she stocked the shelves of Toys R Us. So the store is pretty quiet at this point, and she's stocking these boxes of dolls when she feels a breeze blow on her back. She turns around to see if someone left a door open that she could shut, but not only was there no door, but there was no window. It was just her and the aisle. Weird. She goes back to being busy until she hears, Lucy!

She turns. And as there's no one on her aisle, her boss must need her at the checkout or something. But when she gets there, it's clear that no one called for her. And in fact, there was no one anywhere near her aisle in the first place. So she walks back to the aisle with the dolls that can piss and she stops dead. Hold up. The dolls she had been stacking on shelves were not back exactly where they had started, in their shipping box on the ground. It was as if she had never started stocking them in the first place. Freaked out, she walked quickly to the nearest bathroom to maybe splash some water on her face and try to wake herself up a bit. Had she really

slept that badly that she was just imagining things? After washing her hands, she dried them, looked at herself in the mirror, and headed for the door. Right as she reached to open the bathroom door, she heard something behind her. It was running water. When she looked around, she saw in the three sinks, every tap was now running wide open. They had turned themselves on. Enough was enough. She had to work out what was happening. So she found her boss on the shop floor. He was showing someone all the different kinds of Tamagotchis. Mr. Lazarus, sir, do you have a moment? Funny, isn't it? The games we play. What? Tamagotchi's only purpose is to eat, poop, and die.

They're just like us, Lucy, the Tamagotchi. Death awaits us all. Sir, some weird stuff has been happening since I got here. Firstly, the taps just turned on all on their own and then- I know Lucy, everyone here knows. Didn't you know? This Toys R Us is haunted! I'm assuming she didn't know. I mean presumably she didn't need the job that badly. She wouldn't have taken the job. I guess as far as haunted and cursed locations to work, you know, Toys R Us. It's up there.

That's pretty, that's on the safe side of things, I would say. What's the bad side of haunted locations? Jesus. Prison? Oil rig? Yeah. I mean, regular prisons are pretty, I guess you just think of a bad place to be anyway and then just add it occurs it's just a multiplier it makes it that much worse exactly like a graveyard keeper in the first place sure throw cursed in there yeah buried alive but also

that's just a thing that happens to you stabbed and haunted is pretty bad as well but i guess you know a haunted toys r us worst case scenario those toys are coming to life i mean yes you're working for minimum wage so as long as the ghosts don't take some of your salary that would really push you into a bad situation i think it's all about positioning if you're in a cursed toys r us head straight to the plushies my friend yeah head straight to the beanbag chairs you don't need to be in the pissing shitting baby alive whoopsie poo dolls don't go to whoopsie poo doll stay away from the rock'em sock'em robots they will knock you the hell out. For the love of God, stay away from the Beyblades because... Jesus.

A couple guys didn't make it back from that shift. What we're dealing with here is a very real, very haunted Toys R Us store in Northern California. Obviously, to protect the anonymity of Lucy Rogers, I made her up. But everything that happened to Lucy, from the moving toys to hearing voices and the running taps, these are all real claims and testimonies from staff members at this Toys R Us store. And a crazy amount of staff members have these stories. Several female employees complained that it sometimes felt like an invisible being was playing with their hair. Oh, that's awful.

Other staff talked about children's books falling off racks, balls bouncing down the aisles out of nowhere, and swing sets swinging on their own. You know what the weird thing is? These are all things that happen in the Toy Story movies. But because we get to see all the toys chatting and having a fun time it's like a really funny thing you know that like the humans come into the room and all the toys are just lying there like they've been at a town hall meeting that's so true but

it's like if you cut those movies to all the bits with a toy just from a human perspective they're horror movies they're horror movies like andy's mom puts the bag of toys in the garage and then suddenly the toys are back in the room woodies in your backpack like if you're walking just wide open staring eyes why do you always do those creepy eyes that moment where you felt like someone was tugging on your hair that was buzz lightyear swinging across the aisles that's a very playful scene in in toy story that's great spanish buzz lightyear hilarious in real life you're gonna scar these people for life that's a fantastic point i didn't i didn't think of this from a toy story perspective which is really where we should be coming from in future that was always a funny kind of thing that i thought about in those movies

was like they made a huge part in the first toy story to kind of like highlight how creepy the toys were that sid made oh yeah sid like where he was making like you know it was like a baby's head with spider legs like mishmash frankenstein toys and woody and buzz and everyone were like oh my god you y'all are freaks yeah when in reality if andy had come in and seen woody with his lasso on the bed he would have kicked the shit out of that that little cowboy you know they're not any better than the weird toys any living toy is going to die it's a mistake that's right it's an absolute is a curse yeah exactly yeah you know like the the toys have age ranges on them you know they they'll have bought woody because he said ages two to eight if they had

known it was an animate living breathing talking man trapped in a toy that thing would not be suitable for two-year-olds no way so yeah a bunch of weird things going on in the store one real member of staff called o'brien had been working there for 18 years when she was interviewed in 2007 she said many people have experiences not just one or two of us. He's like Casper. Nothing he ever does hurt anybody. The folks at Toys R Us have tried to explain it logically, but they can't. O'Brien even claims to have seen the ghost once, when a young man in his 20s or 30s, wearing underwear, a long-sleeved shirt and a tweed cap walked past her and she heard the sound of galloping horses.

Another employee called Lisa said, It's a good ghost. It's fun here. Positive spin, Lisa. I like it. And the paranormal phenomena is extremely varied, from taps to moving toys to apparently some workmen were waxing the store's floor when every aisle they went to a teddy bear kept following them and just like was lying at the end of the aisle apparently aisle 15c is notorious right between the mickey mouse toys and the batman toothbrushes it permanently smells

of garden flowers oh that's that's pretty good. Right off the bat, Roy, hearing some of this varied phenomena, like I said, what are your instincts as an investigator? I mean, varied is the word I want to highlight in that sentence, because, you know, we had this teed up as a haunted Toys R Us. But at one point in those personnel interviews, they referred to he the ghost yeah uh as if the phenomenon that was taking place there was a very singular thing it's a male figure um so it's interesting to see so many things going wrong but also the understanding that it could just be one entity causing all this trouble which does make sense yeah you know because all the other things you know toys being unpacked uh the taps being turned on if we're talking about a ghost or a spirit here that could be uh him just going around messing with people uh trying to freak them out a

little bit we haven't seen like you know god forbid a drone flying itself through the store or like i don't know a stretch armstrong strangling an employee from the shelves that would be you know then we're really dealing with something else really dealing with a yeah and an r-rated toy story movie for sure out of control you need to start looking up uh the history of the ground you built this toys r us on because there's something bigger at play so one of the craziest features of this paranormal case is that it goes way back, a full 50 years all the way to the store's initial opening in the 1970s. There are stories of contractors brought in to do work on the property who ran away refusing

to finish the job because of something they saw move inside. Needless to say, after so many years of continuous haunting, it didn't take long for paranormal investigators to get involved. In the late 70s, a TV investigation brought psychic medium Sylvia Brown to El Camino Real to see the toy store and try and make contact with the dead. And make contact she did. Sylvia was able to communicate and see the ghost where she got his name. Jan Jonny Jonsson. A Swedish preacher. I'm sorry, is something funny, Rory?

Jan Jonny Jonsson? Jan Jonny Jonsson. Is something funny? Yeah. This immediately... Well, it's thrown a loop in in everything this brought up more questions than it answered clearly but uh when you shut the spell book and leave you're not gonna end up finding anything just move the toys are us it's not suitable for children obviously yan yoni yon said isn't going anywhere. It's been 50 years. You'd almost rather it be the

spirit of Geoffrey the Giraffe than someone called Jan Joni Jonsson. However, Sylvia was able to get a surprising amount of information from this visit. She learned that Jan had come to California from Sweden in the 1800s and on arrival here would

work for room and board in the local farm owned by a family called the Murphys. Sylvia worked out that Jan fell in love with the Murphys' beautiful daughter Elizabeth, but that love was unrequited, and she instead married a lawyer, and he never saw her again, leaving him brokenhearted. I'm really hoping that toys are going to work their way into this story. Then one day as Jan was chopping wood his axe slipped and gouged his leg causing him to bleed out right there on the farm.

Oh shit. The land which he has been roaming ever since. The land which Sylvia believed has become Silicon Valley's premium location to buy toys. Wow okay. No toy relation at all that's a shame but that makes more sense probably does that story make sense to you in any way i think so you know what there were two ways that that was going to play out and one was going to be that she married a lawyer and stole all of his toys so now he roams the store looking for deals on the hottest toys.

That's probably the bad way it could have gone. Sure. It makes a lot more sense and shows a lot more parallels to previous investigations that we've done. For it to be that this was the plot of land where Bethel this misfortune. Because that's what we see in pretty much all of our haunting cases stone memory as we like to call it where the memories and tragedies of the deceased bleed into the environment i think we call it rock theory or stone theory either one is a great name for a heavy metal band it's so true so that's this is good this is you know we're right on the the track of investigating

where we're finding out a reason for it now we're at the point where we need to get some evidence for it it's a miracle that we're not at the double no territory just yet already the up thing was a lot of this story is real the store really is built on what was old farmland, land that a Murphy family lived on. They were a famous Irish immigrant family, very beloved, influential, and wealthy. Their daughter was called Elizabeth and she did marry. Fun fact for anyone who lives in the Los Altos area, but Elizabeth Avenue is actually named after this Elizabeth. However, this is where the picture becomes hazy. Maybe because he was a traveler, there aren't any records of Jan living or working there, and certainly not dying there. However, there are

records of several Swedish farmhands at the time, so it's not impossible. I realize this is a lot to take in. So thankfully, Rory, we have a recording of that TV investigation segment so we can see exactly what they did to make contact with Jan. It's always nice to hear that, yes, some tragedy did take place on the location at which the ghost has been seen. But I'm just going to say it right now, guys. on the location at which the ghost has been seen but i'm just gonna say it right now guys do you know how old the earth is it's pretty old pretty damn old something bad has happened everywhere square in every corner of every room there was probably a victorian peasant beheaded in my bathtub bad things that's a have happened in my apartment. Just in the time that I've lived here.

Which is like three months. We haunt our own apartments every day. With our ghoulish Northern Irish faces. I think it's quite funny. That yes. We do have some history. Relating to the location. Of which this Toys R Us is located. But yeah. We definitely, we definitely need stronger evidence

of the fact that a tragedy took place. We need to dig up the Toys R Us floorboards and find the bones of an ancient pharaoh. We need the physical juice. So I'm glad that we're getting a bit of a look at the video investigation let's see what you make of this weeks ago we did a ghost story that really got to us so we decided to look into it further this seemingly normal toy store is a popular place

for local kids there are those who claim that it's a favorite haunt of a very playful ghost it's at night after closing time when the toy store becomes most haunted could a ghost be lurking here in this irresistible playground a psychic named Sylvia Brown believes she made contact pretty creepy shots yeah walk down the hall towards me, he kept saying, have mercy on me, Beth. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. There were a lot of professional camera people here, and they actually caught the person on film. And this was in the presence of, oh, maybe 15, 16 people that knew that there was no one walking down that aisle at that particular time, so it was validated not only by the camera people, but by the people that were there.

Could this be the ghost that's believed to haunt the toy store? The idea of uncovering a real ghost is fascinating. Toy store employees were curious, so they did some research. The toy store is located on the exact spot where this house once stood it was built in the late 1800s by a prosperous settler named martin murphy it was easy to guess that murphy might be the ghost but sylvia brown had a psychic sense of another name i kept picking up this uh yanni johnson or johnny johnston further research revealed that a local circuit preacher sometimes lived on the Murphy farm. His name was John Johnson, and he had fallen in love with Martin Murphy's daughter, Elizabeth.

Johnson often worked on the farm to pay for his room and board. Unfortunately, Elizabeth paid little attention to him. One day while chopping wood, Johnson badly slashed his leg. We simulated the moment when unable to move or get help, he bled to death. Bleeding to death is, I've talked to doctors that I do work with, and that's really not that painful. It's sort of a slow tiredness so he probably doesn't even realize he is dead we have several letters on file from medical doctors and professors attesting to sylvia brown's psychic ability both sylvia and the toy store employees why are these

guys like hugging this is so weird we had to investigate further we hired a professional photographer who knew nothing about our story then Then we held our own incredible seance. On the night of August 5th, the seance took place. The seance members gathered in an aisle. Bill Tidwell of Alpha Photo in Oakland was in charge of photography. Both of these cameras are 35mm single-end reflex cameras. One of them is set up with black and white infrared film. The other one is set up with a very high up with black and white infrared film the other one's set up with a very

high speed uh black and white film that takes pictures almost in complete darkness now sylvia makes contact with the ghost okay all right i i i really feel him now i think he's in the back yeah he's beginning to walk yeah now he's coming very very. Yeah, he's beginning to walk. Yeah, now he's coming very, very quickly. Just moving along to the right, turning his head now towards me. Johnny, come, or Yanni, come towards me this way a little bit. He's got his hands in his pockets. He's looking down at his feet. Yeah, if you want to.

He says if he kneels down, it would be easier for me to see him. Yes, why don't you? Do you see Beth amongst any of the people? Not now? You thought she came in okay no I don't know of any Beth in the group you're thinking of Beth Murphy the girl you loved

John you can find Beth if you just go on to the other side. I, you really are caught in a time framework. It's kind of a hard thing to explain to a ghost. You are dead, sir. It was nice of you to come to see us. I will come back again.

Take care of yourself. May you find peace, Johnny. Yeah, he's gone around the corner. That's very sad. These photographs were taken during the time that Sylvia Brown is talking to the ghost of John Johnson. The photograph in this proof sheet was taken with infrared film.

At the same time, the photograph on this proof sheet was taken with high-speed film. The incredible thing is that the enlarged infrared photograph shows a shadowy figure standing at the back of the picture that does not show up in the photographs taken with high-speed film my assistant and i do not remember anyone standing in this position while sylvia was talking to the ghost of john johnson and we cannot explain why a figure that appears

in an infrared photograph does not appear in a photograph taken at virtually the same instant with high-speed film these are the photographs taken that night. Fair play. Now remember, Sylvia had no way of knowing what pictures the camera was taking. These two pictures were taken less than a second apart. In the first one, the aisle is empty. Then suddenly a figure appears in the second. Now you heard the photographer say he couldn't explain the pictures,

but this ghost story is one to think about. So, Rory, what do you think of that photographic evidence? What year did you say this broadcast was from? This was the late 70s, I want to say. I'd say like 78, 79, something like that. I can't believe that a seance and an investigation that old is maybe the best i've ever seen before that might genuinely be the best evidence towards a ghost or a spirit that i've ever seen before i don't know if it was like the old school pacing of the presenting yeah and how it's written like

they're not trying to like sex it up at all. They're just like, this is what we did. This is what happened. This is what it looks like. This is what we saw. There was many people present, none of them paid by the studio, just people who wanted to be there and see it. That's wild. I've never seen so much convincing evidence from a ghost case before. And to describe for the people listening,

I realize it's probably frustrating to hear us seeing these images. But basically, as they said, using two different types of film, they took two photos less than one second apart. It shows basically people sitting on either side of a hallway and nothing in the hallway.

Less than a second later, there is the figure of very clearly a tall man in the hallway less than a second later there is the figure of very clearly a tall man in the hallway yeah have i been gone too long like that's good evidence right or am i just i just forgot maybe i just got so numbed by paranormal cases of like week by week by week could have been photoshopped yeah blah blah he's obviously lying he's obviously lying as soon as i detox for two weeks and come back i'm like it's all real double yes from me this is crazy i thought one of the cool things about that piece of evidence was that as the host explained sylvia did not know what the cameras would pick up she was in a dark

room and she said he's walking towards us then she said yeah if it would be easier for you to kneel so we could see you yeah that would be fine and then she said he eventually walked away down the corridor or whatever so you know he didn't appear as a spider and descended from the roof or something like pretty much what she explained actually turned up on film. Yeah. And as you said, it was all kind of broken down into departments. So it's like the guy who was in charge of photography. I mean, you heard his voice. He could not give a shit about what he was there to do. He just very like blandly was like, this is a high speed camera this is uh i guess what like whatever infrared or whatever he said and uh i'm just gonna take some pictures over here i mean

you guys wasn't like a paranormal investigator or something oh yeah like you guys couldn't see him but he was a normal guy very normal if if he had opened his mouth and he started quacking like this we would have been in trouble but he didn Yeah, I don't know what it was. Like, fair play to them. That was very convincing. Apparently also, 10 of the 16 people present that night for the seance reported a high-pitched buzzing noise while Sylvia was communicating with the ghost. And one other slightly interesting piece of information is that Elizabeth Murphy's family in this story, in reality, did endure quite a lot of tragedy after all this supposedly happened. Her whole family died pretty young, and there was a number of gas explosions in a well on their farm that killed a couple people. So I'm not saying that Jan Jon Jansson did it or anything, but, you know, some weird stuff happened over the years.

How many gas explosions were there? Two, I think. Okay, right. Like for it to be required to be mentioned in this story, that's a lot of gas explosions. I think the story was one person died down the well in a gas explosion. And then another person went looking for them and needed to obviously see where they were going. So lit a match in the well. And the rest is history.

Getting some real money pit vibes from this well where a series of people all died trying to rescue people from the pit. That was a great episode. Make sure to check that one out. Can't promise that it's a yes but uh you know of course when researching the paranormal there are always two possible stories here right two paths in the woods one leads to a dark twisted up cave and the other leads to let's face it back to the boring car park where you came from what i'm trying to say is there's always a mundane explanation for anything that happens and the other leads to, let's face it, back to the boring car park where you came from. What I'm trying to say is there's always a mundane explanation for anything that happens. In this case, some believe that there is no ghost,

that there is absolutely no basis for people's stories. Instead, that it's just a legend that freaks people out, creating some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, so when they visit the store, they see something, and then they say, that's the ghost I've always heard about. Right, right. At one point, the store's director, Stephanie Lewis, said to the press, it's very good publicity for us, but I personally don't believe in it.

Is it possible that the whole story is just a way of getting people to visit the store and sell more toys? Quite possibly, yeah. Because I guess like, I mean, their target audience is children. Is just a way of getting people to visit the store and sell more toys quite possibly Yeah, because I guess like I mean their target audience is children This does seem like the kind of thing that children aren't quite smart enough to know the dangers of the paranormal sure That's why in all those fables. They're always doing dumb shit like making fun of witches going into the cursed woods But going into the current whatever their parents say don't do they're basically doing it so if you hear that there's like a haunted toys r us day one that's where you're gonna buy your pokemon cards exactly because you want those sweet ghastlies and haunters yeah that is fair in my mind kids are a little too young to understand the appeal of this

right but i guess those years of like 10 through 15, like, I guess you still want like kind of toys, whether it's Pokemon cards right down to like, you know, action, man, you want that stuff and you are kind of into this kind of thing, I guess. Yeah.

I was trying to think when I stopped being into toys. Yeah. I guess I was probably quite late, probably later than people. Thing is my job pretty much now is to play with toys sure i used to um when i was growing up i used to every christmas my grandparents uh would give me and my brother and my sister christmas money sure and it was kind of like it was the big treat you know because we weren't like a particularly wealthy family. So every Christmas you got like a bit of Christmas money from your grandparents.

And every year we would do a big family trip to Toys R Us. Wow. And, you know, we were in Northern Ireland. So I think like going to Toys R Us was maybe like a three hour drive. There was maybe one. I was going to say, I've never gone to this store. There was like one or two in Northern Ireland. It was super far away.

But you made like a whole day of it. I think we had a Baby's R Us, but no Toys R Us. Yeah, weirdly. And I remember towards the end of my love affair with Toys R Us, I weirdly got super into spy toys. Of course. Which was like a whole thing. Oh, like night vision goggles yeah stuff that shit has no place in a toy store really no i don't know if it was like spy kids the movie that kind of kicked all that off true but for a while like every i guess for like toys marketed to boys

it was all spy toys like in your happy meal you would get like yeah like night vision goggles which were just binoculars with a flashlight on top you get a balaclava like gloves to cover up your fingerprints i remember a lot of shit you shouldn't have in northern ireland by the way it's not a good idea i remember that era so vividly it was like i remember yeah like playing tom clancy's splinter cell on xbox and simultaneously like yeah my little brother getting like shit loads of spy toys what a bizarre time i remember at one point it peaked when my entire bedroom had a laser defense motion system where if anyone entered the front door, alarms would go off.

It did. It had like a motion. I guess it was like a motion pack that you would put on the door handle. So if someone moved it like the faintest bit. The only person it would ever be is your mom. And you're like, you're allowed, mom, because you clean my room. Yeah, everyone was allowed in my room. there was no one that shouldn't have been there so i said a perfectly good actual burglar alarm system like your room wasn't doing much for the

overall security of the house in hindsight i can't believe my parents weren't more worried about me opening my bedroom door alarms going off and i'm behind my bed in a night vision goggle headset your parents are just like do you think he's smoking weed is like he isn't cool enough for that shit oh god i wish he was yeah they're like in bed at night being like do you think he's smoking weed i don't know rory are you smoking weed you just hear the sam fisher night vision goggles in the corner. No, I'm doing good. All right, sure. I'm not here. I told you.

The problem with this idea of using the ghost story as publicity to sell more toys is that if that was the idea, the store went out of business two years ago. Oh, no. Wait, two years ago was in 2018? 2018. It had a good run. It did have a good run. I was very curious to see if whatever business replaced the Toys R Us store also became haunted. So instead of flying to Northern California, I did the next best thing.

I dropped the little yellow Google Maps Street View guy in there. I walked around the building. I zoomed in on my web browser to see if I could see any ghosts in the windows. Right. Of the Toys R Us. It's still a Toys R Us. So nothing's been built on it. It's just like now an empty Toys R Us.

There is still no business there to my knowledge. There is just on Google Street View, just a faded Toys R Us sign. That is so much more creepy. Now I really want to go. And sadly, I could not see any paranormal activity on street view damn so rory i feel like after all this investigation we're left with a mixed bag but at the end of the day we do have to decide if this is truly paranormal or not so what are you saying i loved this case i again i don't know whether it's because we've been gone for so long or whether or not that genuinely was very convincing

paranormal evidence i don't think i've ever been on the fence so much with a case about ghosts usually the ghost case are the ones that i can pretty i mean i've tuned out within the first five minutes i'm borderline asleep uh right after we do the intros that's great to know yeah it's more i mean most of your episodes i'm just you know i'm on a beach in the bahamas pretty much from the get-go mentally just on autopilot completely zoned out because you do some pretty good like monologues like bits some pretty you know really because that's news to you yeah i'm gone until i hear i mean my stories are 50 of this paranormal life so it's quite a lot of time for you to not be mentally present i've actually uh been training

with a hypnotist for the last couple of years really so that uh whenever i hear the word shout outs i kind of snap back to reality and i'm back in the room that's the bit that you think you need to be mentally present for well just you know take taking her home land in the craft you know it's like flying a plane these days because i would take off and you gotta land because everywhere between just peanuts and tiny wines my friend because i would say that that is absolutely the least important bit of the entire episode so your priorities are completely backwards there well luckily i've snapped out of the uh the trance and i'm here for the conclusion you must have like you must have said something that sounded like shout outs because i pretty

abruptly almost inception style came to from the dream like i was being dunked in a cold water bath so i'm back in the room right now ready to to conclude. The weird thing is, is this is a paranormal case where I love the evidence, but the actual backstory of the suffering and how the ghost got there and why he would still be here is quite two dimensional. You know, a lot of the times we have these much more elaborate, much more incredible stories that maybe span years or generations where the ghost appears in many forms uh but then there's almost zero evidence it's hearsay it's all the other points of the golden pyramids of truth but in this case we have kind of a not a boring

story but it's kind of like you know it's nothing really extraordinary. But then we have this incredible physical evidence, which is totally flipping the script. So, man, I'm confused. I don't know where to land. It definitely calls into question what makes a ghost story believable, because there are some holes in what Sylvia has been saying. I mean, as the investigator said, they actually can't find any any written evidence of the existence of jan joni johnson no f**king shit there's no evidence but in some ways it doesn't matter really who the spirit of the dead man is he might be from the other side of the world the point is that they got some, some evidence of photographing a ghost.

Yeah. Does it matter which farmhand it was from the 1800s? Not really. I mean, that's it. If a guy died because he stubbed his toe in the 1800s, it doesn't matter as long as you have a picture of him checking out Furbies in aisle seven from the afterlife. That's a good paranormal story. seven from the from the afterlife and that's a good paranormal story and in some ways this story is maybe that like much more believable because this is such an incongruous location for a ghost a toys r us between and i quote the mickey mouse plushies and the batman toothbrushes i feel like i'm losing my mind but i'm edging towards being convinced on this case that there's something

paranormal going on here i say f**k it we don't give ghost stories enough of a chance we've i think it's fair to say we've had a negativity bias towards the ghost story on this paranormal life very whenever we are faced with believable evidence and what can i ask for more here i want more believable evidence that's not fair to these investigators uh it's not fair to the people who have looked into this and written about it and told these stories for for decades so i am going online today to say that this is a yes i believe there's something paranormal going on at the toys r us Us in El Camino Real in Sunnyvale, California. F*** it. Double yes. Let's do this.

As you said, you know, we can't conclude every ghost story we investigate by saying we need physical evidence. And then the one time we get physical evidence, we shit on it. Like the story would just be, we don't like ghosts. We don't believe them. Exactly. It's not the point. I mean, for all intents and purposes purposes we have a picture of a ghost here i mean that's pretty

much as physical as the evidence gets unless he wants to show up and slap me which i mean he's yanking women's hair so he's crossed that line before so what we need is for this toys r us in sunnyvale to turn into some kind of other store doesn't really matter it could be a starbucks it could be wendy's it could be a sex shop it doesn't matter we will go we will try and encounter this ghost firsthand look i'm not i don't i haven't done a lot of research on the land but if that plot is up for sale i mean things have been been getting kind of hot recently with our current uh tenancy for this paranormal life commune we've been looking for a new location haunted toys are us are you kidding me that's the dream right there enough toys to last all winter enough ghosts what are we burning the toys?

Why would you need more toys in winter? It's the most boring month. It keeps everyone entertained. I guess it is a month in California. It'll make good presents for Christmas as well. We won't have to worry about that. So true. It just sounds so weird.

Enough toys to last all winter i'm just saying we should look into whether or not this land is up for grabs or down for keeps because if it's up for grabs these hands are gonna get gonna get two fistfuls of furby up in here i want that land so hopefully we can acquire this plot uh guys and hopefully you will be able to join us there. Let us know what you thought of this story at thisparanormallifepodcast at gmail.com. Thanks for sending in your suggestions. That's where we get all our ideas from at the moment. So please keep sending them in.

As always, you can follow us on socials as well. Twitter.com forward slash thisparalife. Facebook.com forward slash thisparan facebook.com forward slash this paranormal life remember to check out the secret society on facebook too um it's a great place to hang out and meet other like-minded members of this paranormal life commune and aside from the usual places twitter facebook uh you can also find us on reddit if you are uh inclined to surf reddit please check out our subreddit um i believe that is just reddit.com forward slash r forward slash this paranormal life oh yeah lots of cool cats and cool kittens

hanging out over there talking about the paranormal i love it i feel bad i don't i don't they're like my uh my secret family that i don't visit enough and like i'll like tune in sometimes and like see how everyone's doing and they don't recognize old papa And like, I'll like tune in sometimes and like, see how everyone's doing. And they don't recognize old Papa anymore. Cause I've been, I've been too busy looking at the YouTube or the Twitter, whatever it is. So second secret family,

I see you and I love you. Yeah. You know, you that's, it's the family you sure you spend some time with, but you don't take any photos with them. I can't take, I can't take any photos with you.

I'm sorry. I'd love to, you know, junior don't point that camera away point the camera away junior and we don't think we've mentioned it on the podcast so far but this paranormal life is also available on youtube we are now uploading the podcast not only to soundcloud and to itunes spotify and so on but also to youtube so if that's somewhere you hang out, let's face it, I know a lot of you guys, you're listening to this at work. This is maybe a handy place to catch This Paranormal Life during the week. Head on over there and subscribe to make sure you don't miss a single episode.

But as always, the mothership, the final destination. I've listed so many possible destinations for This Paranormal Life. The mothership, of course, is patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life this is the site that makes it all possible this is the community who is at the front lines machine guns in hand uh facing every paranormal case head on on patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life for five bucks a month you can get access to bonus episodes, which cover the Too Hot for TV cases that we don't do in the normal feed. For 20 bucks, you can get a This Paranormal Life commune uniform t-shirt.

And you know, in the end, Kit and I, yeah, we're podcast hosts, but we're also basically just whoopsie poo baby dolls. You put the money in our mouths and we shit out a podcast. That's all it is at the end of the day. And the $20, that's the special juice. That's the special juice. And yeah, for the last week, nay month, we haven't been able to poop. No.

But we're back in the game. We're very excited to be drinking that special juice which i'm assuming is lombardi and we have a ton of great episodes being pulled out of our ass there's probably a more gracious way to to word that it sounds a little clumsy i don't think there is and at the end of every episode we like to take the time to shout out those who supported us on patreon let's go thank you to lauren kelleher no one tell her but lauren kelleher is a stand-up gal oh very nice like stand-up comedy or just like a nice person you don't know is she nice or does she do performing comedy on stage well sure a bit of both okay i guess but um yeah lauren is a fantastic stand-up comic but it it is just technically stand-up comedy she refuses to stand while she does it um she does the entire thing on the floor but um you know

the lack of the lack of body language think, actually makes it even more special. Highlights the jokes. I like it. Thank you to Andrew DeForge. May DeForge be with you, Andrew, now and always. Thank you to Natasha Goldenberg. You've heard of an iceberg? Meet a Goldenberg. Wow.

Just a nugget of gold the size of a mountain? You know, an iceberg, something like a Titanic, a goldenberg could honestly sink the earth. It might just plummet into the vacuum of space and time. It's pretty dangerous stuff. Thank you to Harry Dawson. You've heard of Dawson's Creek? Mm-hmm. This is Dawson's beak.

Because Harry's a bird. A bird? How does he listen to the show don't birds have ears do they well they must right i guess they get scared when i yell but not harry he enjoys when we yell on this paranormal life um thanks for tuning in harry where the f is a bird's ear thank you to ian hall more like ian cuckoo another bird listener and that's right i just got one question for you my friend where are your ears i don't have honestly no idea don't understand how you guys are enjoying the cast this much do you just put an airpod in your beak it just vibrates through their skull hard to know know. Thank you also to Antonis Theodoru.

Antonis, they adore you. The people, that is. And that is because you're a kind leader. You are. I mean, granted, he's thrown many, many of his people into the lion pits. The lion's gotta eat, man. It's true, so he's kind to the lions this is what we're saying you know they adore the lions adore you for this thank you also to andrew lubson andrew

lubson do you want to go to the pub son first round's on me the other's on you brother because i am fresh out of the balloons of the the runs are on you yeah, I just need to get you tipsy enough with round one. Can I get an advance on the first round? We pay for round one with his Patreon contribution. There we go. That covered one pint we'll share. Thank you to Frida Elise Galpin. You can catch Frida Elise Galpin

through the fields on any given day. Not because she's a fantastic horse rider. Sadly, she fell off the horse and got her foot tangled in the horse's straps. And she's actually just being dragged along. And has been for weeks, actually. No one can slow the horse down. Luckily, she's being dragged through, I mean, just really plentiful farms right so she's being very well fed as she tumbles through the field so she's managed to stay alive by just grabbing

passing carrots tomatoes and every couple hours they just divert the horse into a stream she gets a gulp of water a little shower and she's having a pretty good time, actually. Better time than I'm having. Thank you to Michael McGraw. Michael McGraw, more like Michael Caw-Caw. That's right, our third little bird. And granted, we don't know shit about birds, because we just call them all birds. Exactly. There's, like, city bird, country bird,

and then I think ground bird. Wind bird, fire bird. But my question to all the bird people out there remains, where are your ears, sir? Thank you to Hillary Kordoff. They call her Hillary Kapillary because she is a vampire who loves that blood, my friend. Jeez.

Exactly. Every bite is the perfect location. Sometimes bad vampires gotta chomp down a couple times, you know, and try and find you. She's like a f***ing sniper, a technician. She knows where to go. She's got a red dot sight strapped to her chin, so she hits it every time. You know, you can hear her coming because of the uh-oh, the Tom Clancy. Thank you to Maddy Hanson.

Maddy Hanson is mighty handsome. You know the way they say handsome people are a dish Yes, Maddie's a literal dish. Oh A literal plate a serving tray of some kind so not even food No, no, just the plate the actual serving mechanism. They. That is right. They are a plate of a person. Where are your ears? Thank you to Holly Clark. Holly Clark, she is a spark in the dark. That is right.

Holly herself is a firework. She spends most of her life dormant, but the second she moves, she explodes. But boy, is it beautiful. What a sight. She might actually not be around to hear this because last time i talked to her i just lit the fuse and walked away so holly you lit the fuse that seems rude because sometimes you know she needs a little push in life to get going holly i hope you had a good show uh glad you're enjoying the podcast thank you also to tabitha cap it's oh crap it's tabitha that's what everyone says

really rude when she right they go oh crap it's tabitha because tabitha is that person in the group that just spoils everything game of thrones star wars you know okay well it shows she yeah they're just like i've seen it i seen it. And this is how it ends. But also life. You know, she'll be like, hey, I died. I died for a few seconds once. I know what happened. Oh, come on, Tabitha.

No spoilers. Is there an afterlife? No. No. Worm food. Oh, come on, Tabitha. Which is actually what she said about Game of Thrones as well. They were like, does Jon Snow come back?

No. Worm food. But she was wrong he came back didn't he thank you to jenna kate jenna kate the dinner plate that's right another dish what literal uh plate of a person um on patreon don't know how that don't know how that happened two plates and no food Welcome to the paranormal commune This final life call me inversion of two girls one cup Two plates no eggs

The least sexy version that's that's the porn available in the commune because even in the commune there are no dreams there are no fantasies thank you to david webb david i hope you don't get caught in your web aka your nest you little bird bastard i hope you're enjoying the show i hope that you're you know what do birds do don't they like chew stuff up and put it in their little birds mouths yeah do that i hope you're doing that but with our podcast to your your baby birds just spreading it down the line we appreciate it thank you to alexander alexander likes to wander but uh don't wander too far alexander because you're getting dangerously close to this paranormal life.

Master quarters of the commune. And we wouldn't want you to... Listen, we wouldn't want you to, you know... How's best to say this? Get above your station in life. Because... That was a bad way to say that. It shouldn't have been the best way to say that how

do i how do i put this kindly in a way that is inclusive to the commune you are a peasant alexander and you are wandering towards the king's quarters it's a little aggressive let's slow this down you're a valued member of the alexander you're a valued member of the commune where we are all equal so make sure to well some are a little more equal than others, granted, because why would we have the giant beds and master quarters if not for... There being some difference in equality. Okay, yeah, sure. Fair enough. And he was wandering a little close to the tower of the commune,

which guards the two plates where no peasants are allowed near. Because the day that food returns to the commune, we want plates to be ready. Thank you to J.R. Wilson. Well, if it isn't J.R. the A.R. Wilson. This guy is a crack shot with an assault rifle and just the kind of guy we need around the commune, actually. To keep people away from the tire where we keep, I cannot stress enough, keep the two existing plates. Listen, no, no, he's not going to need the assault rifle because no one's going to wander that close. Because you don't have any food.

So no one needs the plates right now. But there will come a day. The JR, you're going to need to stockpile a little ammunition, sure, because the food will eventually come. Thank you lastly, but not leastly, to Zach Kingslayer. Well, get this son of a bitch out of my commune. Kingslayer is his second name?

And yes, of course, yeah, yadda yadda yadda, I said, paranormal commune, we're all equals and no one's the king, but technically, legally, I am a king. On paper, sure. For sure. This crown isn't made of wood. It's made of gold and two plates.

That's right. I have taken the plates and I have... You're not in the tar. The tar is a decoy at this point. So I don't need to be killed. I don't need anyone taking my plate hat. Everyone's like, Roy, no one believed they were ever in the tar. We can see the plates on your head.

Thank you to everyone we have shouted out and everyone we are yet to shout out. We are getting through our list of shout outs slowly but surely. Thanks for sticking with us. We will be back next week, of course, with a brand new paranormal tale. Until then, see you next week of course with a brand new paranormal tale until then see you next week bye