Originally a thread on Mastodon.
Have I ever told you about the haunted charity shop?
(I know I haven’t, because this is a *brand new* story!)
My partner, Joh, works for a collection of charity shops. They’re the driver, circulating stock from warehouse to shop to shop etc.
In this role, they get to see a lot of shops and meet a lot of people. It’s a pleasant, sometimes quite quirky job.
But recently, there have been rumours flying about a certain shop, and the spooky happenings therein.
Volunteers refuse to work there. Staff are too afraid to work alone. And getting someone to cover it is nearly impossible.
Why?
Because of its rather active ghost.
Over the last month or so there has been an explosion of supposedly spectral shenanigans.
Coins have spontaneously appeared and been thrown across the shop on more than one occasion.
Items move, things fall down.
At one point, a shoe was thrown with such force that it hit the window on the opposite side of the shop.
Weirdly, these have all been witnessed by multiple people. The shoe incident, by multiple people at once.
Is it really a ghost? Well … no. Ghosts don’t exist. Or at least, I don’t think so (and I certainly hope not).
But some of the witnesses didn’t believe in ghosts either, apparently. So let’s carry on as if it is.
This has of course caused curious employees to research the shops history. It’s a reasonably old shop and has been various things that could possibly lead to ghosts, including a WWII medical centre, but there are really no dramatic historical happenings that might suggest a ghost.
The thing is: this shop wasn’t haunted before.
So what changed?
Well, there are a lot of theories, of course, but Joh’s favourite relies on its present, not its past.
It’s a charity shop.
It recieves donations, often from the recently deceased.
So the theory is, it’s not the shop that’s haunted: it’s something IN the shop.
So maybe something was donated that the former owner didn’t want to lose, or had some particular attachment to.
And now it’s showing it’s displeasure by tossing coins and chucking shoes.
But what does that mean now?
Well, 1) that there are a lot of very nervous staff working at that shop
And 2) Joh intends to buy the shoe that was thrown in the hopes that the shoe was haunted
I am not on-board with number 2.
Anyway, that’s the story of how my partner decided to buy a haunted shoe.
The end.
UPDATE
It gets weirder!
Due to the claims of being haunted, the charity shop was really struggling to get enough staff and volunteers.
So the charity sent out some maintenance workers to do ‘repairs’.
Joh spoke with them when they came back and it turns out, head office had not told them anything about what was going on because ‘please fix whatever is making people think there are ghosts’ is a hard thing to put on a maintenance request.
So these maintenance workers arrived at the charity shop and were like ‘we hear there’s a broke shelving unit and things have been falling?’
And the charity shop, puzzled, are like ‘No, everything’s fine?’
‘So what’s been falling?’
… and that’s how they found out the shop is supposedly haunted.
So these maintenance workers are here. They have been sent to fix the shelving units. They check all the shelving units.
Everything is completely solid. Not a screw needed tightening.
The charity shop staff are like ‘Yeah. Because it’s a ghost.’
The maintenance workers pass Joh on their way back and they have a laugh together. I wonder what they reported they fixed!
Then something I explicitly didn’t want to happen, happens: Joh buys the ghost shoes.
You may remember that Joh had threatened to buy the baby shoes that the ghost had reportedly thrown, just to see if the anything happened and for the story of it I guess.
So a handful of months ago, Joh comes home with these shoes. They say they’ll give them to my sister, who loves haunted stuff. They leave them in the car, because I won’t have them in the house.
They did not get rid of the shoes. In fact, the car moved from the street into our garage (connected to our house) for unrelated reasons.
So the potentially haunted baby shoes have been in my house for 3 or 4 months.
And Joh hasn’t heard about any more haunting at the charity shop, so I guess this whole weird episode is over, right?
Except.
Except I didn’t know the baby shoes were in our house. I thought they’d been thrown away.
And I have been having some weird experiences these last few months I have disregarded.
Namely: things have been going missing.
Just for the last few months. Sometimes as soon as we get an item, it disappears.
Now I’m not the most organised person. I’m pretty sure I have ADHD, and I definitely lose things regularly.
The thing is, they’re never lost for *long*. Our house is just too small.
And things have been going missing *a lot*. A new bowl for Merlin, a parcel brought into the house, new clothing, all sorts of things.
And I … haven’t found them. Any of them.
Anyway, the shoes are still in my garage.
I am 100% sure it’s just my own brain getting even better at losing stuff. We have often joked that I am my own poltergeist because of how easily I lose things or put them in weird places when I’m not focusing.
Still. It makes for a pretty good story.
And I *will* get rid of those shoes!
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