A few years ago, I became good friends with a coworker while we were both library assistants in an academic library. She was a bit older than me and a seasoned traveler. When she was my age she lived in London, a trip she made on a whim that turned into two decades abroad. Her stories were always real aces.
She told me about an independently owned bookshop in London where she worked for many years. The owner took great care of her shop and its employees, and she became something like a mother to many of them. She passed away from cancer while my friend was still working there, and soon after her death the “unusual occurrences” began. It was the full range of classic ghost story tropes, from faulty electronics all the way to full body apparitions. In the most romantic sense, the deceased owner achieved the cozy bookshop trifecta by adding “haunted” along with English and independent to its retail profile. My friend remembers her days in the book retail scene with significant fondness.
At Borders we didn’t have spectral visitors, but we were haunted by more than a few very-mortal ghosts.
The Ice Cream Man was a common topic during our morning meetings. We were all admonished every time the Ice Cream Man would successfully strike the store, the evidence of his activity usually discovered a day too late. He would arrive unnoticed during our regular business hours, maneuvering through the entire store unseen while carrying a full quart container of ice cream. He would set up in our Math and Science section, a place in our store tucked away in a back corner due to low interest from our customers. He would then consume the entire quart and leave the empty container in a tiny trash can hidden in the book stacks.
This particular ghost customer was actually caught in the act a few times and asked to leave with his highly prohibited outside food. While Math and Science was not popular with our customers, it was an excellent corner of the store for us to discreetly hide the door to our employee lounge and offices. He was only unlucky when an employee snuck away to grab a quick snack from their locker. Ultimately, though, he got away with his act far more often than he was caught.
There was never a clear motive in his actions and there were no grocery stores in our strip mall where he could’ve bought the ice cream. Borders was clearly a special trip for him and his frozen side piece.
And why leave the evidence behind? If we didn’t catch him eating, why leave the empty containers, ensuring we would be more vigilant for a few weeks after each incident? We theorized that may have been the point. We didn’t catch him, and he wanted us to know that. The empty container was nothing more than a taunt.
Other ghost customers moved through our store without notice. I don’t remember a single shoplifter being caught while I worked there, but plenty was stolen. And then there were the customers we wish were simply there to steal their summer reading assignments or cookbooks destined for resale on eBay.
Not too far from the Math and Science section was a catch-all cubby of bookshelves that contained Psychology, Medicine, Self-help, New Age, Erotica, and Religion. This section was visited only slightly more often than Math and Science. The cubby was also one of the most tucked away corners of the store, frequently out of sight for any bookseller or most customers, who preferred more popular sections like Fiction and Cooking.
One Friday night, as our evening skeleton crew was tidying up the store (picking up trash and straightening shelves), I found myself in this forgotten cubby of sex, science, and faith. There was a footstool pushed into a corner with clear plastic wrappers below it on the floor. The wrappers contained something viscous and off-white, puddling between the sleeves of plastic. An expectant mix of nausea and disgust took root in my stomach, and I took a step back. Looking around the shelves I hoped the wrappers came from one of our larger or more expensive books. Of course, they did not.
I saw there were a few magazines tucked into one of the shelves in the space above the books. Playboy and Penthouse.
I looked to the magazines and then back at the fluid filled plastic and my disgust vocalized in a little yelp. Then I asked one of the male employees to clean it up.
That cubby was watched a lot more after that.
My friend’s charming little English bookshop was haunted by a friendly ghost who just wanted to check-in on her friends. My big box bookstore was haunted by two of the Seven Deadly Sins.
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