Weird Mall Encounters

Folks have had some strange encounters while at their local shopping mall. Ghosts and spirts are seen by many. Reports of huge aliens have been reported. A few people have vanished, never to be seen again.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Are you are you coming to the tree. Well, they're
hung up. A man who will say she murdered.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
True, strange things have happened back now stronger.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Would it be? There a minmo, do the humming? True?

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Welcome to the shell. I'm your host, Chris James. Either
my body is crooked or this T shirt is crooked.
The center of my chest is right there. I don't
know if this happened because I washed it, put it
in the dryer. Maybe they printed it wrong, but oh well,

(01:01):
that's life. Reminds me of back when we used to
get our uniforms in the Border Patrol made in Mexico.
On the collar it said Echo and Mexico. And you know,
the folks down there weren't exactly too concerned with quality control.

(01:22):
We would get uniforms where the zipper wasn't sony in
one pant leg was longer than the other. I had
a sleeve one day fell off my shirt. I fell off.
The threading just came apart. Yeah. Nothing says good quality
like the government buying their uniforms from a country that's

(01:46):
not really happy with us. Ooh well, I found out
I'd drink more coffee than I eat food. I guess
I'm a coffee based life form. Organic Man Coffee Trike
is home to the best coffee in the universe. Four
or five is zero one McPherson right here in Laredo

(02:11):
or Organicmancoffeetrike Dot shop for everybody else. I usually start
thinking about the next show while I'm finishing up the
one that I'm working on. As you know, I don't
edit the show. It's too much time and a lot
of my fellow podcasters don't know when to quit. I

(02:35):
see some of these guys. They do like a twenty
minute show that took them four hours to edit. Get
a life, or maybe that is their life. They slice
and they dice and they move things around, which for
a show that is more of a hobby that sounds

(02:57):
like you're going to work. On a few occasions, I
sit in front of my computer wondering what I'm going
to talk about. Sometimes this will take all day. Other
times I will get suggestions from listeners and they all
send in ideas, either in the comments section or by email,

(03:19):
and I try to jump on them right away. I've
had several suggestions given to me in the same week,
which leads to confusion on my part. I write everything
down and then I lose things. I keep a clipboard
right here next to my computer, or I write things

(03:39):
and then I lose the page, or maybe one of
the cats eats it or something. My desk is a
horrible message. But no, I do not like cleaning up
the place because the cats are just going to mess
it up again. The other day, David Subas asked if
I ever looked into haunt to shopping malls. He sent

(04:02):
me a leak link about a weird occurrence at a
mall that I simply had to check out. Now, not
all of these are hauntings. Some of these are something else.
You decide. May twenty fifth, twenty sixteen, at the Fayette
Mall in Lexington, Kentucky, a very weird incident took place.

(04:28):
It was around sundown and the mall was half empty.
There was a jewelry store next to the food court
that was the main focus of the weirdness. Witnesses were
sitting at the tables, consuming whatever food they had found
at the fast food places. Nothing seemed off until it

(04:50):
suddenly looked as if several of the people there became
quite nervous. They started looking around as if they were
expecting something bad. Happened. Nothing they could quite put their
finger on, but it was something. The air felt a
bit charged, like an electric storm was coming. The lights

(05:12):
dimmed just a bit. Most of the shoppers decided to
see what might be on sale somewhere else. The crowd
became just a few dozen people intent on enjoying their
meals and not putting not being put out by any
weird feelings. There was a slight rumbling sound that my

(05:36):
most thought was thunder. This was accompanied by a slight
vibration through the floor. Everyone's attention was suddenly drawn to
the jewelry store. It looked as if a black curtain
had been pulled over the front of the shop. It
was described as being blacker than black. Just to add

(05:59):
to this weird this was when the lights went out.
The entire mall was now plunged into darkness. The few
shoppers still there used their cell phones to light up
their surroundings. A woman who had been walking past the
storefront was suddenly joined by a tall, shadowy figure or

(06:24):
shape that was twice her height, almost human looking. The
shadow formed and grabbed her In less time than it
took to tell she simply was no longer there, The
shadow began to move towards the people in the food court.

(06:45):
A few witnesses say they thought they heard screams coming
from the blacked out storefront. Others said it was totally quiet.
One witness says as the shadow moved away from the wall,
others similar to it began to form. The blackened storefront

(07:06):
was now filled with others just as nasty looking. This
was the time for everybody to run. Their flight was
paused by a louder rumbling sound from just overhead. The
building shook and the blackness in front of the store
was whisked away, followed by a collapsed wall. Where the

(07:31):
jewelry store used to be was now just a blown
out ruin. People began making for the exits outside. The
police had arrived. Every police unit in town showed up.
All the exits or entrances, depending on which way you're going,

(07:51):
were secured. As a shoppers exited the building, they were
stopped by the authorities and questioned extensively about what they
may have seen. Anyone who said they saw the blackened
storefront or the shadow beings was questioned more intensely. Cell

(08:11):
Phones were examined and any videos or stills were erased.
Folks were told to not go spreading false stories that
might make people scared. By midnight, four teenagers had been
arrested in connection with this incident. The story was they

(08:32):
had somehow perpetrated a hoax that involved blowing up a store.
Folks outside the mall, who had no idea anything weird
had just taken place, reported seeing strange, ring shaped clouds
moving in what looked like a formation in the area

(08:53):
right around the mall. This was accompanied by rumbling sounds,
even though the sky was and there was no sign
of rain. Power was lost in the neighborhoods around them all.
At first, it was everywhere all at once. Then it
was one neighborhood at a time. The lights would come

(09:16):
on and then go back out as the lights came
on just a few blocks away. This went on all night.
The airport had begun re routing all incoming flights to
surrounding fields, and no airplanes were allowed to take off
until the next morning. The power company said there was

(09:39):
no real power outage and that the folks had just
experienced a minor blackout. The investigation on what happened inside
them all got a little weird. The store was completely destroyed,
as if a bomb had gone off, but there was
no evidence of any kind kind of explosive device. There

(10:03):
had been two people working in the store who were
now missing. There was no sign of any human remains.
The woman folks thought had been grabbed by the shadow
was nowhere to be found, along with two others who
were still missing. A total of five people had vanished

(10:24):
without a trace. The authorities assured everyone the investigation was
going to go on, followed by a hasty explanation saying
there was some kind of an unknown explosion, which was
followed by there was nothing to see here and it
was time to move on. Within a month, other more

(10:48):
exciting things that happened to other crimes that needed investigating,
and the incident at them all just kind of fizzled
and went away. As for those four kids who were arrested,
nobody was ever charged for public disturbance, and their files

(11:09):
all just kind of disappeared Within about a year. Many
of the witnesses died from unexplained illnesses or accidents. I
could only find one version of this story. Could it
be just a story to entertain folks, or did this

(11:30):
really happen, and the folks in charge don't want us
to know about it. It reminds me so much of
the mall in Florida where the aliens showed up that
went away real quick, didn't it. An incident at the
Miami Mall which resulted in the arrest of four teenagers.

(11:54):
Does that sound familiar? Seems to be a pattern here.
The teenagers were arrested for causing a wide spread fight
involving shooting off fireworks and running amock. New Year's Day,
twenty twenty four, more than sixty police cars swarmed the

(12:15):
Bayside Marketplace in downtown Miami to quell a fight involving
a group of about two hundred and fifty teenagers who
were fighting with each other in an open air shopping mall.
The people who had witnessed the fight said otherwise. They

(12:36):
said that huge black alien figures had arrived in the
shopping mall and began moving about, causing the shoppers there
to make a hasty retreat. You could hear king Arthur
yelling run away, run away. Okay, not really, but if
you don't understand that reference, go back and watch The

(12:58):
Holy Grail, Monty Python's finest hour and a half. As
the mall was being surrounded, the airport was told to
shut down or divert all incoming or outgoing flights. Does
that sound familiar? People had some videos showing huge, shadowy

(13:19):
figures moving about them all. These were described as being
ten foot tall aliens, aliens from outer space, not from
other countries. As these videos were being released on social
media platforms, the authorities quickly tried to debunk the whole thing.

(13:40):
The police came out saying there had been several dozen
teenagers arrested for fighting, shooting fireworks at people, and disturbing
the peace. Later on, the story was four teenagers were
arrested in connection to the incident. The images of the
ten foot tall aliens was explained away as being a

(14:04):
group of uniformed officers moving past the building and their
shadows looked like aliens. Just five months earlier, a similar
incident had taken place in California. The first report said
there were thousands of teenagers involved, followed by it being

(14:26):
a few dozen, and by the end of the day
five teenagers were arrested. Is this a pattern or are
these folks simply copying each other's stories and adding to
it a bit or just changing the names and the
locations to try to get in on the excitement. Back

(14:53):
in the nineteen seventies, there was a ranch house on
north of Hillside Neighborhood next to the Interstate thirty five.
The ranch house was still there, showing signs of having
lasted for some time, maybe since the eighteen hundreds. Horses
would graze on the lawns in front of the homes

(15:16):
that were being built in the neighborhood. The field where
the ranch house sat was saved for commercial development. One day,
the ranch house was torn down and a Sears store
went up, along with a shopping mall now known as
Mal del Norte Mall of the North for y'all up North.

(15:41):
James was a new security officer working at Mal del
Norte no relation, that's his first name. He had to
enter one of the empty stores in order to turn
off the lights. The breaker box was on the back
wall and this was the only way to turn the
lights on or off. As James was walking through the store,

(16:05):
he noticed the bathroom doors were all open. He looked
inside each room just to be sure there was nobody
hiding in there waiting for him to leave. Both rooms
were empty, so he flipped the lights off and started
for the main door. As he was moving through the
dark store using his flashlight, he heard the sound of

(16:27):
a door slamming shut. Both bathroom doors were closed. There
was no one in there to move the doors he
had checked. Being new on the job and not wanting
to miss anything, James went back and checked each bathroom again.
Still nobody there. He quickly moved through the dark heading

(16:51):
to the exit. He checked all the corners for intruders,
but he was very much alone. I hope that's how
you pronounce your name. Khry worked at Mal del Norte
for a few years. He has had a few odd
encounters in his time there as well. The first place

(17:15):
he worked was at the Macy's store as a support personnel.
His job was to fetch anything needed to stock the
shelves and move anything too heavy for the sales clerks.
The store has three floors, but only two are open
to the public. The middle or second floor, is only

(17:36):
for storage. The ceiling is very low, giving it a
very claustrophobic feel. In November, as it was raining outside,
Kiri was sent to the storage floor to pick up
some boxes of perfume. The room he needed was called
the Fragrance Room, which at one time had been a bathroom.

(18:00):
The wall was still covered with mirrors, but in place
of stalls, there were shelves from floor to ceiling. He
didn't say if they took out the toilets or not.
That would have been kind of convenient, you know, But
have your own private bathroom that nobody else used. He
pulled his cart to the door and then went to
find the boxes he needed. As he was bending down

(18:24):
to check the labels, a box fell from one of
the shelves. It hit the floor with a bang, but
none of the bottles broke.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
It.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Key repicked the box up and put it back where
it had fallen from. He moved to another shelf, only
to hear the same box hit the floor once again.
As he stood there looking at the box, wondering what
might be going on, he felt the hand on his shoulder,
thinking this might be the manager. The manager had a

(18:55):
tendency to do this sort of thing. Key returned to
ask was up. There was nobody there. He quickly moved
to the door to see if somebody had slipped out,
and he saw a leg disappearing around the door jam.
He removed to the hallway just in time to see
the same leg vanishing around the corner at the end

(19:18):
of the hall. This hallway was a dead end. There
was nobody there and there was no place for them
to hide. Shaking off this weird encounter, he made his
way back down to the main floor. There he ran
into one of the women, who asked what was up.

(19:39):
Apparently he had kind of an odd look on his face.
Ke retold her what had just happened, and she said,
that's why your position is always vacant. He removed from
a support position to a security guard position security officer.

(20:00):
Late one night, one of the employees at one of
the stores came back inside saying that she had forgotten
her cell phone in the store. He went in with
her to help look inside the store, They both saw
man wearing a blue striped polo shirt moving around the displays.

(20:22):
Kiri went into security guard mode, and he went to
see who this was and what he was doing. He
searched the entire store. He looked in any place a
person could hide, but he found nothing. Had the sales
clerk not seen the man too, this might have been
just his imagination. Two people do not imagine the same thing.

(20:46):
At the same time, James worked the six p two
a shift each night, Kiri worked the twelve midnight to
eight a m. Shift. During their two hour overlap, they
worked together. A call came from the police department saying
there was a motion alarm set off at the Louby's Cafeteria.

(21:10):
While James went to have a look through the windows,
Kiri went to the office to check their security cameras.
James got to the front door of the cafeteria and
he looked in just as somebody ran around to the
corner from the front corridor and into the serving line
to the right. James called Kiri and asked if he

(21:30):
could see the suspect at the far end of the
public area. The man he had seen was wearing a
blue striped polo shirt. Kory checked the closed circuit cameras
but didn't see anyone inside the restaurant. There was silverware
scattered all about the floor, as if some disgruntled employee

(21:54):
had had a fit. The cash register cover was on
the floor as well. James called the police and told
them he had seen somebody inside, but lost sight of
the intruder. He also called the manager of the cafeteria.
This was standard policy. James had checked the entrance and

(22:16):
the exit to be sure they were both locked, and
they were. He stepped outside through entrance number three and
he looked in through the outside windows near the entrance
to the mall. The police showed up. Six officers came
to search for the man inside the restaurant. The manager
came along as well to be sure everything was okay.

(22:40):
No one was found inside the cafeteria and there was
no sign of anyone having broken in. The silverware on
the floor couldn't be explained. It wasn't there when the
manager had left and he was the last one out
the door. Key Rele liked to work evenings. It was

(23:03):
quiet and there were no shoppers running around. He was
beginning in his shift and he stopped to chat with
one of the folks that cleaned up. They stood right
outside one of the stores being remodeled for a new
client when, even though it was after hours, the lights
were left on and the door was opened slightly so

(23:25):
that workers could come and go as they needed. As
the two were standing there by the door, they heard
a loud bang come from inside the store. He returned
to the door just as a shadowy form of someone's
feet moved across the bottom of the door. You know,
a little gap you can see through, followed by the

(23:47):
door moving a bit. He opened the door to see
who was in there, but the store was empty. He
walked to He walked in to make sure there was
nobody hiding in one of the dressing rooms. The store
felt extremely hot. It felt as if somebody had turned
the heat on. Akiri searched the whole store, but he

(24:09):
found in no one there. Whatever had caused the shadow
to pass under the door and then move the door
could not be found. After store hours, a man hauls
a pressure washer around each of the entrances to the
mall to clean the sidewalks get rid of all that

(24:30):
nasty chewing gum that people insist on throwing on the ground.
Kii was walking his rounds and he felt the need
for a drink a bit of refreshments. He walked his
rounds and found the drink machine outside entrance number three,
where the Loubi's cafeteria sets, the one with the strange happenings.

(24:56):
He stepped outside and he bought his drink, and then
he started talking to the man with the machine. That
was when he saw what looked like somebody standing inside
the loobies next to one of the windows. The blinds
were halfway down, but the lower half of a person
was there. He reasked, do you see that guy? The

(25:19):
man cleaning looked over at the security officer. He then
looked at the window and said, I see people in
there all the time, only there's nobody there. He went
back to washing the sidewalks. Aikiri looked closer, but on
his second try couldn't see anyone stepping inside. He carefully

(25:44):
looked through the doors in the gate but could see
no evidence of a break in. All the doors were
locked and the cafeteria was empty. We live close to
Mal del Norte, as in a few blocks. It is
sometimes easier to walk there than to drive due to parking.

(26:06):
Over the years, I've heard stories about the ghosts seen
by the cleaning staff. The folks cleaning Mal del Norte
late at night have reported seeing a little girl hanging
around near the Seer's store at the south end of
the building. She has been seen walking around the concourse
in front of the store and sometimes sitting on the

(26:29):
bench areas there's now a mega furniture store where the
seers used to be. The girl looks to be about
five to seven years old. She's usually wearing a fancy
looking dress that looks more like something to go to
church in rather than shopping. It looks like a dress

(26:51):
straight out of the eighteen hundreds a correction, early nineteen hundreds.
Sometimes she has been seen holding a doll clutched to
her chest, other times she's not holding anything. The reports
are around chen at night, when all the shoppers have
gone home. The people have reported hearing her crying as

(27:15):
if she's lost looking for her mother. Anytime any of
the people that see her to try to talk to her,
she vanishes. On occasion, they will hear her but not
see her. The Laredo Paranormal Research Society had arranged to
spend the late evening looking into the story, but things

(27:38):
got screwed up and due to scheduling and liability and such,
and the investigation never took place. That was too bad,
but too many people involved, too many officials involved, and
some of them didn't trust the LPRs not to try

(28:01):
to steal anything from the shopping mall, even though about
half of the LPRs members are in law enforcement. I
did stop on occasion and try looking through some of
the doors right around ten thirty at night. Whenever I
was out for a run, I would run past the
front of the seer's store and then I would stop

(28:23):
and I'd look in each window. But I never got
to see the little girl. It's not like she's on
a clock or anything. She shows up when she wants
to and sometimes where she wants to. It's not really
a residual haunting because the images change all the time.

(28:49):
The description of the little girl is very close to
the same one that is seen at Fort McIntosh. The
ghost at Fort McIntosh hasn't been seen holding all, but
the rest is the same, same dress, same hair, same
physical description. Mal del Norte to Fort McIntosh is about

(29:12):
three miles in a straight line, although it takes you
about a half hour to drive there because of traffic.
Could or would a ghost travel that far. We don't know.
Anybody that claims they know everything there is to know
about ghosts is full of themselves. Until we actually have

(29:33):
a ghost come forward and sit down for an interview,
we won't know, and then we'll have to wonder whether
or not the ghost is telling us the truth or not.
Ghosts do not follow the same rules that we do
at the mall. There's a meter box located just outside.

(29:56):
The door has been seen to open and close on
on its own. Inside, somebody has written with a felt
tip pen. Have you seen her? Anyone reading this message
immediately thinks of the ghost of the Little Girl. In

(30:18):
twenty eighteen, at about nine to fifteen pm, the motion
alarms went off inside the Dillard store. The alarm was
pointed reported at the Laredo Police Department, and they contacted
mall security to have a look around. As the police responded,

(30:38):
Officer Jared and several other security officers went to the
main entrance and looked through the gate. An off duty
Sheriff's deputy who worked at the mall was sent around
to the outside to check the doors. Jared told his
partner to stay at the gate while he went to
check one of the side exits. The police arrived and

(31:01):
they used a canine to search for anybody inside the building.
They found no sign of anyone being in the store
or anyone trying to break in. Jared went back to
the gate, where the other security officer was still on guard.
The man was as white as a sheet. The officer

(31:22):
said he had just seen a little girl about six
to eight years old. She had a long white gown
that looked as if it was from a long time ago.
She was there, and then she simply vanished in the
blink of an eye. Further north from the Seers is

(31:42):
the Macy's store. People have reported seeing a balloon drifting
along as if it's held by an unseen hand. It
is possible it is visible for a few seconds before
it vanishes from sight. It doesn't pop, it just fades away.

(32:02):
Jared saw a pink balloon in front of the Macy's store.
It was moving along about five feet up off the floor,
about the height if a little child were holding the string,
say a six or eight year old girl. The balloon
went along for about twenty yards and then it settled
to the floor. It then looked as if it had

(32:24):
been discarded by the owner. Helium does leak out, but
it does not do so in a few seconds. It
takes days before a balloon will no longer float, but
still maintain its shape. Jared looked at the balloon now
sitting on the floor. The former owner no longer had

(32:45):
an interest in it. It could be considered a hazard's
should somebody step on it and slip, And so he
punctured the balloon and threw it the trash. Two years later,
Officer James was working the same shift when he received
a call from the sergeant. The sergeant asked James to

(33:06):
meet him in front of the movie theaters. There was
a blue balloon that seemed to be following the sergeant
as he walked towards the Dillard's store. The blue balloon
was right behind him. If he turned and went the
other way, the balloon was right there as well. The
sergeant made a joke saying it's the ghost of the

(33:29):
little girl. Once the two officers were standing in front
of the Dillards once again, James said it's time for
us to go. I guess you can stay if you want.
They signed out for the shift and left. Could a
ghost girl hold a balloon? Toy balloons were invented in

(33:54):
eighteen twenty four by Michael Faraday. The folks working at
Dillard's have given the little girl a name. They call
her Ashley. Ashley tends to mess with things when no
one is around before going home for the night, the
clerks would set up displays on tables throughout the store.

(34:17):
Once everything was ready for the next day, they would
head home in the morning. When they opened the store
for business, the displays would all be on the floor.
Things would be scattered about as if some small child
had a fit during the night. They would have to
quickly set everything back up for the day's sales. Ashley

(34:41):
is blamed for anything unexplained that happens around the store.
Eddie works on anything that needs maintenance in the store.
If it's anything major that would require a lot of
large area and taking something a part, they'll wait till

(35:02):
nighttime to work on it. One night they had to
work on the escalators. Eddie would have to run upstairs
to check on something. The elevator would be upstairs and
he would have to wait for it to come down.
Once he was finished upstairs, he would have to wait
for the elevator to come back up. If he was upstairs,

(35:23):
it was downstairs. If he was downstairs, it was upstairs.
The elevator would go up and down on its own.
After putting up with this most of the night, they
decided that Ashley was messing with the elevator ghosts for
some odd reason, really like elevators. During the day, Eddie

(35:47):
would hear boxes being thrown around in the linen department.
He finally said, if you're not going to help, stop
making a mess. He hoped Ashley would stop. Erin was
driving home at one thirty am. He decided to take

(36:07):
a shortcut through the mall parking lot. As he was
approaching the Macy's store, he saw a very young girl
walking around. She had on a white dress that kind
of looked out of place. He wondered what she was
doing out at such an hour and why was she
all dressed up. As Erin went by, he looked over

(36:30):
to where she had been, but the girl was no
longer there. The parking lot was empty and there was
no place to hide. Late at night, the security officers
walk around the empty shopping mall, checking the doors and
the gates to the stores. As they walked past store windows,

(36:51):
they sometimes see shadows moving about. The Mannikins tend to
get on their nerves as well, they looked so human.
One of the stores over near Sears, has a set
of stairs that go up to the storeroom. As the
officers are walking by the stairs, they hear what sounds

(37:13):
like a small child crying. They report feeling an oppressive
weight come over them when they're in the area of
that building. Those who check never find anything in the
stairs that could be making the sound. Early one morning,
before the mall opened for the day's shoppers, security officers

(37:36):
saw a man all in black walking along the concourse.
It looked almost like a shadow. The man in black
turned and he entered one of the stores that was
still closed. People do walk around the mall early in
the morning, but this guy look suspicious, and the doors
going into the malls are usually locked at this hour.

(38:00):
Officer was sent to see who was and what he
was doing. The sale staff were inside the store getting
ready for the day, and when the officer knocked on
the door, they let him in. He asked if any
of the sales staff had just walked through the concourse
and entered the store. The sale staff all said nobody

(38:20):
had walked in for the past thirty minutes. The officer
described the man he had seen, and the sale staff
all turned to one of their people who was standing
in the back. This person said, see, I told you
there was a shadow being walking around here. The clerk

(38:44):
had talked about seeing a shadow being inside the store,
knocking shoes and things off of the shelves. Even though
others had seen a shadow, they wrote it off as
being just a trick of the light. The shoes fell
because they were sat on the shelves wrong. No one
had believed it when the salesman had told them what

(39:06):
it was going on. After this day, they began to
believe him. All around the mall are vehicles on display,
brand new cars and trucks that you can purchase at
one of the many car dealerships in Laredo. The cars
are driven into the building through a large glass door

(39:29):
that has opened only to bring big fangs into the mall.
Once they are parked, where the vehicle will remain for
a few weeks, the keys are all taken to the
security office. There, they are placed in a plastic bag
that is sealed. The bag is then placed in the
security keybox, which is mounted on the wall. The key

(39:52):
box is always locked for the safety of the building's
keys and the vehicles. James was in the office taking
care of paperwork. Paperwork is a part of the job
that has to be done no matter what. Reports have
to be filed questions answered for a future perusal. As

(40:15):
he sat at the desk writing, James heard the sound
of keys falling to the floor. He turned to look,
and there on the floor under the key box lay
all the vehicle keys from the vehicles on display. There
was no way these keys could have fallen from the box.

(40:36):
The door was locked. Inside the box is a partition
that swings out of the way. The partition is slightly bent,
so you have to lift up on it in order
to move it. The keys to the vehicles are all
behind this partition, and the little box has a lip
on it as well. The plastic bag was still inside

(41:02):
the box, and it was still sealed, but now empty.
James quickly grabbed the keys off the floor. He shoved
them into the plastic bag, put it back in the box,
closed the partition, locked the door, and then he went
out for a walk to try to get this off
his mind. We have two malls here in Laredo, Mal

(41:27):
del Norte, where the little girl is seen, and the
River Drive Mall where people didn't want to talk to
me for some reason. But that's another story. Back when
I worked for a living all the River Drive Mall
was not the place to go. It was run down.

(41:50):
There were more empty stores than stores that were open.
The place was gloomy even on a good day, and
it had a little bit of a day damp mill.
Do he smell to it? Before the outlets were opened,
there had been a mall near the Rio Grande. It
was built into the side of the hill, so half

(42:12):
of the building was actually underground. You could drive from
Water Street onto the roof of the building where the
parking lot was, and then you took an escalator down
to the stores. The escalator opened into a kind of
a tunnel with stores on either side. Miguel had taken

(42:34):
a job working as a security guard at the River
Drive mall. Once all the stores had closed for the night,
Miguel would walk the corridors, checking to be sure everybody
was out of the buildings. He just about always started
at the west end and worked his way east. One evening,

(42:56):
just to shake things up a bit, Miguel decided to
at the east end and work his way west. He
would check the doors to the stores to be sure
they were locked and turn off any lights. As he
was approaching that tunnel, Miguel saw a woman standing by
the escalator She was wearing a brown top and blue jeans.

(43:21):
Miguel figured she was a shopper that accidentally got locked in.
He approached her to tell her he would unlock the
door so she could get out. She vanished before he
could get a word out. Later on, Miguel was told
there had been some kind of an accident right where

(43:42):
he'd seen that woman. A shopper had been killed when
part of the equipment up in the ceiling fell, hitting
her in the head. From that day on, Miguel always
started his patrols from the west end. The Cherry Vale

(44:02):
Mall in Rockford, Illinois is said to be haunted. I've
been to Rockford, but never to that mall. The first
store opened there was the Sears store, kind of like
how it is in Laredo. I'm starting to wonder are

(44:23):
Seers stores or were Seers stores attracting all of this
weirdness that kept going on. The mall had twenty two
stores on the first day, and the theaters were built
separate from the main building. The mall was updated over
its fifty years of existence. Like many malls, they kept

(44:44):
adding stores as they went. Outer stores also came along,
ringing the parking lot on several sides. List Verse and
Mental Floss say that Cherry Vale is one of the
top ten haunted malls, which I find kind of funny
since they didn't bother to include the Laredo Mal del Norte.

(45:09):
Maybe they go by some other way of rating based
on I don't know what. Some of the paranormal activity
reported takes place in one of the bathrooms. People report
using the john and then having some unknown force hold
the bathroom door shut. Others report say the staff would

(45:33):
leave the mall at the end of each day with
their stores clean and organized, and return the next day
to find things in disarray, clothing scattered or displayed knocked over.
Folks working there say they have a feeling of being
watched or followed after the building closes at night, a

(45:54):
poltergeist that messes the place up and holds the bathroom
door shut. This is isn't what I would call top
ten hauntings, unless there's a lot of things going on
there that they didn't bother the list. Starmall Alabong, previously
known as the Metropolis Star, was built in nineteen nineties

(46:19):
at the grounds of a former Alabang cemetery. It was
constructed by Manuela Realty Development Corps, a company founded by
Donna Manuela Aguilar Rigaria Sor. Over the past few decades,

(46:39):
many folks have reported strange experiences inside and outside this structure.
There have been sightings of strange figures, mysterious mists, and
even accounts of cold hands touching shoppers. A security guard
told about watching a group of well dressed people entering

(47:01):
the mall almost at closing time. This close to closing,
all the exits were locked except this one. Anyone still
inside needed to take the same door back out, as
the last minute ticked by the group never came out.
A search of the building didn't lead to their being found.

(47:26):
None of the other guards had seen these folks exit
the building. This mall has a pool and many of
the locals go there to frolic. Is that the right word?
John Pennette said that he liked to frolic in the pool,

(47:46):
so I'm gonna go with that. These folks went there
to frolic in the pool, but first they went to
the changing room to well change, and then it was
out to the wet stuff. Right from the start, it
felt strange in the room. The lights seemed a bit dim,

(48:07):
and the sound was off, as if they all had
cotton in their ears, like the pressure you get when
ascending in a plane. They were there to swim, so
they ignored these oddities and soldiered on. As they swam about,
it felt as if they were growing heavy and uncomfortable

(48:28):
odd feelings. But I can understand. You don't want to
be feeling heavy in the pool. It might make you sink.
When it was time to leave, they changed into their
street clothes and headed out. Just outside the front door
were hundreds of black birds and a strange looking woman

(48:51):
dressed all in black as well, with super long black hair.
That night, several of them felt weird. In the next
mon morning, they decided they needed to be cleansed, a
spiritual cleansing, not a bath. The person doing their cleansing
said they had encountered many spirits while in the water,

(49:13):
and some of these had become attached. There's another peculiar
phenomenon at them all, involving a shoplifting ghost that steals
items from the store shelves. People have seen an item
on a shelf that seems to vanish as soon as
they look away. Visitors have also reported hearing strange noises

(49:38):
and seeing objects move on their own with no explanations.
On the seventh floor of Plaza Singapore, there used to
be a gynecological and pediatric clinic, kind of like what
we find at Planned Parenthood used to take place there.

(50:02):
Once the baby killing factory was gone, the owners of
the building put in a theater in its place. Well,
what would you call it? The theater goers began reporting
seeing and hearing strange things. Not my show, but strange
things anyway. Folks would see a little girl sitting somewhere

(50:26):
near the front row and theaters number seven and ten.
During the first and the last showing, where there were
fewer people, the girl would appear and disappear without ever
entering or exiting. This happened so often that movie goers
began taking gifts, toys, and stuffed animals and leaving them

(50:49):
in the front rows. The staff began placing things against
the doors at night to see if anybody was sneaking in.
In the more, these items would be hidden away in
some dark corner. In an effort to get the little
girl to go on to the next level. Priests were

(51:10):
brought in to bless the theater, but she still showed
up on occasion. Projectionists working alone at night said that
they would see shadows in the cinema after all the
patrons had left. The old Plaza Singapore at Dobby Gott
was an iconic place is situated right beside the Istana.

(51:35):
The Astana is the official residence of the Office of
the President of Singapore. Folks who worked there had many
weird experiences. The people working at the Johan one of
their stores, one of the fancier stores, has said the
place had a basement where they could take a break

(51:56):
during their shift. Late at night, they would hear the
sound of someone crying, like a small child. A search
would reveal no one and the sound would move around
as they were looking. They also saw white, misty shapes
flying around up near the ceiling. Some of the staff

(52:18):
thought this might be a Puntian nak. A Puntian nack
is a female vampire ghost in the Southeast Asian folklore.
The mall was protected by many sacred symbols and blessings,
so there shouldn't be any kind of an evil spirit
getting in. Other people working there would see ghosts of

(52:41):
young kids walking about. Anyone trying to approach would see
these spirits simply vanish. At night when the mall was closed,
they would hear and sometimes see children playing hide and seek.
The security officers often left candy and toys around them

(53:02):
all school kids. Older kids would play a Spirit of
the Pen or coin at the Plaza Singapore because the
spirits responded much more quickly there. Similar to a wija board,
the Spirit of the Coin game uses a talking board

(53:24):
to contact spirits and communicate with them. You need a coin,
a piece of paper, and a pen. It's basically a
hand drawn wijaboard. On one occasion, two secondary schoolgirls became
possessed and were taken to the fire command center that's

(53:45):
kind of like the security office. At first, their friends
thought they were just playing a prank, but when the
prank wouldn't stop, they got worried and they called for help.
None of these kids wanted to get anywhere close to
these two girls. From the fire Command's center, these two
girls were taken out back to the loading bay area.

(54:10):
They had female staff show up and help out. Since
a bunch of men man handling a couple of schoolgirls,
it just wasn't right. They took ash from an altar
and rubbed it over the girl's faces, and they made
offerings to the deities for help. Nobody really knew what

(54:31):
to do, so they were just praying and kind of
winging it as they went. Hey, I saw this on
TV the other day. Let's try it bad idea. One
of the girls did stop struggling and became unconscious. The
other one was still screaming and flinging her arms and
feet about as if something were trying to attack her.

(54:54):
The unconscious girl opened her eyes and started laughing. This
behavior changed drastically, and it looked like a different entity
had gone into her. The one was much stronger. This
one was much stronger. The two ladies holding her down
were thrown off of her, and three men had to

(55:17):
jump in to prevent the schoolgirl from attacking anyone. There
was a lot of struggling and screaming and maniacal laughter.
Then the violent girl leaped onto the one that was unconscious,
pinning her down. The violent girl had her face right
above the other girl and seemed to be sucking the

(55:38):
life force out of her. The girl who was on
the ground exhaled a very long breath, and then they
both collapsed. When they came to the paramedics had already arrived.
They were treated for scrapes and bruises, but they both
refused to go to the hospital. Management came and everyone

(56:01):
was dispersed. Later that week. Everyone involved was given a
memo stating not to mention the incident to anyone as
there was an ongoing police investigation. The investigation either never
took place or the results were kept secret. This was

(56:23):
not the first time a simple game turned into a
huge problem. There were many possession cases, but they were
written off as some kind of a fit. The mall
later underwent a massive makeover and the official story is
whatever was causing the problem was vanished. Now I've seen

(56:45):
a few places that have signs up that say the
use of wijaboards is prohibited in this area. I wonder
if there's some kind of a connection Thereburn is an
out of town shopping center located on Barhead Road in Pollock, Glasgow, Scotland.

(57:11):
There is an apparition of a woman dressed all in
black period clothing and she's been spotted four times in
just one month. Now. The mall is relatively new, I
think it's only about eight years old, so this has
led to people theorizing what this apparition might be. One

(57:32):
shopper said, and no, I am not going to try
to do a Scottish accent. We were waiting on our
friend coming out of one of the shops when out
of the corner of my eye, I saw this dark
figure coming down the corridor. It was almost hovering. It

(57:53):
was terrifying to see. A silver Burned security guard encountered
this spirit and he said, I'm still not going to
try that accent. I had just finished my shift and
was leaving the center bathroom when I had this sudden chill.
I didn't think much of it, but as I looked up,

(58:15):
I saw this shadowy figure disappear down the hall. There
is no way that it was human. Shopping Center staff
called in the Glasgow Paranormal Investigations to have a look.
The Silver Burned spokesman said, we are aware that a

(58:37):
shadow woman has been spotted around the center and we
are taking these sightings extremely seriously. We have reached out
to local experts in the field of paranormal activity who
will hopefully be able to shed some light on the matter.
A member of the GPI said it is not uncommon

(59:00):
for a spirit to be attached to a site before
the present building was constructed, possibly silver burn or the
construction of the new cinema disturbed something. This can be
common in hauntings. The most important thing is to ensure
that whoever or whatever this thing is finds a peaceful

(59:24):
resting place, kind of like how the arena here in
Laredo has a woman seen up on the second tier
going into the ladies room late at night. Hope you
enjoyed tonight's show. If you did, spread it around to
tell other people they should be listening to Strange Things

(59:46):
with Chris James. If you are listening on one of
the many platforms out there and you figure you'd like
to hear more of my stories, you can find all
of the arc at iHeartRadio in the podcast section. And
if any of you out there happened to have one

(01:00:08):
of the old art Bell coffee cups like the one
I broke and the other one that my cat broke,
think I broke two art Bell coffee cups in the
span of a month. If you happen to have one,
they were blackish barrel shaped coffee cups with a white interior,
so you knew when it was time to wash it,

(01:00:29):
which I never did. If you have one, I'd be
interested in maybe buying it off of you. It was
back the first time art Bell retired and what's his name?
Siegel took over for a while, the guy that had
a cat named a Vanna Vana White the cat. Anyway,
if you have a cup you just don't want it anymore?

(01:00:52):
You know somebody that does. Let me know. You can
contact me at Strange Things at arkanasa dot com or
leave a comment in the section below the videos until
next Saturday. This is Chris James for Strange Things Are you?

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Are you coming to the truth? Well, they're strung up
a man who they say she murdered.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
True, strange things have happened back now Stranger would

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
It be the free at minm Ima Hanging Truth