Day 7…Ever seen a Shadow Figure?
Sometimes, the most haunted places are exactly the kinds of places you would expect. Abandoned buildings, graves, hospitals. Other times, they’re supermarkets.
The spring right out of college, I started working at the local branch of a famous chain of grocery/clothing stores. My job title was “apparel merchandiser,” which is just a fancy way of saying I keep the clothing section looking tidy and I clean out the fitting rooms. Oftentimes, I worked the closing shift, which ended at 10:30pm.
I liked the closing shift for the most part. It had the most customers, which wasn’t fun since we were already understaffed, but my coworkers were nice, the end of the day tasks were easy, and the last half hour, there were no customers. It was just checking and securing everything and locking up.
One night, as I was walking through the racks of clothing, I looked up at the back wall and saw two shadows run across the wall impossibly fast and disappear into the next aisle. I thought we had missed some customers and that there were a couple of teenagers goofing around at the back of the store.
I walked all the way to the back wall and then began walking down the aisle I had seen them run into. Then the next and the next. There was no sign of them. I shrugged it off, trick of the eyes, and went to do my nightly check of the fitting rooms to make sure no one was still there before we locked up and set the alarm.
As I checked the men’s side, I heard the clink of hangers on the other side of the wall on the women’s, as though someone was still trying on clothes. I quickly finished the men’s side and went into the women’s, but to my confusion, I checked every stall and there was no one there.
I’ve tried to figure out where that hanger sound came from, thinking that maybe it was carrying from somewhere else, but the sticking point is that checking the apparel section was my job and mine alone. There wasn’t anyone else messing with hangers or running along the back wall. Everyone else was in their own department far from me, doing their own checks.
If you can believe it, two unexplained manifestations in one night wasn’t the odd part. The really odd thing is that they happened almost every night.
It became a routine when closing up. I’d walk towards the back and see two shadow people running along the back wall, always impossibly fast, always to the right into the toy aisle. I’d check the back wall, check the toy aisle just to make sure they weren’t customers, and then go to the fitting rooms, where I would hear people still trying on clothes.
It became so normal to me that it was weird when it didn’t happen. When the fitting rooms were silent or when I didn’t see the shadows on the wall. Every night, the shadow people seemed to do the same routine at around the same time. So, if we happened to be closing up a little earlier or later, I’d miss them. But then, the next night that we were on time, most of the time I’d see them.
Those weren’t even the only paranormal things that happened in that store! That place was super charged for some reason or another and I haven’t the slightest idea why. The store is closed down now, unfortunately, so I can’t visit and snoop around. But I feel like, even today, at 10:23 PM every night, those shadow figures still run along that back wall.
A/N: Thank you all for making this week of paranormal stories so much fun! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Click HERE to read yesterday’s post, or HERE to read all the week’s prompts.
Protagonized. 
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