🎄Foot Steps In The Store (stand alone)

 The Footsteps in the Store

 

 

 

This story happened in the old Sears I used to work at in Brooksville, Florida. Many people don't realize that in our area in Florida, we have our fair share of ghost stories. I am willing to say almost everyone in our city can tell you a ghost story. When this ghost story was told to me by the Manager who was running the store when I first started, and this story was backed up by the loss prevention associate who also worked in the location. As this Sears store is closed, we can share this story more. Neither the Manager nor the loss prevention associate would confirm or deny the story, but they knew I collected tales and could not wait to tell me this story.

 

One thing about this store is some things had not changed or never improved. No matter how many issues the store had, there had to be a dire emergency to get an upgrade. This information is vital as this is the reason this story takes place. Anytime a big storm hit the store, it seemed to mess with the security system, which would cause issues and delays all day and night. So the beginning of this story does not surprise me at all that during the day, a large summer storm came through the area, and it caused the power to go out in the store twice in a short period. The power outage messed with the security system and other electronic systems. After a while, all the systems came back up, and they thought it was back to business as usual until closing. 

 

At the end of the night, the Manager started the closing duties, but they soon realized that serious issues were happening. The first issue was it took a few tries to get the shutters in the front of the store to go down on both sets of doors. Eventually, both shutters were closed, although it took a few tries. So the Manager tried to finish closing the stores day in the computer. There were issues with the safe room with arming the safe and securing the room the safe was in. Then the Manager went to leave with the loss prevention agent, and they could not get the remaining store to arm along with the doors. The Manager called the security company, and after trying to fix the problem on the phone, they triggered alarms all over the store. They tried resetting the whole system, and alerts all over the store went off. In a last-ditch effort, the security company had said to go outside, and we will set the alarms manually with the Manager outside the building. When the security company tried this, errors were saying all the main doors were open and movement in the store. The security company told the Manager if you can wait, we can have a tech out in a few hours. So the Manager left the loss prevention associate in the store to grab food for them both and waited for the security team to arrive to see what was happening. 

 

Since the Manager and the loss prevention associate had to stay until the security company could get there to fix the problem, they decided it would be a great time to catch up on paperwork and extra cleaning in the office and do some projects on the floor. While sitting in her office, the Manager hears footsteps coming from the store entrance door, then the footsteps proceed to the break room, and she hears the door open as if someone went in. She assumed the Loss prevention associate was making rounds to stretch his legs and walked the store. The Manager then hears the door of the office open. Expecting to see the loss prevention associate walk past her, she looked up with a smile, but when the footsteps sounded as if they were going past the door to her office, nobody passed her door. After a few seconds, she heard the door that led to the loss prevention office open and close. The first time this happened, the Manager let it go thinking she was tired as it had been a busy day. However, after thirty minutes, she had the same experience again.

 

After this happened the second time, the Manager called the loss prevention associate and asked him to come to her office. She explained to him what had happened not once but twice. The loss prevention associate thought it was weird and suggested looking at the security cameras and seeing if they could see or hear anything. They both went into the camera room and checked the security footage. They could hear footsteps on the audio on the footage, then the doors opening and closing, but nothing showed up on the camera. The associate told the Manager he had been in his office untangling security tags and had not heard anything until she called his office. Deciding to see if the footsteps happened again, they went to the Manager's office and sat inside after locking all the doors. The Manager started the paperwork, and the loss prevention associate untangled the security tags. After twenty minutes, they hear the sound of boots walking again, and when it gets to the first door, they hear the door handle jiggle, then the door open, and the sound of boots on the tile. As the footsteps get to the breakroom door, you hear the jingle of the handle, and then you hear the footsteps on the carpet, and when the footsteps get to where they would be passing the Manager's office, no one is there. Although no one was there, the Manager and the loss prevention associate felt like someone was staring them down. Then they hear boots get to the next door, you hear the door jingle again, and the footsteps continue on the tile to the back doors of the store, then nothing.

 

The Manager and the loss prevention associate were still weirded out by what was happening. They went and checked the security feed and discovered that the footsteps started from up in the tool department at the front of the store. The Manager and the loss prevention associate guessed the sound of footsteps walking through the store took so long in between due to the distance. About an hour later, the security company arrived and started working on the system. However, they were at a loss as to what happened because they restarted the system, and it worked again right away. Maybe our walking friend knew something we didn't and decided to keep the store open a little longer to prevent something. Since that night, no one in the stores had heard the footsteps through the office again. Even though we heard plenty of footsteps throughout the store, that's a story for another time.