I've had many experiences with ghosts and other strange
presences, but I think this is the strangest. I've only ever
told this story to one other person, mostly because it is so
very odd. I can't explain it other than to tell it the way
it happened (and I'd like to note that I was certainly not
the only person who experienced these weird phenomena by any
means).
In the late 1990s, while living in a medium-sized university
town in the American Midwest, I had a roommate, R, who
worked in a coffee shop a few blocks from our apartment. The
coffee shop was in a building that had once been a theater
in the early part of the twentieth century. I was told by M,
the owner of the business, that upstairs was an old
vaudeville or burlesque theatre, although it was kept locked
and nobody was allowed up there for safety reasons. In the
basement under the coffee shop were some storage rooms and
some old offices. The coffee shop's office was actually on
the same floor as the shop, and it wasn't the only business
in the building.
My first encounter with something odd there was when I
noticed The Manager, as we came to call him. I couldn't see
him, but I could "sense" him and get a kind of mental image
of him (as could others). He was a short, balding man with a
mustache, and he would come up from the basement and walk
around the coffee shop in a set pattern. He probably went
elsewhere in the building, as well, following a "circuit" of
some sort. He didn't seem at all aware of anyone else, and
he seemed to me to be mostly an "echo" type of presence
rather than sentient one.
He was pretty much harmless, and a lot of people didn't even
notice him, although some people seemed to notice odd cold
spots in the shop. The shop's owner, M, knew about The
Manager, however, and so did my roommate. In fact, she was
present one night when I was standing in the wrong place and
he walked right through me. All the hair on the back of my
neck stood up and I got an immediate case of severe goose
flesh. Fortunately, I knew what it was and I was able to
just shudder and shake it off (I might have freaked out
completely if I hadn't already become acquainted with The
Manager and his rounds).
There were other presences there, though, that were not so
harmless. At least one struck me as quite malevolent, or at
least troublesome. I always had the impression that he was
tied to the theatre upstairs, but I'm not sure why I thought
that. I never really had a picture in my mind of what he
"looked" like. This particular presence caused a fair bit of
nervousness in some of the employees, knocking things off
the walls, breaking the occasional cup, opening or closing
doors, and generally being a nuisance. One girl refused to
work at nights there after an encounter with this spiteful
spirit.
This spirit, whom we came to call "Mr. Spooky", was in the
habit of hanging around the front door and trying to menace
people as they went past. Usually, the shop's owner opened
in the mornings, but sometimes my roommate did, and I was
there at opening a couple of times. All of us felt the
presence of the spook waiting for us by the door. He would
also sometimes hang out by the door at closing time. I
encountered him there several times when I stayed late to
walk my roommate home after work.
Finally one night I got fed up with Mr. Spooky, and I told
him to go away. I had the feeling I should give him some
specific instructions, so I told him, more or less on a
whim, that he was not allowed into the building at all any
more, and that he couldn't come any closer than the curb
from then on. I had the distinct impression that he was
furious about this, but he did seem to move to the curb, and
R and I went home for the night.
The next evening, R came home from work and had a story for
me that still gives me chills. Although her boss, M, had
absolutely no way of knowing what I had told the spirit, M
said that when she had come to open the shop in the early
morning, she was surprised to see that Mr. Spooky was
standing on the curb and didn't seem to be able to come
inside the building at all! She said that normally he would
be right by the door to annoy her, and M thought that Mr.
Spooky did seem quite irritated and angry, although he also
seemed unable to do much other than "chatter" angrily at her
from the curb.
Like I said, I can't explain this. If it hadn't been for M
reporting that Mr. Spooky really was apparently banished to
the curb (without knowing that I had told him he wasn't
allowed any further), I would probably have put it all down
to my and my roommate's active imaginations... Also, as far
as I know or experienced from then on, Mr. Spooky never was
able to come inside to pester people from then on (although
The Manager certainly still made his endless and harmless
rounds of the building, and probably still does to this day).
Someday perhaps I'll go back to that city for a visit and
see if Mr. Spooky really is still chattering angrily at
people outside that theatre turned coffee shop.
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