In the spirit of Halloween, let’s talk about ghosts. The first thing I’d like to say about ghosts is that if police could physically arrest ghosts, the number of registered sex offenders in the nation would double.
Actually, that might be an exaggeration, since there are 750,000 currently registered sex offenders in the nation. There might not be precisely that many sexually offensive ghosts in the U.S.
At any rate, there are countless ghosts that sexually harass their victims. And as if the idea of perverted ghosts wasn’t disturbing enough, imagine if perverted ghosts lived in Toys “R” Us stores.
And, of course, if I mention something such as the existence of perverted ghosts in Toys “R” Us, you know it must be true.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., Toys “R” Us was built in 1970 on the remains of an 1800s apple orchard. Johnny Johnson was a 19th century farmhand who used to work at the old apple orchard. He accidentally cut his leg while chopping wood, dying soon thereafter from the loss of blood.
However, once the Toys “R” Us was built, instead of moving away like any sane ghost would, Johnson made the Toys “R” Us his new home. The employees of the store, who are accustomed to Johnson’s ghost, note that, in particular, Johnson likes to haunt aisle 15C, along with some other smaller aisles at the back of the store.
Oh, and he also haunts the women’s restroom.
Women who visit the Toys “R” Us store report that faucets turn on and off abruptly in the women’s bathroom. On an even creepier note, they also testify that they can feel their hair being brushed from behind them when they are in the bathroom, even when they are completely alone.
Instead of scaring away customers, though, Johnson’s ghost ended up making the Sunnyvale Toys “R” Us even more prominent. Several spiritual mediums visited the store to try to speak to Johnson and one psychic, Sylvia Brown, managed to make contact with him.
When the famous séance that Brown led with the rest of the store’s employees was observed with an infrared camera, photographers identified the shape of a young man dressed in old clothing standing in one of the toy aisles.
One poltergeist similar to Johnson has a different reputation for making trouble — it inspired a lawsuit in New York City. Helen Ackley, the original owner of the haunted house, had reported to Reader’s Digest in the 1970s that her house was haunted, and Reader’s Digest even ran several special stories about how the Ackley poltergeist bothered Ackley’s family repeatedly.
In one specific story, Ackley talked about how the poltergeist would shake her bed every morning to wake her up. During spring break, Ackley would call out for the poltergeist to let her sleep in, and the poltergeist would obey, not waking her up until later in the day.
Certainly beats the standard-buzz alarm clock.
When Ackley sold her house in 1989, however, she neglected to tell the buyer, Jeffrey Stambovsky, that the house was inhabited by a poltergeist.
When Stambovsky realized the house was haunted, he sued to revoke the $650,000 contract he had signed with Ackley. The case went all the way to the New York Supreme Court.
The court ultimately concluded 3 to 2 that Stambovsky was not responsible for fulfilling the contract because Ackley had forgotten to tell him about the ghost. The court noted in its majority opinion that it was “entirely appropriate to relieve the unwitting purchaser from the consequences of a most unnatural bargain.”
It seems, also, that the court had some fun with this particular court case. The justices included several thinly veiled references to Ghostbusters, as well as puns such as “the plaintiff hasn’t seen a ghost of a chance,” “I am moved by the spirit of equity,” and “the notion that a haunting is a condition which can and should be ascertained upon reasonable inspection of the premises is a hobgoblin which should be exorcised from the body of legal precedent.”
“The spirit of equity.” And I thought real-estate finance could never be poetic.
Kevin Hwang is a senior at Athens High School who is taking classes at Ohio University. Is your house haunted? Email Kevin at kh319910@ohiou.edu.
