Ghost Toys

"Can you help me, please?" the woman customer asked the salesclerk at a Toys " " Us store in Sunnyvale, California. "This talking doll must be defective. It hasn't said a word, and my daughter is very disappointed."

"Let me try it, ma'am," said the clerk. She tilted the doll, pressed its stomach, and turned it upside down. The toy was stubbornly silent.

"Why don't you pick out another one and I'll send this one back to the manufacturer," she said, putting the doll into its box.

"Thank you, dear," smiled the woman. She turned and walked away down the nearest aisle.

"Another satisfied customer," thought the salesclerk to herself. She closed the lid of the box and was about to shelve it when she suddenly heard sounds. The clerk put her ear to the box.

"Mama, Mama, Mama," the doll repeated over and over again. After a period of silence, the doll talked again. Puzzled, the clerk took the toy to the stockroom. There, the doll actually started to make crying sounds!

"Very strange," thought the clerk later as she sat alone in the employee lounge. "The voice mechanism must be jammed or something."

Suddenly the bulletin board on the wall started to move back and forth.

"Anybody here?" said the clerk nervously. She looked around and found she was still alone.

As she stared at the bulletin board, a stack of papers piled on top of the nearby refrigerator floated slowly to the floor, one sheet at a time.

"Okay, that's it. Let me out of here!" she declared out loud. The frightened clerk had to stop herself from breaking into a run as she left the lounge.

Other employees at this Toys " " Us have experienced unexplained and mysterious incidents. One manager had just locked up the store for the night when he heard a loud banging inside the building. Could someone have been locked inside accidentally? He went back in, but the building was empty. Shrugging his shoulders, the manager locked the doors once more. As he walked to his car, the loud banging started up again. This happened several more times before the man simply ignored the banging and went home.

Another clerk heard her name called over and over again by a mysterious voice and felt invisible fingers in her hair. One customer complained that the water faucets in the ladies' room were turning on and off by themselves. Merchandise moved during the night, shelves fell over, and lights turned on and off without explanation.

As the incidents continued, more and more employees began to believe the store was haunted. Several investigated the history of the area in which the store was built, hoping to find clues to identify the ghost or ghosts.

At first some workers believed the ghost of Martin Murphy, the founder of Sunnyvale, haunted the toy store. But after psychic Sylvia Brown spent a night in the store, most believed the restless spirit was that of a preacher named Yon Johnson.

Yon had lived with a family whose farm was on the site of the toy store at the turn of the century. He loved a girl named Elizabeth, who may have been the daughter of Martin Murphy. She eventually married someone else, but Yon never stopped loving her and remained a bachelor all his life.

Sylvia Brown had visions of Yon walking through the store, which he still saw as the farm on which he lived. She saw him pumping water from a spring, which employees later discovered had once been located right under the toy store.

Do the mysterious happenings in Sunnyvale have logical but overlooked explanations? Is the ghost of restless and lovesick Yon still searching for his lost love? Or do the employees of the toy store have overactive imaginations?

Perhaps we will never know the answer. But now, whenever something strange and unexplained happens at this particular toy store, the employees just say, "Yonny's at it again!"