The Fruth Ghost

At work we all have had our little run-ins with the Fruth ghost. He is usually a ghost which moves things around and makes noises - not one that you see. Although there are a couple of people who claim to have seen "him". According to my friend Kim, his name is Oscar and he is a butcher. (Our store used to be a Kroger's grocery store before it was a Fruth). It was a cemetery before that.

Sometimes after we close you will hear somebody talking in the back and no one will be there or you will hear a noise that makes you wonder "how did that happen?" More than anything things mysteriously move for no reason. I have had several "encounters" with what I consider to be the ghost and I have heard the noises and the voices after closing.

I was walking down an aisle once when I first started working at Fruth. There was a whole pile of comic books in the floor. I picked them up and put them in their place and I started to walk off. After taking a few steps all the comic books fell in the floor again. I silently cussed myself for not putting them back properly and I went back and put them firmly back on the shelf in their proper place. I walked off again. When I was about halfway down the aisle I heard one of the comic books fall again.

"Well Crap!" I thought to myself as I turned to go back to the comic books. As I turned another one fell in the floor, then another and then another. They were falling one at a time as if someone was thumbing through them one by one and making them fall. This happened until they were all in the floor again. I decided that I would just leave them alone and I walked off. If somebody wanted them in the floor, who was I to argue about it!

Another time Anita and I were closing. There were 2 men talking beside the door and one of them left. The other man went over to the magazines and started looking at one. I could see the corner of his head and the pages of the magazine turning. Anita had gone to the back. The alarm went off and I locked the doors and I went to my register to wait on the man to leave. I couldn't see him anymore but I knew he did not go out because he would have had to go right past me.

A few minutes later Anita called the front of the store and wanted to know why I wasn't back in the office yet. I told her I was waiting on the man to leave. She said it was ridiculous that he was still there and she came up front. She did not see him on the way and she asked me where he was. I told her that the last time I had seen him he was reading the magazines. She made an announcement that the store was closed and for all shoppers to come to the front to pay for their purchases. Nobody came.

She knew who I was talking about when I described him because she had seen him before she went back to the office. She walked the perimeter of the store and she didn't see anybody. We decided to call the police because it is a pharmacy afterall and there had been a rash of oxycontin thefts in the area. The policeman came immediately. He searched the entire store including the stock area. He did not find anyone.

He told me to pull my drawer and he kindly waited until we were ready to leave before he left. The only other way out was the back door in the stock area and the man would have had to pass Anita to go out that way. She reviewed the security tapes the next day. She saw no sign that the man had ever been in the store.