My Story was Pubished in the Charleston Gazette Today

Pam Brennan: Write Your Own Column: My encounters with the Fruth ghost I worked at Fruth Pharmacy on Oakwood Road for years. Many of us have had our little run-ins with the Fruth ghost and more than one has claimed to see him. He is usually a poltergeist type ghost, which moves things around and makes noises. According to one co-worker, the ghost's name is Oscar and he was a butcher. (Our store used to be a Kroger store before it was a Fruth. It was a cemetery before that.) Sometimes after closing we would hear voices or noises in the stockroom or noises when there really shouldn't have been any. By far the most common occurrence was things mysteriously moving for no reason. I was walking down an aisle one evening when I first started working at Fruth. There was a whole pile of comic books in the floor. I picked them up, put them in their place and started to walk off. After taking a few steps, all the comic books fell in the floor again. I silently berated myself for not putting them back properly. I went back, put them firmly back on the shelf in their proper place and 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. As I turned, another comic book fell in the floor, then another and another. They were falling one at a time as if someone was thumbing through them one by one making them fall. This went on until they were all on the floor again. I decided just to leave them. If someone wanted them on the floor then who was I to argue! Two years ago, I was standing at my register. I watched a package with a flagpole holder in it fly off the peg and go all the way across the aisle before it dropped to the ground. These are heavy items and it didn't just fall off the shelf; it flew across the aisle and dropped straight down! I was told similar stories from other clerks. Another time I was closing with one of the managers. There were two 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. The manager had gone to the back. The alarm went off and I locked the doors. 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 the manager 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 a man to leave. She came up front to see if she could assist him because we were already closed. She did not see him on the way. 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 whom 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 didn't see anybody. We decided to call the police because it is a pharmacy after all 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. The policeman 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 the manager 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. Last but not least our poltergeist may have tried to warn me before we were robbed. About five minutes before the robbery my cellphone started to ring. I was busy with several customers and I couldn't answer it. The phone was still lit up when I went to check it to see who had called. It was on the message screen but there was nothing on it. I thought this was odd because my phone is not set up to ring for messages so I went to check my received calls to see who had called me. The last call listed was one I had picked up the day before. I went to the message screen. The last message I received was the standard message I get from my cellphone carrier at the first of every month. There was no record on my phone (I even checked the dialed calls) of a call coming in. At the time I thought, "how weird," but then we were robbed just a few minutes later. Now I wonder. Brennen may be emailed at damnp...@yahoo.com .