An Early Halloween Tale

Springfield Mall

Melissa J. Dallago

I have held a job consistently since I was 15 years old.  My first job was at McDonalds where I developed a lifelong addiction to cheeseburgers and fries.  Then in 1994 I began working in Springfield Mall selling shoes at a store called Dulce, which is Italian for sweet.  Their shoes were definitely sweet, sassy and sexy, and needless to say, much like my addiction to cheeseburgers and fries, I stand here before you a reformed shoeaholic.  However, this is not a story about me overcoming my addiction to cheeseburgers and shoes; this is a story about what happened to me one day when I was working at Dulce and a ghost walked through me.

In order to explain my ghostly experience, I have to mention a terrible tragedy that occurred at Springfield Mall on October 30, 1985.  A mentally unbalanced woman named Sylvia Seegrist walked into the mall dressed in military fatigues, carrying a shotgun and proceeded to open fire on the crowds below.  She killed three people, two men and a two year old child, and injured seven more.  Now, by the time I had started working in Springfield Mall, the tragedy had become a distant memory for many, and the mall was once again prospering.  One day at work my coworker Alicia said to me, “So you know what happened here right?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I remember hearing about it when I was a kid.”

Alicia nodded.  “You know this place is haunted right?  Have you ever experienced anything here?” she asked.

I shook my head, “Nope, I can’t say that I have, and I don’t really believe in ghosts and goblins.”

“Well trust me, you will,” she said.  “Just give it time.  I’ve had plenty of experiences, and you will too.  It just takes the ghosts a little bit of time to warm up to you.  You know, get to know you.”

“I think you’re full of it!”

Alicia just looked at me with a smile, “You’ll see,” she said as she walked away.

Well, sure enough, within the next month, I had my first experiences.  It started simply by thing being misplaced in the store, displays being changed, and purses and shoe boxes being knocked on the floor after I had put everything away.  At first I just chalked it up to gravity and my own forgetfulness, but then, I started seeing shadows out of the corner of my eye. 

There were rows of shelves in the back of the store where we kept the shoes.  Sometimes when I was walking to the front of the store I would see the figure of a man in black standing at the very end of the row.  I initially thought it was the manager, Matt, but when I turned my head to look, no one was there.  These experiences happened repeatedly, but I was never scared. 

On that day, which turned out to be the hottest day of the summer, the air conditioner for the store decided to take the day off.  It goes without saying that it was as if the gates of hell had opened in the store; Alicia and I were hot and utterly miserable.  We were covered in sweat and our formerly perfectly quaffed hair had melted and was hung limply.  Our boss Matt, who was not a sympathetic man, absolutely insisted that we must do an inventory of the shoes and purses regardless of the sweltering heat.  So there were the three of us, Alicia, Matt and I, working in the back of the store moving shoe boxes, counting and recounting stock, and bitching at each other. 

I was nearing heat exhaustion when suddenly goose pimples broke out on my arms, and I was engulfed in an arctic blast of air.  The freezing cold went down to my bones.  I stood there utterly still, eyes wide open, heart hammering and staring into Alicia’s eyes.  Apparently, she had experienced the same cold front I had.  Meanwhile, sweat was still dripping down Matt’s face as he continued to count boxes, totally oblivious to the ice cubes that Alicia and I had become.  This experience lasted only seconds, and then the heat returned; I was petrified. 

Alicia looked at me with a knowing look, and whispered, “See, now do you believe me?  That was one of them helping us cool off.  Neat right?”  I just started at her dumbfounded. 

“That’s happened to you before?”

“Oh yeah,” she said.  “It happens to me all the time.  You’ll get used to it.”

I just nodded.  “If you say so, but aren’t you scared?”

“No,” she said.  “I think it’s just their way of saying hi.  I think the ghosts are lonely and like to have some contact with us.  So no, it doesn’t bother me at all.  I actually feel blessed when it happens, like I’m in touch with something unique.”

I considered that for a moment, and said, “I guess I can see you’re point, but I would appreciate it if they didn’t do that again!”  The ghosts must have heard me because after that one ghostly walk-by, it never happened again.  I continued to see shapes and the shoes and purses still fell on their own, but the ghosts pretty much left me alone.

I do not know if my experiences at Springfield Mall were genuinely paranormal ones, but as years passed I had other ghostly experiences and read books on the subject.  I have come to believe that places of great tragedy retain the energy of those events within them, and it is possible for that energy to affect those who are within.  I also believe that people who died sudden, violent deaths may also linger on this plane, so it is also possible that the spirit of one of the men who died on that horrible day was flirting with two pretty young ladies by giving us a ghostly goose.  And that is the story of what I learned from working at Dulce Shoes all those years ago.