It's Halloween, and fall is in the air — though that’s still no guarantee you won’t be sweating in your costume.
But one thing’s for sure — our listeners are spooked.
The Show asked for ghost stories, and listeners have certainly delivered. All month long, we’ve been sharing your hair-raising tales.
Now, Sarah Bingham of Phoenix shares the final tale in our series.
Bingham had a clothing store in Phoenix, housed in a warehouse-turned-retail space.
Though she's since moved locations, it's not the business or décor she remembers, but unexplained occurrences like spinning clothes racks and mysteriously gifted T-shirts.
SARAH BINGHAM: We opened in 2010 in a building in Central Phoenix about 7th Ave. and Indian School. It was an old warehouse space they converted into retail, it was pretty shabby. The first couple of years we were there, there were just some unsettling things that would happen from time to time. There was this one clothing rack that would just start spinning on its own like nobody would be near it and it would just start spinning.
There was one time when I was talking on the phone to I think my business partner and all of the sudden an entire rack full of belts just like one arm on the belt rack just all of the belts fell off of it somehow. And I still can’t understand how that happened. We came in after hours one night I think it was around Christmas time we came in to work on our holiday displays while we were closed, just get our window together and like you know make it Christmassy in there.
And we were the only ones there and we were locked in and so I had come in and I put my bag down behind the counter I think it probably had dinner and a laptop in it. And that was that and we got to work and we were there for a couple hours and then we went around the counter to get my bag and there was a T-shirt in it just like kind of like spilling out of it like I thought she had put a bag or a T-shirt in the bag.
So I picked it up and I was like what’s this and she’s like I have no idea what that is. I was like you didn’t put this in my bag and she said no. So we like kinda unfolded it and looked at it and neither of us recognized it, we’ve never seen it before. It was like a vintage t-shirt and it was from a boxing match in Vegas in the 80’s and we didn’t know anything about it. So, we kinda look it up to see what it is. And it was like a pretty important boxing match. This boxer had died in the ring. He got knocked out and died during a championship match in Vegas and this t-shirt was really valuable and neither one of us still have any idea where it came from and how it got into my bag when we were both the only ones locked in there at night. After probably a couple of years of just like weird stuff happening, I contacted a paranormal investigator organization here in Phoenix. They sounded interested so we set a time and they came down and they brought a team of people. There was like a group of more sciency people that had recording devices and devices to detect electromagnetic fields.
So we all went in and stood around and I think somebody asked a question just presented a question to the room and nothing happened except all of the sudden I got an overwhelming perfume scent like I felt like somebody had walked behind me and then it dissipated like somebody had just walked by me and kept going. Somebody else had remarked they smelled that and asked did you smell that and I did smell that. And then we go downstairs into our retail shop where all of the clothes are and next to the rack that was spinning they kind of like zeroed in on that area to the rack that was always spinning. And again they kind of presented somebody presented a question to the room and one of the devices I don’t know what it was supposed to be detecting but it just started beeping after the question.
It beeped five times after like somebody asked if there’s somebody in this room and the machine beeped five times. And so they kind of kept talking to like asking questions and every time a question was asked the machine would beep. And then shortly after that somebody heard a yelp. They’re like oh did you hear that? The guy said it sounded like somebody was whooping or yelping like right next to him. It was a pretty intense evening, we did end up moving out of that space but we took all of those fixtures with us. Like all of the mannequins and clothing racks and chandeliers to our new spot. We haven’t had any weird stuff happen since we moved it was all the same stuff but none of the same issues.