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Where a ghost can be a kid
By Deborah Taylor-Hollis
Welcome to another October, ghost fans, and another chance for me to tell you a tale that will curl you hair and shiver your bones. I don't think this year will disappoint, it's something more accessible than the frights and ghouls of years past.
Most people claim that their haunts are private--an old house in the hills that you cannot go to, a story from years ago in a county far away, the very personal memory of a small child alone, or a woman in the dark.
Putt-Putt is not one of those people. She is a very real woman that anyone can meet, any day of the week--during business hours. She has been at her job for 25 years, and her ghost is so well known that there is, allegedly, more than one website about both she and the ghost she deals with every day on her job. Putt-Putt works at the Sunnyvale Toys-R-Us store at 130 E. El Camino Real.
A major toy store chain store is not your typical place for a haunting, but the ghost of Johan Jansen is so well known in America that famed ghost hunters have held séances in the store and broadcast them on prime time television. It is not unusual during October for people to walk into the store with camera equipment trying to interview the staff for television overseas as well.
Putt-Putt jokes that the crew calls Johan "her ghost" because of her encounters and one sighting in the early '80s.
"I saw him in the stockroom, just for a moment. He was right there. He's on the infrared film we took" she reminds me while cashiering customers. "But even the new employees have had problems, not just me. The girls say he's behind them, flipping their hair," she remembers.
"The Murphy Family came through here just a while ago" she says, retelling the story of how the Murphy Ranch stood on this site and Johan, their hired hand, fell in love with the daughter. "She married someone else, moved away, and one night, he chopped off his leg by accident" and died not long after. But, in classic unrequited love, he never left the farm. Even when it became a toy store.
"Phones ring, pages turn in books, there are breezes out of nowhere. One time, the doorknob on the computer room started to make a rattling noise, and so one of the guys went to see what was grabbing it but on the other side of the door there was no doorknob. Things fall off shelves for no reason and everyone hears him upstairs in the stockroom." The store uses its entire second floor for storage, and the ghost apparently moves frequently upstairs.
Deanna, another employee, voluntarily chimed in with her own stories.
"Upstairs, the stacked pallets fall over all the time for no reason. Musical stuff turns itself on and off all the time and just plays when there's no one there. Last Christmas I put something away upstairs, and I was supposed to scan it and he was there. I could feel him knock it over."
The manager of the store would not come out to talk to me about their ghostly friend, but apparently he is enough of a nuisance that corporate policy changed on at least one occasion.
"I used to have to use a password just like everybody else on the computers," Putt-Putt told me while scanning in toys, "but one day, nothing worked. Then I thought, why not try 'ghost' instead of my password--and it worked. Every time I tried to use my password it refused it, but when I put in ghost the register came on. I don't have a password anymore."
Heavy toys like skateboards flip up and smack the clerks in the face, water goes on by itself, things fall off shelves when no one is by them, and the sound of horses' hooves and chains is heard every now and then right in the middle of the lower level where the old barn--and Johans work area--used to be.
The only outward sign for a ghost hunter entering Toys-R-Us that the place is haunted is a creepy thudding sound the rubber door frames make as they open and close behind you. That has not deterred the spook chasers from around the globe, including folks that Putt-Putt has had to do interviews with using translators.
I found the merchandise reasonable, the decor spartan, and the place rather chilly. Even on a cool day, the store runs fans inside. Managers can't hide the falling merchandise or stop the rattling noises, but they can try to cover up those chilling ominous breezes. Happy Halloween.
Deborah Taylor-Hollis can be reached by broomstick until midnight Oct. 31, or at dthollis@metronews.com
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
