Everyone has a weird work story. But for the former bag boys of Robertson’s Family Supermarket in a small farm town, the stories lean less toward annoying customers and more toward the paranormal. What was supposed to be a typical after-school job became a masterclass in creeping dread, centered on a building with a dark aura and an owner who seemed to defy nature.
Robertson’s was a community pillar, but the family that ran it had a reputation ranging from miserly to, as some whispered, straight-up evil. For the employees, the building itself felt wrong. Vaulted ceilings in the back rooms echoed ominously. Upstairs offices featured creaking floors audible throughout the empty store. A mysterious door, hidden behind old shelves, seemed to lead into a void under the loading dock.
Then there was Blaine Robertson, the ancient patriarch. Too stubborn to fully retire, he spent his days shuffling the aisles, micromanaging and antagonizing the teenage bag boys with fanatical precision—chastising them for clocking in a minute early, or for the sin of standing still. “I always joked that Blaine was a vampire,” the narrator admits. “He just refuses to die.”
One closing shift, that joke took on a darker hue. Blaine had arrived at 9 PM to do office work upstairs. Two bag boys, their duties done, loitered at the foot of the office stairs. At 10 PM, ready to lock up, one started upstairs to alert Blaine—only to find the offices pitch black and utterly empty. They had been at the only staircase the entire time. Blaine had never passed them.
Even in Blaine’s absence, the upstairs refused to stay quiet. Employees reported sudden, loud twangs from the exposed water pipes, as if struck by a hammer. Heavy, unmistakable footsteps would pace the creaky floor above, despite the lights being off and the doors locked.
Spooked by these auditory hauntings, two bag boys once decided to spend the end of their shift walking the sales floor. As they crossed the aisles, a single can of green beans in the vegetable aisle suddenly toppled from its shelf. They replaced it, only for another can to fall two aisles down. As one bent to pick it up, a third can, 15 feet away, flew off the shelf as if thrown. They retreated to the safety of the cash registers, leaving the can where it lay.
The most chilling story, however, came from a bag boy who requested an immediate transfer off night shifts. Alone in the break room on his dinner break, he heard the unmistakable sound of a baby crying, coming from the adjacent women’s bathroom. He’d been there for five minutes and had seen no one enter. The crying persisted, growing more distressed.
After five more minutes, concerned a mother was in trouble, he knocked. No answer but the wails. He called out. Silence, then more crying. Finally, fearing the worst, he pushed the door open. The light was off. The small, tiled room was completely, undeniably empty.
These experiences paint a picture of Robertson’s as more than just a grocery store. For those who worked there, it became a place where the rules of reality seemed thin—where a cranky old man might just be a nocturnal creature, where empty rooms walk and talk, and where unseen forces, perhaps stirred by a legacy of whispered malice, make their presence known among the canned goods and cleaning supplies. The doors may be locked at night, but some things, it seems, are always open for business.
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