Subject: Ghost Story, Legend

Informant: Megan Andersen

Background Information/Context: The following dialogue is from Megan, telling me about a Toys-R-Us store in her hometown that is supposedly haunted. Although Megan has never had a personal ghost encounter at the store, this is her knowledge about the ghost legend:

“There’s a supposed haunting in my hometown. It’s at our Toys-R-Us. I’m not completely positive about the backstory, but if you mention my city, which is called Sunnyville, to any ghost enthusiast they’ll know about the Toys-R-Us thing.

So, there was a plantation owner, and one of the workers was an African American man, and he got in a relationship with the owner’s daughter, and the owner got mad and killed the guy, and the daughter killed herself after. And then a Toys-R-Us was built on the land.

I haven’t personally experienced anything strange when I’ve been in it, but a lot of people have had weird experiences, and a lot of employees have also reported strange occurrences.

They tried to do a séance a few years ago.

And then there’s another version I’ve heard of the story: Johnny was the name of the guy who worked on the plantation, and he wanted to marry the daughter. But in this version, he was crazy, so the daughter didn’t want to marry him, and when he was chopping wood one day, he accidentally chopped himself and died. And so now he’s supposed to be roaming around on the land still looking for the daughter, who obviously later died since then.”