(Be sure to watch the accompanying episode, "DÉJÀ-BOO: The Poltergeist of Stagbridge Mall" for the full experience.)
Preface:
Last month, our team was contacted by a frightened woman who claimed her workplace was being haunted by an angry spirit. What's more, she managed to capture its violent outburst on camera. The video she sent to us was compelling, as far as these types of videos go. There were no obvious hidden accomplices throwing things around or fishing line pulling things over, so we decided to look into it.
While the Stagbridge Shopping Center in Mississippi is what's known as a "dead mall", it's not a famous or well documented haunting. In fact up until recently the most supernatural thing about the building was how it managed to stay open so long. Built in the late 80s, Stagbridge Mall's popularity declined steadily as the idea of the shopping mall fell out of favor over the years. Recently though, those employed at the few remaining stores have begun to experience strange and unexplainable things. Strange noises at night during closing hours, objects falling off of shelves, and an unusual lack of wildlife in the area... only for weirdly colored fur fibers to show up inside of the mall's hallways and stores.
These strange happenings all preceded the event that triggered the employee to come to us: In the middle of the day, sunlight merrily shining down through the skylights, a sudden loud eruption of noise was followed by various objects being thrown through the air and knocked to the ground by some invisible force. The event was captured by store surveillance cameras, which leads us to our investigation.
Investigation Breakdown:
In a nice change of pace for us, we chose to conduct our investigation of Stagbridge Mall during the day, since that's when the incident occurred. Oddly, as soon as we arrived, Jess said she felt no spiritual presence of any kind. I might be a skeptic, but I still trust her intuition on things of this nature. Our research shows us that this area has no history of unusual deaths or tragedies. In other words, there's no reason this mall should be haunted at all.
We began the investigation by meeting up with the woman who sent us the video. She told us that she'd been working here for about three years and had never seen anything like that happen before. It wasn't until the past few months that the "haunting" began. She led us to the store where the ghostly outburst had supposedly occurred. At the time, she claimed, it had only been her, her co-worker, and a single shopper in the store. She had just begun to play some music over the store's speakers when the incident began. Maybe ghosts don't like today's top 40s?
After speaking with the woman about her experience, Francisco came to the conclusion that the spirit must be a poltergeist. A poltergeist, if such a thing does exist, is a type of violent spirit that attaches itself to a specific location or person and causes disturbances such as loud noises, moving objects, foul smells and occasionally causing physical harm in the form of bites or scratch marks to humans.
Our investigation of this location was really very straightforward. We didn't need to wander aimlessly around the mall past closing time, trying random devices in hopes that we might find something. We instead tried to recreate the events that lead up to the poltergeists outburst in hope that it would spark the same reaction. If you'd like to see what happens next, watch it for yourself in this article's accompanying Déjà-Boo episode!
Closing Thoughts:
While it was interesting to investigate a haunting at noon instead of midnight, it seems there was no haunting at all. Or, if there at some point was, maybe the ghost didn't need to get any shopping done today. As for the strange fur, we didn't see much of it, but it probably just came from some stray animal that accidentally got inside at some point. I don’t think poltergeists have fur anyways.
Stagbridge Mall is a gorgeous building, all things considered. Its liminal vibes and deserted halls made for some nice shots. And I did pick up a funky keychain, so I guess this trip wasn't a total bust.
- Ethan
Hello Molly Molly
ReplyDelete