Ghosts scare staff in toy shop.
By Chris Morris.
Ghostly goings on in a town centre store has left staff so afraid of going upstairs they are now calling on the help of a psychic. Over the last four years at the Poundstretcher store in Colwyn Bay, toys have been ‘going mad’, suitcases have been flying off shelves, sinks filling ‘themselves’ up with water and lights going on and off. And one staff member said she had heard tales of little girls laughter and the creaking of a rocking horse coming from the top room. Now staff are trying to dig out the history of the shop and one assistant has even called in the aid of her psychic gran.
“The last time I went up to the top room where most of it happens I put my hand on the door handle and felt cold, so cold that I felt I was burning inside,” said the staff member who did not wish to be named. “Only this week the sink filled up with water and I distinctly remember pulling the plug out and wrapping it round the tap. Toys suddenly start going mad for no reason and one customer was even hit on the head by a suitcase that suddenly fell off the shelf, it was secure. Things seem to come in bouts and it’s scary.”
The shop was built in the late 1800s, it was then a department store owned by John Homan who according to staff mysteriously disappeared without trace.
North Wales Weekly News, 26th July 1990.
Medium bumps off store ghost.
By Chris Morris.
A medium called in to rid a Colwyn Bay store of unsettling spirits believes she has done the job. Mrs Rita Taylor, 52, from Barking was called in by another spiritualist – the father of a member of staff. She visited the Poundstretcher store on Conway Road last week after the staff there had complained of spooky experiences.
Staff say that over the last four years toys have inexplicably been turning themselves on and off, sinks have been filling up with water, and footsteps creaking across the floor boards in the room above. They have been too frightened to go up to the top room of the building, where they say the original owner of the upstairs flat disappeared about 80 years ago.
Although the store manager Carl Jones allowed Mrs Taylor, a member of the Institute of Spiritualist Mediums, to “bless and protect” the building, he remains deeply sceptical about ghosts that go bump in the shop. But Mrs Taylor believes the staff. “I blessed each room and cleansed it from any entity until the room felt right to me,” she said. She claimed a deep rosy pink colour tinged each room as she cleansed it. “There were so many rooms and I sensed something in virtually every one – different spirits from different times. In one room I felt that there had been a fire while someone was living there, and I felt there was a deep unhappiness. In another there had been children and I had a heavy feeling of unrest. There was no need for an exorcism, just a blessing; the spirits were not evil or bad ones.”
Staff at Poundstretchers say they now feel much happier about going up to the top room.
North Wales Weekly News, 2nd August 1990.