A long standing legend of Sunnyvale is of a ghost that haunts the town's Toys R Us store. A purported psychic, Sylvia Browne, claimed to have made contact with the ghost on the 1978 TV show “That’s Incredible” and named him Johnny Johnson.
This story was also explored in a 1991 episode of “Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories”. Furthermore, she stated that he had been a farm hand who worked in the orchard where the toy store now stands and that he bled to death from an accidental, self-inflicted axe injury to his leg.
The toy store was built in 1970 and appears to have been haunted ever since. Employees first thought someone was scattering various toys throughout the aisles as a practical joke, but things then suddenly took a turn for the worse. Many individuals reported hearing strange voices and feeling a hand reach out to touch them when no-one else was near. At this point the staff members decided to report their experiences to their manager Judy Jackson.
Judy looked into the matter further and discovered that customers had also been reporting strange things such as faucets that turned themselves back on again after being turned off, and invisible hands tapping their shoulders or stroking their hair.
Staff members were becoming more and more frightened to work in certain areas of the store and according to some workers, objects were flying twenty feet through the air and hitting them.
As a last resort, psychic Sylvia Brown was called in to investigate.
She contacted the spirit of Johnny Johnson, a young man who worked on a ranch that had existed on the site of the store during the 1800's. Delving deeper, Sylvia discovered that Johnny was mentally impaired and came to be known as Crazy Johnny by his fellow ranch hands.
In 1884 Johnny passed into the world of spirit, after hitting his leg with an axe while cutting wood and bleeding to death next to a well on the property, where his body was found some days later.
Records have shown that a well did exist beneath the store at the spot Johnnys ghost pointed out to Sylvia. |
