This happened recently at the new Wal-Mart Super Center in Fayetteville, West Virginia, just south of the New River Gorge Bridge.
Before I continue, it was said that there was a great deal of protest on building the new store at its current location from local residents. One of the reasons was because there was supposedly a very old cemetery on the land. Ultimately, Wal-Mart beat out the protest and the store was built and opened in July 2006.
Now, here comes my story and I realize this isn’t too big a story, but giving the “background”, I wouldn’t be surprised if more occurrences occur at the store. I was at the store a few weeks ago doing some late night shopping with my wife. We’ve shopped at the store a few times before and nothing ever happened, so we were going about our business, as usual. We stopped by the automotive department to check on tire prices when we noticed an older man leaning against a counter in the Tire & Lube Express. It was close to midnight, and the Tire & Lube Express was obviously closed and the lights off. I would guess this man was in his 70s. We went over to check on him and asked if he was alright. No answer at first. I asked him again and he only replied, “oh, thank you… I’m fine”. He then sat down against the counter on the floor. We reluctantly left him there and not even 10 seconds later, right around the corner, we ran into an employee and informed him. Together, we walked back to the Tire & Lube Express. No old man! Nothing at all. He had completely vanished.
Now, you might be thinking he just got up and left when we weren’t looking, but I’m doubting it. We walked directly around the corner and into the employee. While our backs was turned away from the Tire & Lube Express, the employee was looking directly at its only exit and he didn’t see anyone leave. So there wasn’t any where this old man could have gone.
I have since spoke to other people around town and they have told me they have heard of strange things happening when the store was being built. Rather or not it’s true the store was built on an old cemetery, I don’t know, but I’m starting to believe there’s something to that story.
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I had to share a similar story; I was hired at the Hurricane Walmart as a CSM before it had officially opened–we actually put the shelving, registers, etc. in, ourselves. It was a rumor among some of the older people who had lived in the area their whole lives that the Walmart had been built atop the site of a small family cemetery.
We also experienced strange things at the store, mostly between 10pm and midnight. I had chased several phantom customers around, as had several other people I worked with. The main thing that happened quite often was a malfunction with one side of our theft prevention devices…that one side would just go off every five minutes with no one around.
Actually, these things started happening before we even opened to customers. I kinda thought the place was cursed because our opening date kept getting pushed back due to things like strange flooding.
Several years after I left the store, I received an email from an acquaintance asking me to speak with a friend of hers who was concerned about some really negative feelings and general unease she felt while shopping there. I don’t know if there was an actual graveyard at one time, but there was definitely something go on with that store.