Case #3: Donut Shop Ghost

Paranormal activity is far more prevalent than the majority of modern people will admit. Even some of the most mundane settings, which you may visit everyday, hold their own secrets.

This is not fan fiction. The events are transcribed to the best of my ability. Names are changed.

On of my earliest cases was very involving and I spent 3 nights investigating the unusual happenings at Daddy O’s Donuts, a coffee and dough nut shop in Hudson, Florida. The shop was closed from 9pm until 5am when the night workers come in to make the dough nuts. Jack, a 25 year old male was a cook and worked from 9pm until 12am frying the dough nuts. Sarah, 38 years old, was dough nuts decorator and worked from 9pm until 4am decorating and glazing 3000 dough nuts a night and also preparing orders of dough nuts for local convenient stores which a driver we’ll call Bob would pick up at 3 am and deliver. I was contacted by the owners of the shop when all 3 night employees came forward claiming to experience very disturbing apparitions every night. I went in and spent the entire night shift at the shop for 3 days. This was one of the most spiritually active places I’ve ever been to.

EVENTS:

I agreed to investigate the dough nut shop because all 3 night employees, separate from one another, came to the owners of the shop concerned with “seeing a ghost.” Individually interviewed, each described having an eerie feeling whenever in the shop and throughout their shifts always caught glimpses of a dark form standing and walking in various places in the shop. Other activities reported were:

Hearing voices from the front cafe part of the shop when it was closed and there were no customers.

Finding dough nuts missing from the delivery boxes which would show up later with bites missing from them.

A consistent tapping noise on tall cooking and glazing racks, the tapping could be seen vibrating through the metal racks and knocking off sugar glaze icicles.

FIRST NIGHT:
I started the first night there out in the cafe end of the shop and not even an hour after close Sarah came out from the back room asking what I needed and claiming I called out for her to come to the front. I hadn’t, and went into the back room where Jack was cooking and questioned whether or not he had heard “me”, and he had. I had been using a tape recorder and reviewed the tape but nothing was heard in the playback. When Jack left at midnight, I switched to the back room where I sat on a stool near the decorator’s counter. Sarah stood about 10 foot from me going about her job. We both noticed at the same time a metallic clicking noise, and I saw the tall metal glazing rack vibrate and drop bits of sugar glaze on the floor. I felt for vibrations through the floor from machinery and on the counter, but only the rack vibrated and keep up this motion for nearly 3 minutes. After it stopped the back door which was 20 feet to my right swung open and then closed with a slam. Startling Sarah who indicated it happen often. I took a close look at the door which has a spring and piston closure system, making the door quite forceful to open. Nothing else occurred the first night.

SECOND NIGHT:

I started my vigil again at 9pm in the front portion of the shop and almost immediately saw a dark shadow-like humanoid silhouette which I would see from the corner of my eye at least a dozen times this night in various places. I joined Jack and Sarah in the back after an hour and sat on my stool till about 11:30 when, quite distinctly, voices could be heard by all three of us. It seemed to come from the front room as if costumers were speaking to one another, but when I went through the door to the front of the shop they ceased and no one was there. I returned to the back and asked if we might have heard sounds from the adjoining pizza shop but Jack informed me they closed at 10 and the employees always left by 11pm.

Jack left at midnight again and I went up front to use the restroom. The restroom was in the back right corner of the cafe part (looking from the front door). I locked the door and immediately heard shuffling foot steps outside of it, followed by a knock. I called out, letting Sarah know the bathroom was occupied and startled when I heard a very masculine voice respond with a single word, “Lee”. When I returned the back room Sarah had heard nothing and swore she hadn’t been in the front part of the shop. I told her what had happened she she became upset and when I went out the back door for a smoke she came with me. Returning about 10 minutes later we found that another event had occurred.

To decorate dough nuts that need chocolate frosting on top, you need to put out an electric cooking pan that you set on low and fill with melted chocolate which you dip the tops of the dough nuts into. We came back to the decorating counter, and the melted chocolate (which I had noticed as normal before leaving) had a hand print in it. Five fingers and a palm, a normal hand print, as if someone had put there hand palm down into the chocolate, was obvious and around the edges of the print the chocolate had harden and cracked as it if was cold. Sarah was very upset at this, crying, and rushed to stir the chocolate and erase the print before I could take a picture. I’ll admit to being angry at this and asked her to not do this again (still makes me mad to think about it, even to this day). It was proof to me at least that something more than could be explained away was happening at this business.

After Sarah calmed and returned to her work I turned to sit back on the stool I was using to find it gone. I hadn’t noticed if it was gone already when we came back from smoking so I am unsure of just when this happened but the stool was not to be found in the back room. I went forward and found it toppled over and resting beneath one of the tables in the cafe. No evidence or markings where found on the stool. I returned it to the back and sat.

The delivery driver came to work at 2:30am, a half an hour early at my request so I could speak with him. He reported seeing similar shadowy shapes when he was in the shop and had also seen the opening/closing door event at least 3 times from the parking lot when he was coming in to work. He never experienced anything more because he never spent more than an hour in the shop while picking up the deliveries.

THIRD NIGHT:

The shop was closed on Saturdays so Friday night I was given permission to spend the night alone at the shop. I started out in the back room this night and again the shadowy apparitions were prevalent, never lasting for more than an instant and always just out of the corner of they eye. I set up the tape recorder and also set up the chocolate melting pan in hopes of another hand print. No hand print occurred and the night passed uneventfully until an hour before I planned on leaving (4am). I was making a last walk through of the building and in the front section behind the register I found the 3 glass doors to the dough nut display case were all open. They had latches on them and on a previous walk through had been closed. I suspected something paranormal and stood still, waiting for more. After 10 minutes of nothing I decided I’d been wrong and closed and latched the 3 doors. When I turned to walk away the last door on the left opened again, followed one at a time by the other 2. Another 10 minutes, nothing, and again I closed the doors and latched them. When I went to close the last door on the right though there was considerable resistance and in the same instance a very audible voice which I believe said “HEY!” was heard right next to me and the resistance on the door increased drastically, swinging open and knocking me to the floor. These doors are very light and a definite weight could be felt shoving it open against me. I stood and waited, suddenly very aware I was alone and expecting some sort of assault. When none came within a few minutes I gathered my things and left.

CONCLUSIONS:

I spoke the following week with all 3 employees and the owner, relating everything that had happened. The owner was concerned about what had happened to me the night I was alone and asked that no further investigations be done. He also agreed at the behest of his employees to alter the shops scheduling so that there were always 2 people working at any time. This satisfied Sarah the most. I thanked the owner for his cooperation and agreed to end the investigation.

Nothing ever showed up in any of the photographs I took, nor in any of the recordings but the amount of eye witness experiences, including my own, lead me to believe this site was very active with the presence of some unknown entity. The physical characteristics of some of the occurrences are similar to poltergeist activities and occur regularly enough for me to believe this may be an inhuman haunting, but without an further investigations this can’t be decided for certain.

I was alone the third night, so even my own little assault can’t be shown as conclusive of anything but I think that a threatening presence is possible. Follow up calls to the workers found that having no one work alone seemed to keep the amount of events down, though everyone still reported seeing the shadowy form and occasionally hearing voices from the front room. In the time since all the employees I interviewed have quit working at this location including the owner. With this I ended any follow up calls and don’t even know if the shop is open anymore or if another has replaced it. I’ll note here that all individual’s names are changed to protect identity.

If it is still around, I ask any inquiring folks to not disturb any current owners or employees with questions as they weren’t around when I investigated nearly 6 year ago. Though if you are in the area and just want to see for yourself if anything more happens there (probably not, most poltergeist activity burns itself eventually), please behave yourself.

Related posts:

1. Published Case #1: A Demon’s Passing Interest
2. Case File: Haunted Hotel Rooms
3. Case #2: Spectral Garden
4. Case #4: The Witch’s Circle