The Drugstore Slaying
At one time, I had this great job of being the blacksmith for Museum Village in Monroe, New York. It was a fall day, and we had few visitors, so the interpreting crew spent much of the day together talking.
Someone asked if any of the buildings in the village were real or if all of them were fictional buildings built just for Museum Village. Not to go into the long, but interesting, history of the Village, the interpreter of the village drugstore said that his building was one of the real buildings that was moved to this site. He went on to ask, "You know what happened there, don't you?" We didn’t, so he went on to explain.
He said that the owner of the drugstore, or someone who worked for him, hung himself in the drugstore. They found the body hanging from one of the ceiling fans or lights. That is why the village got the building, because no one went there after that happened. He said the shop stood empty for a long time, and everything in the building was from the real shop. He said even here some of the crew would pass by and thought they saw something hanging in the shop. He said that even the cleaning lady wouldn't go in unless her husband was with her. I didn't say anything, but I too passed by this building a numbers of times and thought I saw something dark hanging in it. I didn't know this story at that time and thought it was just a reflection from the trees out front. There were a few other so called “haunted” buildings in the village, so hearing about this one didn't surprise us.
At the end of our workday, I was strolling about the village, as I often did. When I came to the drugstore, I was thinking about what was said and went in to look around. It was a typical fall evening. The sun was setting, and there were no lights on in the drugstore but more than enough nature light to see by. And besides, I had been in this building hundreds of times before. I remember creeping myself out a bit, as I looked up at the ceiling fans and wondered if that was where they found the body. After a few minutes, I decided to leave. I walked to the door, turned the knob, but the door would not open! I grabbed the knob on the other door, but that door would not open either! I grabbed the first knob again. It spun in my hand, as it never had before. I remember looking out the big glass doors and wondering how I was going to get out. Then it opened. As I said before, I had been in that building many times before and many times after that, but never had I had trouble with the doorknob as that one and only time. Maybe there was something to this “haunting” after all!
