A Kinokuniya Horror Story: Sunday Survey Halloween Edition
Sunday Survey Halloween Edition
A Kinokuniya Horror Story
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It’s one of those things that get repeated through murmurs behind the cashier counters and back office doors of Kinokuniya’s flagship store in Indonesia: “Did you know that there are ghosts around here?”
If you work in the bookstore or happen to want to work there, you’ll hear it eventually. Either from the mouth of the person who experienced the ghostly encounters or the rumors that have since become something akin to urban legends. But you don’t have to work in the bookstore to hear about them… because we’re here now to tell you all about it.
The one who met the ghost is A-san. Who is she? “I’m an employee in the bookstore,” she answers. Which department? “The one that orders the books, now. But back then, I just started out. So I was in the department that deals with people’s book inquiries and complaints about service.” Does she read books? “Obsessively.” Does A-san have a a sixth sense? “Well,” she begins, “maybe. When I was young my parents told me I was able to see spirits and all but they told me my ‘third eye’ or something like that was ‘shut off’. Whatever that means.” Does she believe in ghosts? “Yes,” she affirms. “I mean, we live in Indonesia. If any place in the world is Supernatural Central of the world, it’s this country.”
Nicely put. But unfortunately for her, believing meant seeing. And one day, back in 2005, she saw ‘it’.
The morning started like any other. A-san came to work, sat down and booted her computer. It didn’t take long for the emails to flood her inbox. The emails always flooded the inbox of customer_service@kinokuniya.co.id. She was only hoping she didn’t have to read any angry ones. Sometimes the book inquiries would take her the whole day to reply but she would take that anytime of any day compared to the complaints. Ever since being accepted into the company the year before, the complaint emails had been the one thing she dreaded most in her job.
There was a minor complaint and a string of inquiries but they were nothing she couldn’t handle. She began typing the responses and quickly lost herself in the task. Half an hour passed by and she was still typing. Another half an hour of keyboard-tapping and mouse-clicking, three mails were ready to be sent. But there was one email she couldn’t answer: it was asking about a stationery product, which she had now knowledge of whatsoever, and the time on the email stated that it had arrived on the inbox since the previous evening. She made a mental note, as well as a real one, to ask the then-stationery merchandiser, a certain Mr. TS (the Office Joker and liked to fire jokes in Sundanese), about the product.
She continued the correspondences, settling back in her chair and not wanting to leave her desk to search for Mr. TS just yet. Then halfway through responding to another batch of inquiries, she saw him. Mr. TS passed by in front of her door at around 10 A.M., wearing a white shirt and a pair of brown trousers. Her first reaction was to gasp and raise her hand, as if to call him so she could wave him inside her room. But her eyes happened to glance at the monitor and saw that two more emails had arrived. She lowered her hand instinctively and settled back down to work on them. Mr. TS passed.
“Fine. I’ll just talk to him later,” she said to her self and Mr. TS disappeared from her view. She thought nothing more about it.
A few hours later, A-san was summoned by her boss. He asked her, “Can you call TS for me? I need to talk to him about something.”
A-san, remembering that she still needed to talk to TS, immediately set out to get him. The problem was that she couldn’t find him. The back office area was not a big place. It was just around 200 or 300 square meters and it didn’t have small partitioned cubicles; the space was wide open and several rows of desks and chairs were positioned next to one another without too much enclosure. Anyone could see where everyone sat and at that moment, Mr. TS was not sitting anywhere in the office. Neither was he sitting or standing anywhere in the selling floor. A-san made sure she circled the store more than once to look for him but she just couldn’t find him.
Thinking that perhaps he went out, she asked the Stationery staff for their section head’s whereabouts. “Has Mr. TS returned from lunch?”
The staff stared at her in confusion. “Mr. TS? He’s not in today.”
“Really?” A-san replied. And wasn’t that weird? “I swear I saw him this morning at around 10,” she told the staff.
“How is that possible?” the staff responded. “Today is Mr. TS’ day off and at around 10 I was on the phone with him.”
A-san talked her co-workers in the office, all of whom confirmed that they didn’t see Mr. TS that day. Some of them, who had been in the office since the morning, didn’t even recall seeing any man bearing any resemblance to Mr. TS in Kinokuniya for the whole day at all. Another one even confirmed that that day was Mr. TS’ day off and said, “You probably saw a ghost.”
A-san laughed it off although even to her ears her laughter sounded nervous. She returned to her room and reported Mr. TS’ absence to her boss, who grumbled a little about it, but then the working day continued as usual.
The next day Mr. TS showed up and heard about A-san’s intense search for him the day before. He was amused that A-san seemed to have insisted that he’d been there when, in reality, he had been at home enjoying his off day. He suggested that perhaps what A-san saw was a spirit that liked to play with people’s eyes by adopting the appearance of others. Jokingly, she answered, “Yes, that must be it.”
A few days later, A-san was handling customer inquiries at the Customer Service counter. A cashier staff – who is older and had been working there longer than A-san – approached her and asked, “Did you really see someone who wasn’t here the other day?”
A-san nodded her confirmation. The staff then said, “I see you’ve finally met the ghost who likes to impersonate people. You’re not the first one. And you probably won’t be the last. Maybe one day you’ll see her again.”
As if speaking a prophecy, the cashier staff’s words were proven true a couple of years later. A-san saw her senior colleague, E-san, at her desk in the morning but later in the day when someone asked her where E-san was, she couldn’t find her.
All she could say was: “I could have sworn I saw her this morning at her desk, wearing her brown suit.” She paused. “But I think I just met the ghost who likes to impersonate others… again.”
THE END
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Tell us your horror stories in the comment section below for Halloween. You can write in English and/or Indonesian. The most haunting stories will get a chance to appear in Kinokuniya’s Holiday Catalogue 2011, coming out in December. Happy Halloween!
