The Ghosts of Eagle Market

Eagle Market as it looks today, via Wikipedia

Suburban shopping malls can be called many things, but “Fortean” is not one of them.  You go in, buy your clothes or shoes or living-room rug or whatever, stop at the food court for an indigestible sandwich, and off you go to do other daily errands.  They are generally not places of mystery, or alarm, or downright spookiness.

All that is what gives the shopping mall discussed in today’s post a proud place in the hallowed halls of Strange Company HQ.  You don’t see very many malls where the most notable customers are ghosts.

In 1975, the east-end slums of Derby City, England, were cleared to make way for the building of the Eagle Market shopping mall.  Right from the start, the project seemed to have a curse over it.  Construction workers reported that when they were alone, they would hear uncanny noises and screams around them.  Tools would mysteriously vanish, only to reappear in the most unlikely places.  After the mall opened, the eerie occurrences only increased, terrifying the shop owners.  Local newspapers, naturally, had a field day telling readers about the “haunted mall.”  The stories became so widespread that the Eagle Market’s management, concerned about what this would do to their business, took out a court injunction ordering reporters to stop covering the supernatural doings.

This attack on freedom of the press did nothing to calm things down at the Eagle Market.  The standard poltergeist rappings, crashes, screams, and disappearing objects continued.  Electrical devices would turn themselves on and off.  Clothes hangers would swing on their racks.  Mall staffers would hear their names called out…only to find they were completely alone.  A number of shop managers saw shadowy figures flitting through their storerooms and walking through walls.  One night, long after the mall closed for the day, security guards spotted a little girl wandering through a clothes store.  Assuming the child had accidentally strayed from her parents and been locked in, the guards thoroughly searched the mall for her.  However, she was never seen again.  On another occasion, half-a-dozen shoppers were treated to the sight of a group of flying shoes.

The Derby City Council leaders were so concerned about Eagle Market business owners possibly abandoning the mall, that they resorted to one of the most delightful details I’ve found in any supernatural case:  they issued a pamphlet titled “Your Poltergeist and How to Deal With It.”

The document assured mall tenants that poltergeist phenomena was “common” and “natural.”  Just one of those things business owners sometimes had to deal with, like chronically late employees or shoplifters.  Given time, the pamphlet stated consolingly, the ghostly activity would fade, and then go away entirely.

Eight years went by, and this optimistic prediction had yet to come true.  In early December 1983, a janitor quit after hearing a woman’s voice screaming “almost like a dog in pain.”  Fearing further walkouts, the mall owners summoned a group of Anglican church leaders, headed by the Bishop of Derby.  The clergymen were brought to the mall’s basement, where they conducted an exorcism.

Regular readers of this blog will know that poltergeists tend to respond to such things with a horse laugh.  The occult occurrences continued at such a rate, that a second exorcism was conducted a few months later.  This repeat attempt appeared to be more successful.  The poltergeist activity gradually dwindled until the mall was rebuilt in 1990.

As far as I know, the site--now known as "Derbion”--is now as humdrum and unghostly as any decent shopping mall should be.