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Supermarket Blues

I used to suffer from nausea, feelings of depression and occasional violent impulses when I ever I enterred a branch of Morrisons in Morley, West Yorkshire, for a period of about 3 months sometime in the mid 90´s. The easiest way for Paul to remove his negative emotions upon entering the store is to walk up to the Supermarket manager and tell him he can shove his 190p an hour up his a**e, it certainly worked for me.
 
Anyone check out the cover article on the latest FT? Someone really needs to go to these places with some fairly sensitive sub and ultra sonic recording equipment to see if there is anything going on.

My cousin is recording electrical impulses from individual neurons. The signal has to be run through this high-tech amplifier thinger. Virtually EVERYTHING has to be blocked out with a special barrier, lest it interferes with recording the signal. The sound interference comes from lights, any kind of electronic equipment, even just the building shifting slightly. So even if on a small scale, these interferences are affecting every part of your body. I'm guessing the right wavelength or combination could cause any of these symptoms.
 
"When Morrisons first opened, I worked there for a year on the night shift with about ten others. We had a number of experiences mainly huge bouts of aggression and depression - now this wasn't the usual night shift blues - many of the workforce had prior experience of working through the night but felt something completely different while working there.

Obviously being interested in the paranormal I began to question why.

The answer seemed too obvious when I saw a church nearby and the removed gravestones on the Langsett Road side. Alot of the Morrisons development is beneath part of the old graveyard, according to old maps of Sheffield available from the Sheffield Archives.

I often question if it was the dead telling us something about the disrespectful way the developers acted or whether the ghost/remnants of a soldier or prisoner at the Barracks was trying to make contact.

Interestingly, after the development of the Supertram stop outside of the Sheffield Cathedral a number of people reported sickness and fear while walking across the disrupted gravestones - it may be a phenomenon that needs further investigation."

Reply to Paul's Morrison's Letter (when sent to Mysterymag.com)
 
Everything technology has built puts out some definite emanations and their effect on the human body can be felt by many people. Could be ghosts certainly not ruling it out. I do know that I have an intense reaction to overhead fluorescent lights. I've disabled the ones in my office. The sound they make is audible to my ears and very distracting and upsetting. Plus the quality of light even when the lights are functioning perfectly makes me sort of ill. I think it's the wavelength of the light. I can see the waver, quiver, or bounce of the light and it makes me kind of nauseous as it's like looking at everything with a slight jiggle in the corner of your vision.
 
It's interesting reading this just now. The other day there was a high-pitched hum/buzz annoying me. I traced it to a fluorscent light about 12 feet away from my cubicle. My boss thought I was a little ... well... strange in my request to investigate, and he couldn't hear anything standing just under the light. Anyway, he opened it up and the first bulb/tube he pulled out caused the sound to cease.

Unfortunately, there is still another high-pitched noise annoying me. I traced it to a computer or power supply in a cubicle across the hall. The person in the adjacent cubicle couldn't hear the sound until standing directly beside the computer.

So now I'm wondering if there's something freaky going on with my ears or whatnot. I'd like to purchase or borrow equipment which detects high-frequency sound (so I know I'm not going crazy), but I had trouble locating exactly what I was after on the internet. Anyone know what I need? I'd like to be able to see the wavelength or frequency of the sound and perhaps it's intensity or volume? And something which is good at picking up stuff at the higher range of human hearing? And all for a reasonable price?
 
Some years back, I went in to see the boss about something, and eventually asked if the high-pitched beeping wasn't getting on his nerves ('cos it was getting on mine!) He couldn't hear anything, and nor could the secretary who came in a few seconds later.

About lunchtime, I was back in my office when the boss came in with his pager. The noise was the low battery alarm. The pager had been in a closed briefcase behind his desk: he didn't hear it until opening the case to get his sarnies.

In the 'factory' area of the same place, the radio was on all day, flat out. Whenever I worked in there, I asked for it to be turned down just enough to stop the speaker distorting. The volume didn't bother me, but the distortion was physically painful.
 
Really?

I have very low hearing abilities.
My doc was going to test it and see how low I could go but she didin't have equipment that could range low enough.

For me, all radios and beepers emit a low buzzing or humming that drives me freaking insane!
I don't do beepers!
 
Near where I used to live, there's an area of road (Widmore Rd, Bromley, the town end) that *really* used to bother me every time I walked down it.
There's a high pitched whining noise along a stretch about 50 yards long that really went right through me - did not like it at all, almost physically painful. It was only audible down one side, so I just took to walking down the other and never found an explanation for it.
At the time, for some reason, I did put it down to the burglar alarm on one of the houses emitting some weird frequency: the sound seemed to be worse the closer you were to it.

I once asked my dad if he could hear it too, and he said not. But then, I always thought our telly emitted a strange high-pitched whistle that he said he couldn't hear. My hearing doesn't seem to be particularly acute otherwise, though.
 
I seem to have quite accute hearing in some areas. I can normaly tell if lightbulbs are going to go by the sound they make. Actually some lightbulbs make sounds for several days before they fail!
 
Saw an odd thing in Tesco today. Passing the end of one aisle and glancing along it, I saw a small can of something rolling on its rim (i.e. the flat ends were not vertical). It rolled in a circle of about 4 feet diameter, and disappeared under the stands on one side. Oddly enough there was no-one near the can, and no-one else seemed to notice it.

The only explanantion I can think of is that someone in the adjoining aisle had dropped it (or maybe rolled it deliberately) under the stands. Even so, I should not think it is an easy thing to get a can rolling on its rim.

Very odd.
 
I think sometimes even the lighting in these places can have an effect on people
 
Alarms and lighting

When I was younger, my mother always liked to shop in a particular, and very pricey, clothing store. But whenever we went there, I had to run for the exit within minutes. I could hear the alarm system; no one else seemed to hear it -- not my mother, not the helpers, not other customers. The sound went right through my head.

I also used to see the flickering of flourescent lights wherever such fixtures were used, even when the lights were quite new. I think most people must be right on the edge of seeing them (or even seeing them unconsciously) which may contribute to feelings of panic, and so on, in large, brightly lit stores.

My husband becomes quite irritable in such stores, but does just fine in the local foodstore which uses incandescent lighting.
 
I used to live in a fairly large town in southern Arizona. Just prior to the city becoming a full-fledged metropolis in the late '90's, the only place one could really shop in town was a large indoor shopping mall located in one of the city's fancier sections. As this was the first ''real'' mall in town, it basically became the focus for much of the town's activities. It was the community gathering place & everybody shopped there, on the weekends there were performances by the local orchestra, it was the place kids hung out after school- heck, my older brother even met his (ex)wife there. Fast-forward about fifteen years, and with the advent of a booming local economy, the town now has five other much bigger and better shopping malls, the once-ritzy old neighborhood looks like a demilitarized zone, and once the shops began to leave and relocate to the newer shopping malls in the suburbs, the place itself had basically become a dump. I hadn't been by in years, but I found myself in the area a few months back and decided to have a look. In it's heyday, the place would have been literally packed with shoppers, but what I found was pretty much one huge, mostly dark, empty barn with shuttered shopfronts and a couple of 99 cent stores. I began to experience an odd sensation of isolation mixed with sadness, and I don't know why, as I had never been particularly fond of the place. The more I walked, it just felt sort of suffocating to be in there. I found the nearest exit and got the hell out. A couple of weeks after this, I was introduced to a friend of my brother-in-law, a guy who actually has the job of overseeing the mall's janitorial staff. I was surprised to hear him say that he was having difficulty keeping positions filled, as the people in his employ are convinced that the lavatories are haunted. They supposedly hear laughter coming from the empty restrooms, and are constantly having to turn off the water faucets which supposedly begin running by themselves. Well. I know one place I'm not planning to pee anytime soon.
 
I get headaches and nausea in the ASDA at the Parkhead Forge here in Glasgow, and really, really bad headaches in the sports shop (forgotten the name, the one you go downstairs to get into) across from HMV on Argyll St. Precinct.
 
There used to be a very loud humming noise in my street, we never could track it down, but it certainly felt very creepy. One time I woke up from a particularly vivid and terrifying dream about being kidnapped by UFO's, to hear the humming outside. As I was still shaking from my dream, I didn't have the courage to pull the curtain to check it really wasn't a UFO outside. We never did figure out what the humming was, but we assumed it was to do with Heathrow - rather then any more frightening alternative.

A lot of these 'creepy' supermarkets seem to be Morrisons. There was a Safeways here that became a Morrisons...and became an uncomfortable, tense place to shop, that I avoided if at all possible. It's the only supermarket in the area, and yet it's closing because no-one shops there. Are we sure Morrisons isn't the front for some forces of evil? (Kidding...probably)
 
escargot1 said:
I had just the opposite experience last year. ... I felt completely blessed.
Click to expand...

We have a cheap "C1000" supermarket in Rotterdam where I feel calm and relaxed and like to go - even though their selection of goods is limited and the quality very average.

There's a kind of greyish / drab / 1960's atmosphere that I find very soothing and relaxing. And it reminds me of an Italian supermarket that I frequented in many holidays.

And the spacing of the shelves is just right. We have many supermarkets in our neighborhood where the spacing is plain wrong and you get a claustrophobic, cave like atmosphere.
 
I wonder whether any of these disturbing markets have subliminal advertising being broadcast on the sound system along with the typical Muzak, and that it could accidentally make people feel testy or frightened.

I bought a subliminal weight loss tape many years ago. All I could hear (consciously) was a soothing swoosh sound with ocean waves added, but the subliminal messages must have been awfully insulting. Listening to it made me feel so enraged that I had to smash it and throw it away !
 
When we were kids, ma and pa shopped at Safeway. We had one in the town centre that was a reasonable size (it was the biggest supermarket in the town) but sometimes we went to a nearby Safeway that was much bigger. Us kids loved it but mum hated it. She said it was build under a power cable and apparently we would always play up when we shopped there.

(Off topic slightly but my mum has always hated being near the power lines and has always had problems with buildings built underneath them. She wasn't alone in this either)

Personally, I have been back to that Safeway, now a morrisons and it seems fine. In fact I like most Morrisons. ASDA tho, is another matter. I hate the one nearest us. In fact, I get panicky at the thought. But it might be more because I know when I get inside, the morons will attack. But generally I find this particular one has very harsh lighting.

I actually quite like supermarkets, just when they're empty. I also love visiting foreign supermarkets!
 
Oooh, i drive past there during my driving lesson every week! Next time i will be having a much closer look!
 
I live near to the barracks too! my great-great grandad was stationed there in the mounted artillary. I allways feel fine there but I suppose it's due to the family links with the building.
we have some lovley pictures of him during his service there I will see if I can get some scanned.
 
CrazyRedHead said:
I bought a subliminal weight loss tape many years ago...Listening to it made me feel so enraged that I had to smash it and throw it away !
Click to expand...

LOL! That's one way to lose the pounds (£s)!

I like the way you had to smash it and throw it away! Oh the little details!
 
Going to my local Lidl whilst under the effects of hash cake is interesting. The products are all strange unfamiliar brands, there are peculiar vegetables and the colours are all extremely garish.
Last time i spent an inordinate amount of time being impressed by the aubergines... I know they're not 'peculiar' but they look like a made-up cartoon vegetable would look like. If someone said to the Disney corporation "Design a new vegetable " it would have looked like an aubergine. Plus they feel like they're made of high density foam rubber. And they are a splendid colour!
 
A while back, I had a really good rant, about being treated like a potential criminal, in a local Lidl store, where I couldn't walk round with a small rucksack on my back, or even hang on to the original trolley that I'd put a Euro deposit into (you had to take a different trolley out of the shop. Crazy.

I called the shop something very rude about Germans, at the time, in Dutch.

Anyway, more evidence that Lidl is echt een mof supermarkt ketting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/27/germany.supermarkets


German supermarket chain Lidl accused of snooping on staff

Kate Connolly in Berlin. The Guardian, March 27 2008

Lidl was accused of recording how many times staff went to the toilet, as well as intimate details of their personal lives. Photograph: Graham Turner

The German discount supermarket chain Lidl has been accused of spying on its employees, including recording how many times they went to the toilet as well as details about their love lives, personal finances and menstrual cycles.

An investigation by the German news magazine Stern uncovered an extensive espionage system in its shops across Germany. It obtained hundreds of pages of documents gathered by detectives allegedly employed by the chain to find out about its staff. The surveillance took place via mini-video cameras installed by detectives. The official reason given to store managers was to reduce shoplifting.

Critics have accused Lidl of using "Stasi methods", referring to the secret police of the former communist East German state who kept track of the most banal and intimate details of hundreds of thousands of citizens' lives.

The detectives' records include details of precisely where employees had tattoos as well as information about their friends. "Her circle of friends consists mainly of drug addicts," reads one record. The detectives also had the task of identifying which employees appeared to be "incapable" or "introverted and naive".

While most incidents seem to have occurred in Germany, the most shocking one allegedly occurred at a Lidl store in the Czech Republic, where a female worker was forbidden to go to the toilet during working hours. An internal memorandum, which is now the centre of a court case in the republic, allegedly advised staff that "female workers who have their periods may go to the toilet now and again, but to enjoy this privilege they should wear a visible headband".

Recording how a German employee identified as Frau M spent her break, one report read: "Frau M wanted to make a call with her mobile phone at 14.05 ... She received the recorded message that she only had 85 cents left on her prepaid mobile. She managed to reach a friend with whom she would like to cook this evening, but on condition that her wage had been paid into her bank, because she would otherwise not have enough money to go shopping."

A Hamburg labour lawyer, Klaus Müller-Knapp, said the transcripts were "scandalous to the highest degree" and breached laws on freedom of expression.

Human rights groups and trade unions pledged to take up the case.

While denying any knowledge of the Czech case, Lidl, which has more than 7,500 stores in 24 countries, including Britain, confirmed that surveillance had taken place in Germany. It said the purpose was "not to monitor staff, but to establish possible abnormal behaviour".

It added that in retrospect the company distanced itself from the transcripts. "The references and observations are not in keeping ... with our understanding of how people should treat each other."
Click to expand...
 
A while back, I had a really good rant, about being treated like a potential criminal, in a local Lidl store,
Click to expand...

I had the same thing at my local Lidl. The security guy told me to TAKE MY HANDS OUT OF MY POCKETS!!! I naturally said something very rude and my hands remained firmly IN my pockets.
I don't like the way that you can't get out of those stores unless you squeeze past the queue....
 
Not been into a Lidl yet, though I know of at least two new ones in the county.

Never had any problems with my backpack in my local Tesco, nor with my brolly (which is in fact a cunningly disguised machine-gun - mwah ha ha! :twisted: )

(Mind you, one of the security men there has the avuncular look of Prof. Robert Winston.... 8) )

But I do find it difficult to shop with my hands in my pockets... ;)
 
Yup, what d'you push the trolley with?



:shock:
 
I love this thread - obscure and recherche with bizarre overtones and also about real peoples experiences. Definitely has the potential for someone to do an article in the magazine.

I happen to have lived near and experienced some of the places discussed. The first post about the Hillsborough Morrisons brought back memories of a few years I spent in Sheffield in the early 90s. As I recall the building did have a local reputation for being haunted and I remember the feeling of oppression. My wife really didn't like it and we used to trek to Rotherham instead. I think I commented about the Safeway supermarket (as was) next to the railway age in Crewe in the elsewhere on this board. I lived in that area in the late 90s and used to actively avoid that. Strangely the adjacent 'Railway Age' museum has the haunted reputation, but I used to take my young son there with no-one else there and experienced nothing - the Supermarket gave me the serious creeps for no rational reason.

I spent my childhood years in the Trafford area of Manchester and used to play in the area now occupied by the eponymous shopping centre. There was actually a small farm in the area at the time with one of those ponds they dig for cattle in the field. Opposite the centre (where there is now a Tulip hotel I think) was an area overgrown with ferns where we used to make 'dens' and play with discarded bits of industrial equipment (the thought of my kids doing that now fills me with horror). That whole area on the fringe of Trafford Park had that marvellous gloom of creeping industrial deriliction (this was the late 70s). At the time I used to find the atmoshpere strangely mysterious and oddly exhilirating but the faux Italian Piazzas that occupy the space now are way more frightening.

I now live in the outer suburbs of North New Jersey and have noticed definite patterns of supermarket ambience here too. So far though, this has been more to do with aisle layout and grotesque marine-themed displays in the seafood aisle (the lobsters are live in tanks here). I will see if Weird NJ has any recommendations for eerie supermarkets (probably in Seacaucus)....
 
I have had a life-long hatred of supermarkets (and similar stores such as Target, Myer etc...). I couldn't stand going shopping with my mom when a kid, I hate doing shopping now.

Bizarrely though, there are a few exceptions. I can (barely) handle my local Woolworths, never will go into a Target or Myer unless dragged by force, there is a Coles near my work that I find impossibly depressing and have only visited twice and won't go near again.

However, I do like my local K-Mart and Big W!

I have no problems with the Franklins in my suburb, but can't stand the one in the next,

Ok, I always thought all of this was a bit peculiar about me, but apparently not! :D
 
Hey ideasman, I have photos of the erstwhile Safeway/Railway Age area that you mentioned, taken from the road bridge nearby. I'll dig one out and post it. :D
 
Thanks Escargot! I'd love to see those.

Actually we may be moving back to Nantwich soon (at least temporarily).

The only other part of the world where I know the supermarkets is Auckland, New Zealand. Nothing strange there but maybe I should seek one that was built on a Maori sacred site. (I work for a medical publisher with a large carbon footprint). Australia would be fertile ground (though my travels have only taken me to downtown Sydney).

To be honest, in terms of Fortean psychogeography, the North of England is very hard to beat. Jenny Randles touches on this in some of her books. My own 'write that book' fantasy concerns taking an east-west trip staring in North Wales/Merseyside progressing through Manchester and the Cheshire plain and over the Pennines and through Yorkshire. Traditions/legends all forms of Forteana weird and bizarre treated with healthy Northern scepticism but with ample treatment of the rich tapestry - both urban/contemporary and historical/traditional. The working title is 'The Haunted North'. Not too credulous and 'woo woo' (as Rynner would say) but detailing the wealth of stories and their histortical and cultural backgrounds. Also I'd like to point out significant similar themes in the rest of the world. Supermarkets would feature in the former. Indeed 'Haunted Supermarkets in the English -speaking World' could be a whole book subject in its own right. I took some of my US colleagues around the Roman Walls of Chester last month during a visit back and I got re-inspired.

Urban landscapes with their juxtaposition of regeneration and deriliction are a penchant for me (mainly because of where I was brought up I suspsect). We went to stay with friends in St Louis, MO over Easter and there were some wonderful examples there. The so-alled 'City Museum' in an old shoe factory is like being in a Johnny Depp movie (my kids had the time of their lives but really it is quite Gothic'. The whole sun-genre of shopping centres and supermarkets bulit in these locations but somehow retaining echoes of the past is fascinating. There is something of the 'Stone Tape' about the whole area I suspect.

Anyway - I digress...(but in the spirit of the theme...)
 
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