My close encounter with a ghost

I never truly believed in ghosts until I had my very own experience with one when I was 19 years old.  My first job was at a department store at the Santa Anita Mall in the customer service department on the third floor, where my main job was to sell Ticketmaster concert and event tickets and gift wrap.  On closing nights, I would check-in and collect all of the money bags from the cashiers throughout the whole store.  I would make sure to take in the totals and lock up the money in the safe.

On this particular night, one of the managers named Jon had come to visit me at Customer Service to let me know that he would help me close up and collect the money bags. I was thrilled because I wasn't going to do this alone.  There were two other female managers that night and one of them needed help to bring down a few dresses that she had purchased for herself from the women's department on the second floor out to her car. Jon volunteered to help her out. 

Jon and I collected everything from everyone and closed up the safe and the customer service area.  As we were walking towards the escalator, I reminded Jon about the dresses that he was going to help carry out. We were going down the escalator and started to call out the woman's name to see if she was in her storage area, and clear as day, we both heard a woman respond, "Yeah?" Jon told me, "Go down to the receiving area and I'll be right there.  I'm going to help her out." He left towards the Women's department storage area and I continued down to the first floor.  When I pushed the door to enter the receiving area, the little hairs on my arms stood straight up and chills came over my body.  Standing there with the other female manager was the Women's Department manager holding several dress slipcovers in her arms.  "How long have you been standing here?" She looked at me with a puzzled look on her face, and said, "I've been here for close to 10 minutes."  I turned around and went straight to the bottom of the escalator and shouted for Jon to get down there as fast as possible. I saw Jon's face when he came through the door and saw the two female managers and the Loss Prevention officer waiting for all of us to meet, place the alarm and lock up. Jon was in disbelief.  

I turned to Jon and said, "You heard the woman's voice, right?" He nodded his head. He walked me to my car and told me to drive safely.  The next day, I told the story to my department teammates and one of the custodians overheard my story and very calmly said, "This place used to be a Japanese internment camp back in the 1940s. A lot of people died here."  Whaaaat??? This couldn't be true. I went home and looked it up on the Internet.  Sure enough, he was right.  Does that mean that a ghost lived in the department store?  I think so! Last time I visited the mall, that department store closed down many years ago and the store is still empty.  They have expanded the mall but they haven't leased out where the department store used to be. Hmmm, I wonder why?! 

Thanks for reading,
Mayra :)