The Haunted Toys “R” Us: Sunnyvale’s Playful Ghost

It looked like any other toy store. A sprawling Toys “R” Us off El Camino Real in Sunnyvale, California, packed with plastic swords, battery-operated race cars, and stuffed animals stacked floor to ceiling. But for decades, something about the building felt off. Not just eerie, but truly strange, as if something was still wandering the aisles long after the customers had gone home.

The first reports came not long after the store opened in the early 1970s. Workers began noticing cold spots in the aisles, even in summer. Taps turned on in empty bathrooms. Toys moved on their own or were found scattered across floors that had been cleaned and locked the night before. Some employees said they felt someone brush past them when no one was there. Others refused to work alone after hearing voices whisper their names.

One former worker arrived early one morning to find the previous night’s cleanup completely undone. Aisles that had been spotless were now scattered with toys again, as if someone had come through after hours to play. Another recalled being alone when a teddy bear slowly rolled across the floor in front of them, not dropped or knocked, just moving as if pushed by invisible hands.

Two employees waxing the floors late at night experienced something similar. Each time they started on a new aisle, a large teddy bear reappeared in their path. They had already moved it out of the way more than once, but no matter how often they did, it kept showing up.

Customers noticed things too. One woman felt a tug at her sleeve while walking past the action figure section. She turned around expecting to find a child, but no one was there. Another described a sudden wave of cold air, like stepping into a freezer, even though the air conditioning wasn’t on.

In another incident, a box flew from a shelf just as two people were talking about the store’s ghost stories. It came down hard and landed near one of them, startling them both into silence. There wasn’t an obvious cause. The shelf was stable, the aisle was clear, and the timing was hard to ignore.

Some occurrences were stranger still. One aisle was said to carry the scent of fresh-picked flowers, with no explanation for where it came from. In the women’s restroom, taps often turned on without anyone touching them. Several female employees refused to use that bathroom, saying it felt like someone else was there with them. Others reported feeling light touches on their arms or hair, as if someone had brushed by but left no trace.

Cash registers acted up from time to time, ringing up single items with totals that made no sense, sometimes showing figures in the hundreds of dollars with nothing but a toy on the scanner. No one could explain it, and it never happened when anyone was watching closely.

Much of the activity seemed to center around the stockroom, the upstairs offices, and certain aisles on the main floor. Staff reported hearing their names called out, only to find no one nearby. Some employees came and went quickly, while several managers either requested transfers or simply left. Over time, it became part of the store’s culture, the ghost was a better motivator than most supervisors ever had to be.

Despite all the disruption, nothing was ever violent. Many came to believe the ghost wasn’t malicious, just mischievous. Playful, even. He seemed to enjoy causing just enough trouble to get noticed, but never enough to cause harm.

One longtime staff member once said she saw the ghost clearly. Not a shadow, not a flicker, but a full-bodied figure of a young man walking past. He wore old boots, a long-sleeved white shirt, and a snap-brim grey cap that looked decades out of place. Later that same day, she heard what sounded like horses galloping past, not in the store, but just outside the edge of hearing. If the stories about him were true, then he’d once exercised horses on the Murphy farm that stood here long before the store was built.

Some researchers believe the ghost is a man named Jon, or Johan, Johnson, a Swedish farmhand who worked the land in the 1880s. The story goes that he fell in love with Elizabeth Murphy, but she didn’t return his feelings. She eventually left to be with a lawyer from the East, and Johnson, devastated, lost focus one day while chopping wood. His axe slipped and struck him fatally, either in the leg or the neck, depending on the version. He bled to death before help could arrive.

The tale eventually caught the attention of the media. In the late 1970s, psychic Sylvia Browne held a séance inside the store, accompanied by a television crew from That’s Incredible!. She claimed to contact a spirit named Johnny Johnson, likely a different version of the same man. During the séance, an infrared photo was taken that became one of the most talked-about images tied to the case. It showed a tall figure leaning against a shelving unit at the back of the store. The image was grainy, but the outline was clear, a man, wearing what looked like a cowboy hat, standing where no one had been.

Infrared photo said to show the ghostly figure spotted in the store

That photo gave the haunting a face, and reenactments on shows like Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories helped spread the legend even further. But questions lingered. Historical records confirmed that Elizabeth Murphy had lived in the area, but she was married to a man named William Taaffe. No evidence ever surfaced of a Johnny or Johan Johnson working on the farm, or dying in the manner described. Whether the story came from real tragedy or creative interpretation was never resolved.

Even so, the stories didn’t stop. When the Sunnyvale Toys “R” Us finally closed in 2018, the ghost didn’t disappear with it. A Spirit Halloween briefly moved into the space, and staff joked that the ghost had finally found the right seasonal job. When REI, an outdoor recreational supplies store, took over in 2021, flickering lights and unexplained sounds kept the old rumours alive. One employee even said they’d left a red vest hanging in the back, just in case the store’s previous resident wanted to pitch in.

This haunting never became about possessions or violent outbursts. It was always about small moments, a cold breeze, a misplaced toy, a name spoken into silence. And that might be what made it feel so real to the people who worked there. It wasn’t a movie scene or a warning from the other side. It was something they lived with every day, just under the surface of normal life.

Maybe it was just stories. A myth that grew with each new employee and each Halloween special. But for those who worked there, it wasn’t a legend. It was the everyday reality of a job in a store where the toys weren’t always the only things moving.

I visited the Sunnyvale Toys “R” Us myself in the early 1990s, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ghostly cowboy said to haunt the aisles. Instead, the only spirit I managed to encounter was the store manager, who firmly asked me to stop swinging the swimming pool noodles around like a lightsaber. Still, I remember the store feeling just a little different, a little quieter in the corners, like something was paying attention even when no one else was. That’s the thing about stories like this. Whether they’re built on fact, folklore, or a flickering fluorescent light, they leave a trace. And sometimes, that trace lingers longer than the shelves, the signs, or even the store itself.