Toys making noise when nobody is around to play with them is a pretty common “ghost” encounter. We had one ourselves with a Sesame Street Ernie doll that would randomly say “I feel great” in an empty room , in the middle of the night, etc. caught it on video once triggering with the doll just lying on the floor.
Turns out when battery voltage gets low (but not yet dead) this can happen in a circuit. I swapped out the batteries and our ghost never came back. Not surprised to hear it happening in a store where stock just sits there for a long time.
Pretty creepy though to hear that when you are lying in bed
I was in the house a couple of weeks ago when I kept hearing a voice coming from upstairs every so often I couldn't track down because it never happened when I was up there.
Which is to say, nowadays we have some toys that spontaneously speak in the middle of the day with no input too, by design. It didn't "freak me out" or anything, it was clearly an electronic sound from a speaker. Did make me ponder the idea of leaving some sort of speaker with a software-defined-radio wired into the mains so I could do a drive by of my old house a few years later and start transmitting things into it around Halloween or something, though.
I used to work for Toys R Us, so here's a random anecdote no one asked for. When you called the store and were put on hold there would obviously be hold music. The music that played? It was the same music that was playing in the store. I remember calling in one day to get my shift assignment and the music was super weird, I told me coworker and he was like "yeah that's the music they are blasting in here, it's awful."
That's pretty common, a lot of older phone systems will literally have a line input where you can hook up a looping music player, Muzak receiver, a radio (illegal but common anyways), or whatever else to provide the hold music feed and for the most part if the business has overhead audio they'll want to use that as their hold music as well.
I was a young teenager, full of knowledge and a sense of what’s cool. I was chatting with my neighbor, another kid about the same age and temperament.
My buddy’s dad, sensing an opportunity to bond with the teenagers, approached to tell us about last nights episode of the show ( which he knew we liked ). Marshaling all of his cool factor, he walked up and asked if we had seen “This is Incredible”.
Turns out when battery voltage gets low (but not yet dead) this can happen in a circuit. I swapped out the batteries and our ghost never came back. Not surprised to hear it happening in a store where stock just sits there for a long time.
Pretty creepy though to hear that when you are lying in bed
I had forgotten my son bought the Nintendo Talking Flower: https://www.nintendo.com/au/products/talking-flower/ Usually his door is closed when he leaves but that day it had been left open.
Which is to say, nowadays we have some toys that spontaneously speak in the middle of the day with no input too, by design. It didn't "freak me out" or anything, it was clearly an electronic sound from a speaker. Did make me ponder the idea of leaving some sort of speaker with a software-defined-radio wired into the mains so I could do a drive by of my old house a few years later and start transmitting things into it around Halloween or something, though.
The USA: Here's a haunted toy shop that opened ten years ago.
I was a young teenager, full of knowledge and a sense of what’s cool. I was chatting with my neighbor, another kid about the same age and temperament.
My buddy’s dad, sensing an opportunity to bond with the teenagers, approached to tell us about last nights episode of the show ( which he knew we liked ). Marshaling all of his cool factor, he walked up and asked if we had seen “This is Incredible”.
We howled like hyenas.