Eerie Video Scares Up Ghost Tales at Old New Hampshire Store
March 26, 2014 — -- If you believe surveillance tapes don't lie, then a New Hampshire country store apparently has a ghost -- one that likes peanut butter squares.
Video from the Ellacoya Country Store in tiny Gilford, N.H., about 10 miles northeast of Lanconia, N.H., shows employee Heidi Boyd puttering near a counter upon which sits a covered glass display dish holding peanut butter squares.
She leaves and disappears off camera. Almost immediately, the top of the glass dish flies off, scoots across the counter, and falls onto the floor, breaking into pieces. Boyd told local TV station WMUR, which aired the tape, that she heard was a big bang, then returned to find the broken glass on the floor.
WATCH: Woman Scared Awake by Ghost Prank.
Store manager Lisa Ferraro-Gilles tells ABC News that everybody in town has their favorite explanation for how this could have happened, ranging from a small, self-contained earthquake to a puff of wind or somebody out of camera range pulling on the glass with a string. She dismisses all of those as impossible or improbable.
"We're pretty confident it's paranormal because of the little things in the past," she says. "It's foolish to think we're here all by ourselves on this planet or that our life ends with no aftermath."
The store is plenty old enough to have a ghost, she says: It dates from at least to the 1880s and may, she thinks, go back as far back as the 1700s.
Things have always been a little odd at the store, she says.
"It's little things. You'll turn the lights on, and they'll go off. Or turn them off, and they go on. People say they've felt somebody tapping them on the shoulder, when there's no one there."
Store personnel and customers, she says, have never thought much of such occurrences -- until the display dish incident.
How did the glass get from point A to point B? she asks. How was it that the peanut butter squares were entirely untouched and undisturbed?
Asked if anybody has eaten a peanut butter square since the incident, she says, "We can't keep them in house. We bake them right here."
Professionals have been called in. Ferraro-Gilles has a friend affiliated with the cable TV show "Ghost Hunters." She sent a copy of the surveillance tape to him, and he had it enhanced for study. He's visiting the store this week to investigate in person. The store hopes, she says, that this professional can confirm the presence of a ghost.
Does the incident prove that it's been one long winter in New Hampshire? Yes, she says, it's been a long winter. But as for the ghost, "We didn't ask for this."
