2017, November 13: A Grocery Store Ghost

On November 13, 2017, the surveillance cameras at a grocery store in Sansom Park, Texas, USA, caught something very unusual... a dark mass moving from left to right across the scene. While the full video is over two minutes, the part everyone is worried about is in just the last 20 seconds or so.

        The video was posted to YouTube by user Mike Straight on November 14, and he made a very clear claim about what the video display:

"...you will see a real black ghost going into the building, this took place in Sansom Park, TX, at skips food mart. this grocery store believed to be hunted, employees always seeing, and hearing strange things especially at night time. This place was built at the top of Indian cemetery."

No other ghostly activity was filmed at the store, nor have I seen previous public claims to spooky matters, and this appears to be the first video 'Mike Straight' has posted; so it's a matter of personal choice to believe Straight's claims or not. What we do have is a strange shadowy mass that is clearly not related to car lights or other obvious activity in the video.

        The story was picked up by the Fox4 News, who appear to be local to the area. They published an article on the event on November 15, and interviewed some of the staff at Skip's Grocery. Overall, they felt it was a spooky video: Mohammed Hammad is quoted as saying "after seeing that video, I would say it's haunted. There's no explanation for it. It's like supernatural." Another employee, Ahmad Hammad (Mohammad's brother), who was actually working the store at the time the video was filmed, said that it didn't look like smoke or fog, and if it was a shadow, then it should have vanished when it reached the lighted area by the wall.

Practical Answers, Please Ignore...

        Now, it wasn't mentioned by Fox4 News -- though it seems obvious that they would have seen it -- but the comments that were dropped onto Mike Straight's YouTube video posited a very straight forward explanation for the strange mass: it could have been a bug walking across the camera.

        The camera was focused for a distance at least eight feet away; so a bug sitting directly on the lens would be completely out of focus, and appear to be a dark smudge. It also would stay a dark smudge as it appeared to approach lights on the wall, because those lights would actually be a good distance behind the bug. The bug theory also explains the wandering path of the dark mass, which strays slightly side to side as it cross the view. Frankly, this is my take of what I see in the video... but you may see it differently.