 Jeff and Jackie Hansen share their Lakeport grocery store with a playful ghost they've named “Henry.” Photo by Elizabeth Larson.
LAKEPORT – There are many challenges associated with being a business owner – attracting customers, paying the bills, managing staff and keeping an eye on your ghost.
Well, that last one isn't exactly the norm, unless you're Jeff and Jackie Hansen.
The Hansens have owned Lakeport's Grocery Outlet Bargain Market on S. Main Street since 2003.
During the daytime there's a lot of activity in their bustling store. And, apparently, there's also a fair amount of goings on at night, too.
Employees who have worked at night after the store closes or in the early morning hours before it opens have reported paranormal activity – the smell of cigar or pipe smoke, a cold presence brushing by them, doors swinging open, equipment being moved, and things falling off of counters or flying off the shelves, and not because there's a sale on.
They attribute that to “Henry,” the name they've given the spirit that keeps up a pretty steady presence in the store.
“If it is a ghost, it basically stays hidden during the day,” said Jackie Hansen.
Jeff Hansen said the store's former owners mentioned the ghost, which he and his wife have both experienced.
Jackie Hansen explained that the store itself is rather a noisy place at night – its freezers make loud noises, and there are the usual creaks and other sounds that the building has.
But what they've seen goes beyond that.
One night, as the couple was in the store doing maintenance, they were walking down the aisle where paper products are located. Jackie Hansen said paper towels suddenly began flying off the shelves and across the aisle.
As weird and creepy as the experiences have been, Jackie Hansen said it's not a bad ghost. “He likes to play,” she said, adding that it's kind of cool.
Still, Jackie Hansen said she won't come into the store alone at night.
Jeff Hansen is in the store by himself quite a bit, and so he's had some of the most notable experiences.
“It's an eerie feeling if you come in after hours,” he said.
A former police officer, Jeff Hansen said he isn't a big believer in ghosts, but he believes something is definitely going on in his store.
In June of 2008, he came in early one Sunday morning to clean the store's floors. He went into the back of the store and began putting water into a floor cleaner that weighs several hundred pounds and doesn't move easily unless it's on.
He stepped out of the room for a moment and came back in to see that the floor cleaner had been moved across the room, with water spilling all over the floor.
Thinking his daughter, Olivia, had come in and was pulling a prank on him, he yelled out for her, and walked through the store. Going to the front door, he saw no other cars outside, found the doors were still locked and realized he was all by himself.
Henry also has knocked over wine bottles – managing not to break them – and has a propensity for pushing things off of counters, said Kris Kuhlman, a longtime store employee.
Kuhlman said she's come in many mornings and had her hair stand up. “I just feel like somebody is watching me,” she said.
Like the Hansens and other store employees, Kuhlman doesn't feel that Henry is a bad ghost. “He just likes to play games.”
Although, Kuhlman noted, she's occasionally been annoyed by the antics and has called out loud to Henry to knock it off.
One former employee claimed to have seen Henry on the video, although he didn't describe exactly what the entity looked like, Kuhlman said.
Another staffer, Robert Hamby, said he was working in an aisle one day when a stack of macaroni and cheese boxes – which he said are stacked in a very stable way – unexpectedly came crashing down.
Sometimes employees have heard the sound of crashing bottles only to come out and find nothing has fallen, and there's no broken glass. Many of the employees noted that there is a lot of activity all over the store, although the wine and beer area – the spirits, if you will – is one of the places where Henry seems to like to hang out.
Jeff Hansen said one former grocery manager was very unnerved by being in the store after hours. Hansen arrived at the store early one morning to find that employee standing outside and refusing to go back inside the store by himself.
There's some question about what the building used to house, or what was on the grounds. None of the employees know for sure, beyond the fact that a Safeway used to be there.
As if on cue and just in time for Halloween, Henry made another appearance on Thursday night in an incident that Jeff Hansen said tops the floor cleaner prank.
He said his closing manager called him at home to tell him that the door of the back room freezer flew open by itself shortly before the store closed for the evening.
The manager, who was busy cleaning the floors, heard a loud bank at each of the store's back rollup doors and then the freezer walk-in door flew open with a lot of force. Hansen believes he's caught the incident on surveillance video.
Of course, not every odd thing or accident that happens can be blamed on Henry.
During a typical morning at the store this past week, bottles of balsamic vinegar came crashing down in one of the aisles.
Was it Henry?
No, said Jackie Hansen, glancing toward a nearby employee. “It's Gregory.”
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Lakeport Blvd. was created to provide access to south Main St. from Hwy. 29 when they did the straightening and widening of Hwy. 29 , since the only other access was at the 175/ Soda Bay rd. The location of the Grocery Outlet was a pear orchard as I recall. It was also outside of the city limits at the time. Main St. ended at U.S.A. gas station. There was a little market on the site of the law office net to the station.