The old, now defunct Borders Bookstore was on Queen Street, beside the Aotea Centre, and in the same building as the Village Cinema complex. Nestled in the same bustling block as the mighty Town Hall and further down the allegedly haunted favourite, the Civic Theatre. A multi-level shopping complex housing floors of books covering every genre spectrum, magazines, a cafe, and an expansive basement level full of music and movies. The store closed down in 2012 due to financial difficulties.
One from the case files…
On the ground floor, near the lift on the left-hand side, the floor is made of tiles. This area is always cold compared to other sites. As a teenager, I would help my mum with cleaning the building after hours. It was always around that bottom floor level that I’d feel differently. When I cleaned around the area, I always got goosebumps and felt very cold in certain areas. I often felt sudden blasts of ice-cold in my face in a certain part of the store, and I couldn’t figure out where it came from. I found out later a young boy had fallen down the stairs and died there in that very same spot. We would both also see shadows walking around when we were working.
Another person commenting on the shadows figures stated
I went to Borders late one night. It wasn’t busy, and no one was down on the bottom floor where I was browsing. I was looking through the books when one fell to the floor a few feet away from me. I just ignored it and carried on reading. About a minute later, another book fell to the floor, a few meters from the last. Then another book. This time, it was on the opposite side of the racking where I was standing. Thinking I wasn’t the only one on that floor, I looked around the corner to see who was there. At that moment, I saw a black shadowy figure duck around the far end of the bookshelf, like it was running away to hide from me. A prankster. Thinking it was someone I knew playing a joke on me, I looked around to see where they were. I was still the only one in the store at that time. Such a weird feeling!
