okay but hear me out — a soft steady glow that isn't a security light and isn't a work light is exactly the kind of detail that sticks with you. what color was it exactly? you said amber in the photo but did it look amber in person too? i have a whole series of paintings based on light coming out of places that should be dark, so i'm biased, but i don't think you imagined it.

did you ask the hardware store guy what happens if a circuit got cut but somebody tapped back into it? that's the part i'd wanna know. also good call not going in, free glow is never free

it was amber, definitely amber, like one of those old sodium street lamps but softer. and yeah tern that's a good question, i'll ask him tuesday when he's in. he usually tells me stuff about the mall's wiring even when i don't ask lol

amber and steady and silent is a very specific combination. no hum, no flicker? okay but hear me out: if it had been a pipe with sunlight bouncing off it or something i'd expect the color to shift as you moved. you stood still for five minutes and it held. i want to know what's in that store. do you know what happened to the shoe store's stock when it closed?

half asleep reading this from the walk home but: check if it's still there monday. things like this either stay or they don't and that tells you more than the first sighting does. also the basil is doing fine now, moved it away from the heat lamp, thanks to whoever suggested that in the other thread

> things like this either stay or they don't and that tells you more than the first sighting does

tern has accidentally described the entire method of every amateur ghost hunter who ever lived and i think he knows it

that said: bucket, "the wing's on a separate circuit that got cut" and "there is a working light in the wing" are two statements that cannot both be true. one of them is wrong and i'd like to know which one before anyone gets poetic about it

long time lurker, made an account just to say: i used to work mall maintenance (different state, not yours) and the single most common thing we found in "dead" wings was a tenant who never actually cancelled their power. lease ends, store gutted, meter still ticking because billing and facilities never talked to each other. a lamp left behind on a timer or a power strip would do exactly what bucket is describing. not saying that's it, just saying it's the boring answer i'd put money on

glowbug_88 you just described the exact scenario i was hoping to avoid lol. a lamp on a timer left behind in a gutted shoe store would explain it perfectly and i will be a little sad if that's it. still gonna ask the hardware store guy about the circuit tuesday though, and i'll do my saturday lap and see if the glow is still there

boring answer guy shows up with a fully formed theory and no photos. case closed on him. i say the glow stays and you start a case file bucket, one photo per saturday same angle. if you're already doing the lap anyway you're basically wasting evidence by not doing it

we had a stretch on the night crossings where the old terminal building was supposed to be shut down for good... and every so often a window would be lit, warm like that, no one inside when you got to it... turned out to be a caretaker with a lamp he wasn't supposed to have and a habit of napping in the break room... point is, warm light in a dead building is almost always a person who shouldn't be there, not a ghost... glad you didn't go in bucket...

Dex i love this idea and i'm doing it. one photo per saturday, same angle through the food court glass, same crop. i already keep photo albums of everything in my apartment so a dead mall glow album is basically on brand for me lol. if it's a lamp on a timer i'll be happy for the explanation and a little bummed at the same time, you know?

amber like a sodium lamp but softer could just be a leftover ballast still energized, those old mall signs ran on transformers that don't care whether the store is open. i traced a live circuit in a building everyone swore was dead once while redoing my panel box, half the feeds were labeled wrong. don't trust a label, trust a meter. if the hardware store guy says the wing's cut, ask him to prove it with a tester, not with his memory.

gearhead you're right, don't trust a label trust a meter lol. i'm gonna ask him tuesday if he'll actually test it in front of me. worst case he says no and i keep wondering, best case he comes out with one of those little pens and we both stand there in the dark wing watching it beep

> memory is not a measurement

this should be embroidered on a pillow in every facilities office in the country

that said bucket, you're now committed to four saturdays minimum. if the glow is still there in november you'll need to stop calling it "the glow" and start calling it whatever it actually is. naming things is step one

okay but hear me out — if the hardware store guy brings out a tester and the wing really is dead, then what? because a dead circuit producing light is a much less boring problem than a live one.

also i keep coming back to your five minutes of standing still. did the glow stay the same brightness the whole time or did it breathe a little? i paint light for a living and "steady" almost never means perfectly steady, it means you stopped noticing the variation

a dead circuit putting out light means somebody spliced off a feed somewhere, which is exactly how i found out a whole panel was labeled wrong. boring answer guy could still be right, but a tester settles it in ten seconds either way.

Marlowe, a lamp on a power strip doesn't breathe, it just sits there being a lamp. if the glow actually pulses, tell me before you tell anyone else, because then i'm driving out on a saturday with my meter.

Marlowe that's the thing, i noticed it later. i went back in my head and i'm not sure it was perfectly steady, but i could also just be talking myself into it now which is why i need the saturday photos. camera doesn't get excited about stuff lol

if the hardware store guy brings a tester and it beeps in a dead wing im not sleeping that night. also glow is a good name, don't let wren make you rename it, half the point of a thing like this is calling it the glow for years

fine, meter stays by the door. but i want a second photo before tuesday, not just saturday. if it's a lamp on a strip the brightness won't change. if it's a ballast going bad it'll have a hum you can pick up on your phone even in that grain. hold your phone up to the glass and record audio, don't just look.

recording audio of a mall is going to sound like a mall. case closed on that, but i'll allow it. update your title page to add a saturday count bucket, i want a tally. also glowbug still owes us a photo from his old mall, i don't forget things like that

gearhead, a hum is a great call, but fair warning: my phone audio in that wing will mostly be me breathing and the scuffed floor under my shoes. i'll try anyway. and to be clear i'm not saying it pulsed, i'm saying five minutes of standing still is long enough for your eyes to invent something. that's why i keep asking bucket what the camera sees rather than what he remembers.

first post, i lurk because i grew up in that exact kind of mall and the photo hit me like a truck. the shoe store at the end of the dead wing was always a shoe store in every one of these buildings, i swear they all signed the same lease. anyway, one thing nobody's said: check whether the glow touches the gate itself or seems to come from behind a wall. i used to mess around in an empty arcade where light leaked through a gap in the drywall from a unit that had no business being lit either. turned out the arcade and the unit next door shared a wall and somebody had run an extension cord through it years earlier. i never did find out who.

turnstile_kid's cord-through-the-wall theory gets added to the case file as exhibit A, pending photo. and glowbug still owes us a picture, i've got a sticky note now, it's official. bucket, tally page, saturday count, same angle, plus one audio file if gearhead insists. this is going to be the best documented non-event of 2026. case stays open until the meter talks.

Dex putting my wall theory in a case file is the most official thing that's ever happened to me. for real though bucket, when you take the saturday photo, crouch down a little if you can. gate gap height changes what you see — from standing you're looking over the bottom rail, from low you're looking through it, and the difference between 'behind the wall' and 'inside the store' mostly lives in that bottom six inches. sorry, i spent a lot of my youth on mall floors