oh this is so sad and lovely?? one light still on like the place is keeping a nightlight for whoever comes back. i'd have sat there longer honestly. marmalade would have tried to get out of the car and go investigate the arcade corridor

long time lurker, first post because this one got me. my old job had a stretch of shops like this and one unit always had a light because the alarm company ran it off their own supply. might just be boring cabling rather than ghosts. still a great photo tho

> one little strip of fluorescent right in the middle

the interesting part isn't that it's on, it's that it's the only one. one lit segment in a dead building is a decision somebody made and never revisited. would love to know what's on the other end of that circuit

fluorescent that outlives the building is almost always emergency or alarm lighting on its own circuit, not the store's. cheap fixture, single tube, runs 24/7 and nobody ever bothers to kill it. the eerie part is just that you can see it now that everything else is off. i've got a garage full of those tubes and half of them probably still fire up

okay that actually makes me feel better AND sadder at the same time haha. so the arcade corridor is basically being babysat by a fixture nobody loves. there's still a coffee can of tokens from that place in my closet somewhere, i should dig it out and post a pic

welcome back from lurking lurk_lately! and yes bucket please post the coffee can, i want to see that more than the arcade honestly. a can of tokens feels like the actual ghost in this story

okay i'm digging the can out tomorrow, gonna set the tokens up on the counter next to the bread machine like a tiny exhibit lol. cousin's gonna lose it when i send him the photo of the light. thanks for making this less creepy and more lovely everybody

if you go back in daylight look up at the ceiling in that corridor. emergency fixtures have a little battery pack and usually a test button on the lens. if it's a regular troffer with a magnetic holder then it's just tied to a circuit nobody pulled the breaker on. either way it's wiring, not a nightlight.

a fixture nobody loves is somehow worse than a ghost bucket. it just sits there doing its job with no one to say thank you. i'm the same about my oldest pothos honestly, nobody compliments it and it keeps going anyway

reminds me of the waiting room lamps at the terminal... years after they shut the passenger side there was still a light burning in the far corner of the concourse. turned out the cleaners had a key and kept their own little corner going, mops and a kettle in there... you lot see a ghost, half the time it's just somebody's Tuesday...

oldsalt a kettle in a dead concourse is the most comforting thing i've ever read on here haha. and yeah Wren, habits outliving purpose, that's the whole dead mall thesis in one line. gonna frame that next to the token can. will report back tomorrow with the exhibit

oldsalt scoring two whole upvotes in one thread, somebody screenshot this before he complains about downvoters again. also counterpoint to gearhead: a mystery light is better than a working light, and if you explain the wiring you're the guy who tells people how the magic trick works at parties. case closed, the mall is haunted.

first post, this thread pulled me out of the shadows. i closed up a strip place for three years and the corridor tube in the middle was on a timer off the security panel, we were explicitly told never to touch it. i've been gone since spring so somebody's still running that timer. probably the same guy who never figures out the roll under the counter.

closingshift you just made me cry a little on a tuesday, somebody is out there still running a timer for a corridor nobody walks down. that's the most loyal thing i've heard all week and i say that as someone who waters a prayer plant that hates me

closingshift 'never touch it' is exactly the kind of rule i respect. we've got a laminated sign-out sheet by the dock door for the same reason: it's on, nobody questions it, the operation runs. mystery solved and yet still better than a mystery solved. case closed but haunted.

update: can is out! sitting on the counter next to the bread machine like a little exhibit and there are way more in there than i remembered, some still have the arcade's name stamped around the edge. also drove past in daylight and the strip is still lit, so it's a 24/7 thing. my cousin swears there used to be a guy who came in every morning just to check the arcade corridor and nobody ever knew his name

> nobody ever knew his name

that's the detail that turns this from a wiring question into a personnel question. a daily unnamed check-in implies a rota, which implies somebody upstream still holds that rota in their head. anyone got a name would be a paper trail. nobody having one usually means it was never formal to begin with

post a daylight shot of the fixture itself and i'll tell you in ten seconds which one it is. if the lens is a big milky rectangle with a seam halfway down it's emergency, if it's a plain metal tray with one tube visible it's just an abandoned circuit. the unnamed guy sounds like a route guard to me, same as the alarm contractors who do a walk of every unit before they set the panel. cheap, boring, noble work

the man nobody knew the name of... we had one of those too. fella called Dougie by everyone, though nobody could ever tell you why, who swept the ramp at the terminal before the gates opened and vanished by seven. turns out he'd been doing it for eleven years after he stopped being on the payroll. the man who checks the corridor is that man. you don't need a name to do a job properly, only to be paid for it...

oldsalt dougie swept a ramp for eleven years after the pay stopped and nobody thought that was strange?? that's going to live in my head rent free. heading back saturday with the camera and a coffee, gonna get the fixture close up for gearhead and probably stand in the parking lot talking to myself for twenty minutes lol

the part that gets me is that nobody ever knew his name and nobody needed to. like he was doing it for the corridor itself, not for anybody's thank you. i'm going to be thinking about dougie at work tomorrow and my coworkers are going to think i'm fine when i am absolutely not fine

take the shot from directly underneath, not at an angle from the lot, otherwise the glare off the lens will tell me nothing. and if there's a pull chain or a test button i want to see that too. saturday works, i'll be out in the garage anyway with the lathe, send it whenever