Happy Halloween, guys and ghouls!
Your good pal Frosty Mugg is back with another terrifying tale of ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and things that go bump in the night! So grab yourself a beer, dim the lights, and prepare yourselves for FROSTY’S HALLOWEEN SPOOKTACULAR!
Wait, I already used that title.
Yeah, that was the one where I got food poisoning from bad sushi and puked all over a kid dressed like Dracula. Good times!
Alright then. Welcome to FROSTY’S BOOZE ‘N BOOS GHOST HUNT EXTRAVAGANZA!
Much better.
This story happened a couple years ago, back in the ancient and mysterious year of 2024. The place was Yellowz Bar and Grill, which longtime Muggheads will recognize as my usual watering hole and the setting of more stories than Barty the Bartender probably wishes existed.
It all started one night after closing. I was still sitting at the bar while Barty cleaned up, mostly because I had been finishing my last beer of the night. Or maybe my second-to-last beer. There may have been another one after that too. The important part was that I was still there when we heard a loud CRASH from near the kitchen.
I nearly fell off my stool.
“What the hell was that?!”
A stack of plastic drink trays had fallen off a shelf. Barty walked over, picked them up, and pointed to a loose bracket that had the shelf hanging crooked.
“Loose shelf,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to fix it.”
A loose shelf. Sure, Barty.
I had watched enough ghost-hunting shows to know what was really happening. Objects didn’t just fall over by themselves. Ghosts knocked them over!
I explained this to Barty, who naturally refused to accept the obvious truth.
“There’s no ghost, Frosty.”
“Then what knocked those trays down?”
“The shelf.”
“Because the GHOST loosened it!”
Barty stared at me for a few seconds, then told me to go home.
Typical skeptic!
The next afternoon, I woke up knowing exactly what had to be done. Yellowz was haunted, Barty was in denial, and someone needed to conduct a professional paranormal investigation.
Luckily, Frosty Mugg had watched many hours of television.
Unluckily, actual ghost-hunting equipment cost money, and money spent on ghost-hunting equipment couldn’t be spent on beer. So I improvised.
I made an EMF detector out of Christmas lights, speaker wire, batteries, and an old television remote. Whenever two exposed wires touched, one of the lights came on, which obviously meant a ghost was nearby.
For a spirit box, I used an old radio with a broken tuning knob. I jammed a screwdriver into the hole where the knob used to be and twisted it back and forth really fast so it jumped between stations.
I mean, it’s basically the same thing!
I also duct-taped a meat thermometer to a flashlight to detect cold spots and brought an old flip phone for recording ghost voices.
Finally, I packed six beers. A six pack, if you will.
Those were for courage.
All I needed now was a crew.
I called Juan first.
“No way hombre!”
So I called his brother Rico.
“Hell yeah amigo!”
Much like yours truly, Rico was a man of science!
Juan eventually agreed to come after realizing his other option was allowing his drunk brother to break into a bar at three in the morning with Frosty Mugg and homemade ghost-hunting equipment. Juan had also been drinking that night, but unfortunately he was still sober enough to understand that this was a terrible idea.
The three of us met outside Yellowz around 3 AM. Rico brought a twelve-pack, which made me immediately regret only bringing six.
Before we went inside, Juan made us promise not to break anything.
“I mean it. We go in, Frosty proves there’s no ghost, and then we leave.”
Rico cracked open a beer.
“But what if there is a ghost?”
“Then you can apologize for waking it up.”
You’ve probably noticed that Juan and Rico were both speaking perfect English, unlike in Juan’s articles. That was because AJ told me that if Juan didn’t speak perfect English in my articles, people would accuse me of being racist. Frosty Mugg is no racist, folks! Just the other day, I had some Yuengling Black and Tan. Would I be drinking something black and tan if I was a racist? I think NOT!
Where was I again?
Oh, yeah.
Anyway, Rico knew that one of the bathroom windows didn’t latch properly. I asked why he knew that. Rico told me not to worry about it. Which of course worried me. So I drank one of my courage beers to ease my nerves.
We climbed inside one at a time. Juan went first, Rico went second, and I went last.
I got stuck. What the fuck, that was just my luck!
Juan claimed I had gained weight, but that was bullshit, because it was obvious that Barty had made the window smaller.
Eventually they pulled me through, and the investigation officially began.
Yellowz was strange after hours. No music, no customers, no Barty yelling at me. I switched on my homemade EMF detector and immediately saw the Christmas light glow.
“Guys! Activity!”
Juan looked at my hand.
“You’re touching the two wires together.”
He pulled them apart and the light went out.
Obviously the ghost had moved.
We headed towards the shelf where the original haunting occurred. My flashlight-meat-thermometer combination read 64 degrees.
Then 63.
“Cold spot!”
“It’s October and the heat is off,” Juan said.
“Exactly. Ghost weather.”
Then something creaked behind us.
Rico immediately raised his fists.
“SHOW YOURSELF!”
Juan grabbed his shoulder and told him not to fight the building.
I switched on the spirit box and started rapidly changing stations. Static, music, voices, more static. Suddenly a man’s voice came through.
“…ninety-three point…”
I froze.
“The ghost said ninety-three!”
“That’s a radio station,” Juan said.
Obviously he didn’t understand the paranormal. Maybe the ghost died in 1993. Maybe he was 93 years old.
Before I could figure it out, something moved near the bar.
Rico charged. He made it about three steps before slipping on a wet patch and landing flat on his back.
Juan rushed over while I stared in horror.
The ghost had knocked him down.
With one punch.
Holy shit.
“BOXER GHOST!”
Juan slowly turned towards me.
“What?”
“It knocked Rico out! He was a fighter!”
“I slipped,” Rico groaned.
“That’s what the ghost WANTS you to think!”
Rico sat up and rubbed his head.
“Ghost sucker-punched me.”
THANK YOU.
Finally somebody understood what we were dealing with!
Juan pointed out the obvious wet floor, but it was too late. The evidence was undeniable. Yellowz was haunted by the ghost of a boxer.
Rico stood back up and raised his fists, ready for round two!
From there, the investigation became much more serious.
Rico started shadowboxing at every noise while I followed him with the spirit box.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
Static.
“Were you a boxer?”
More static.
“Did you ever fight Mike Tyson?”
A sports radio station suddenly came through.
“…heavyweight division…”
I almost dropped the radio.
“HE SAID HEAVYWEIGHT!”
Juan grabbed it.
“You’re listening to sports talk.”
“The GHOST found sports talk!”
Rico threw a jab at the darkness and accidentally punched a hanging light fixture. It swung sideways and knocked a framed beer sign off the wall.
The glass shattered.
Juan stared at us.
“We’re leaving.”
Then something crashed behind the bar.
The ghost had struck again!
I rushed towards the noise, tripped over a stool, and grabbed a table to stop myself from falling. The table tipped over, three chairs went down with it, and my spirit box flew across the room and smashed against the wall.
Rico shouted that the ghost had attacked me, while Juan shouted several other things in Spanish.
Things got a little fuzzy after that.
Me and Rico drank several courage beers. Then Rico tried to fight a coat rack because he thought it moved. I knocked over a mop bucket while investigating another cold spot. Juan spent most of his time putting things back while yelling at us to stop touching everything.
We didn’t completely trash Yellowz, but by the end of the investigation there were overturned chairs, a busted beer sign, a damaged light fixture, a broken radio, a spilled mop bucket, and several other things that I’m pretty sure had already been damaged before we arrived.
And then, the police showed up.
Apparently Yellowz had a silent alarm.
Who knew?
Apparently Juan did.
He wanted to know which one of us had tripped it.
Obviously the ghost. That spooky son of a bitch had set us up!
Approximately one hour after entering the bar, our paranormal investigation had come to an abrupt end.
The police detained us until Barty arrived. He walked inside, looked around the bar, then stared at the three of us.
“What the FUCK did you do?!”
I tried explaining the boxer ghost.
“There is no fucking ghost, Frosty! Jesus fucking Christ!”
Rico pointed to the back of his head.
“It knocked me down.”
“You slipped!”
That was exactly what someone covering up a haunting would say!
Juan realized we needed help and called AJ. I didn’t hear the entire conversation, but I caught enough.
“Yes, Frosty.”
Pause.
“Yes, Rico too.”
Another pause.
“No, I couldn’t stop them.”
About half an hour later, AJ arrived looking like somebody had dragged him out of bed at four in the morning because three idiots broke into a bar to hunt ghosts.
Which was EXACTLY what happened.
AJ walked inside, surveyed the broken sign, tipped chairs, busted light fixture, Rico holding ice against his head, and me standing there with a meat thermometer duct-taped to a flashlight.
“You three are fucking knuckleheads.”
Juan immediately pointed at me and Rico.
“I was trying to stop them.”
“You climbed through the window too, Juan.”
AJ turned towards Barty.
“Mike, don’t worry about this. I’ll pay for whatever these idiots broke.”
Mike?
Who the hell was Mike? Was it the ghost?
Oh yeah, Barty’s real name was Mike.
I always forgot that.
Barty Mike agreed not to press charges after AJ promised to cover the damages. The police let us go, and AJ gave all three of us a long lecture about how breaking into bars at three in the morning was illegal even if we believed the building was haunted.
As we prepared to leave, I looked back towards the shelf where everything had started.
It was still crooked.
I pointed at my sweet vindication.
“AJ, look!”
He didn’t even turn around.
“No.”
“But the ghost—”
“Frosty, that’s enough, dude.”
Some mysteries were better left unsolved.
To this day, Barty insists Yellowz was never haunted. Juan still claims Rico simply slipped on a wet floor. AJ said the only supernatural thing about the entire night was how none of us ended up in jail.
But I knew what I saw, damn it!
Somewhere inside Yellowz Bar and Grill lurked the restless spirit of a dead heavyweight boxer, waiting for his next challenger.
Rico still wanted his rematch. I told him I’d bring the beer.
The moral of the story?
Never hunt ghosts without proper equipment.
And by proper equipment, I mean beer.
Happy Halloween, guys and ghouls!
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