The Haunted Toys R Us

The piece recounts the fame of a purportedly haunted Toys R Us in Sunnyvale, California (130 East El Camino Real), focusing on its appearance on the TV show That’s Incredible in an episode first broadcast Sept. 8, 1980. Employees had long reported merchandise moving, unexplained noises, and a strange talking doll that only spoke while boxed; those accounts attracted psychic investigators, including Sylvia Browne, who staged a seance and identified the spirit as a man - variously named John/Jan/Johnny/Yonny Johnson - said to have worked on the 19th‑century Murphy ranch, loved Martin Murphy’s daughter Elizabeth, and died of an axe wound while chopping wood. The on‑air narrative and eyewitness testimony made for a memorable supernatural segment that resurfaced on a 1991 Leonard Nimoy‑hosted special, cementing the story in pop‑culture lore.

Independent historical research undermines Browne’s specifics: family records show Elizabeth Murphy (called Lizzie) married William Taaffe in 1863 and died in 1875, making the later romance and 1880s timeline impossible, and no census, newspaper, or other records substantiate the named Johnson or the alleged axe accident. The store, which opened in 1970, kept operating until 2018 and later housed Spirit Halloween and an REI; the haunting lives on through archived TV clips and online retellings because the idea of a ghostly toyshop taps a deep, enduring cultural image.