Book of Daze: Hauntology Day

For reasons no one can explain, Hauntology Day is observed the third Friday of July. It was established in 1987 by a Radio Shack in Levittown, PA, after the store’s intercom randomly began playing part of a jingle for a once popular soda that had been discontinued a decade earlier. The jingle played exactly eleven seconds, always cutting off on the word “refresh.”

Corporate investigated, found no mechanical explanation, then issued a memo declaring the phenomenon “on-brand.”

The tradition spread through the greater Levittown mall corridor and was formalized as a national observance in 1994 by Gerald Fen, an escalator technician who claimed he could sense a store’s impending closure eight months in advance simply by the sound its fluorescent lights made.

Hauntology is defined as the persistent sensation that a Sbarro somewhere still owes you something. It is the study of and yearning for lost futures, the grief felt upon realizing that a once promising strip mall will never live up to that promise. It is the feeling of seeing an old “Coming Soon” banner still hanging on a building whose future never arrived.

Examples of Hauntology in the wild include finding an old, expired gift card in a coat pocket and briefly wondering if the store might still honor it out of mutual nostalgia.

Seeing a parking lot painted originally for a Circuit City that has since been three different businesses, none of which repainted the lines, so everyone still parks like it is 2004.

Any mall fountain, running, in a mall that is otherwise 40% vacant.

Suggestions for celebrating Hauntology Day include visiting a dead food court. Simply standing where the Orange Julius used to be and letting it wash over you.

Playing a defunct jingle for a confused pet. Gauging its reaction. Writing down the reaction, but not analyzing it.

Hosting a Hauntology Day potluck in which every dish is based on a discontinued product.

Driving past your childhood Toys “R” Us at dusk. Not going in, even if it is now a Planet Fitness. Especially if it is now a Planet Fitness.

Hauntology Day cards are blank inside because nobody has yet found the right words. Place them in a drawer with expired coupons, old loyalty cards, and the tiny Radio Shack battery club card you have inexplicably kept for thirty years. You will know exactly where it is.

Browse a curated list of the most truly unhinged holidays that nobody else celebrates.