NEW CONCORDIA — The struggling Concordia Galleria finally has customers again. Management simply had to turn off half the lights and tell everybody the place was haunted.
“After Hours at the Galleria,” a weekend ghost tour through the mall’s abandoned upper level, has sold out three consecutive weekends. Tickets cost $28.
Guests are led past shuttered stores, an empty food court and a department store abandoned with several mannequins still inside.
“The mannequin area is genuinely upsetting,” visitor Erica Mendoza said. “One of them had no head. Nobody could tell me whether the tour company did that.”
Organizers employ actors for several staged scares but insist some unexplained noises are genuine.
Mall management declined to speculate about ghosts, though a representative enthusiastically confirmed another month of tour dates.
The success has raised an unexpected question for the property’s owners: Can a mall make more money pretending to be dead than attempting to stay alive?