6 Unbelievably Weird Stories About People Who Ended Up Living In Shops

I’m not a fan of shopping trips, why anyone would visit a shopping centre for “fun” or to “hang out” is beyond me. On those occasions when I am forced to enter the catacombs of a retail Mecca I find myself wheeling and spinning, the lights grow blindingly bright and my mind grows ever dimmer. All I can hear are children screaming, mothers wailing and sirens blaring as I attempt to claw my way unsuccessfully to the exit.

You might remember the awesome photos of abandoned shopping malls we put up here a while back? That’s the only kind of shopping centre I can enter without kicking off and melting down. Zero people and zero things to purchase. God we live in a dystopian nightmare don’t we?

I hate shopping, not least because it brings me into close proximity with other humans. Each second I spend inside the gilded womb of Woolworth’s seems to take a blessed eternity. As an unnatural shopper, these tales of people who have set up shop within a shop make me shudder to my frosty core.

1) The Ikea Boy

One 12-year-old Chinese boy ran away from home a few years back, he hadn’t done his homework and was ready to get the cosh from his old dear. Escape seemed like the only option. The boy decided that his best chance of survival was to camp out in an Ikea store. Peng Yijian managed to survive an entire week by eating free samples of food at a nearby supermarket and sleeping in the luxury of an Ikea bed.

Once the man-hunt had begun police asked his mother where he liked to go, she replied “Ikea” and the boy was soon found wandering about in the Swedish retailer’s ample bowels.

2) The KFC Cry Baby

In October 2014 a young lady took up residence in a branch of KFC in Chengdu, China. Why did she decide to live in KFC? Well, for a pretty good reason: she was heartbroken. And what does everyone want when they’re heartbroken? Fried chicken of course, and she had it on tap, so why move?

The sad-sack lady didn’t want to return to her apartment because there were too many memories of her ex dotted around it. So she decided she needed more time to think. She thought for three whole days in KFC before deciding to move back in with her parents.