History Main / TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday

* Played with in the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "Magic Duel" and the shop where Trixie acquires the Alicorn Amulet. The shopkeeper certainly fits the trope, as do the curios of the shop.
* The ''Westernanimation/Ben10Omniverse'' episode "Store 23" features The Mr Smoothy Franchise That Wasn't There Yesterday. Although there's nothing sinister or mysterious about what it sells, it does take Ben to an AlternateUniverse where he can learn AnAesop.
* Deconstructed, along with [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor Be Careful What You Wish For]], in the ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' episode "Something Ricked This Way Comes". Summer got a part-time job at a newly-opened vintage thrift store called Literature/NeedfulThings, run by an eccentric gentleman who always knows what his customers desire. [[spoiler:Rick immediately figures out that Mr. Needful is actually The Devil himself, who gives him a golden microscope with a curse that would have made him stupid. Unfortunately for the devil, Rick is able to use his mad science to figure out how to detect, analyze, and counteract curses, and he opens up his own store across the street where he removes curses, leaving the items with just their beneficial magic. For instance, an aftershave that makes a man irresistible to women, but also leaves him impotent? Rick pairs it with a cure for impotence. Rick makes a ton of money, and Mr. Needful is so humiliated that Summer has to talk him out of suicide. Then Rick gets bored and burns the place down.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', of course, parodies this several of its Halloween episodes. One in which Homer buys a Monkey's Paw (subverts the expectation of the store mysteriously disappearing afterward), another in which Homer buys a cursed Krusty the Clown doll for Bart (it came with a free frogurt... which was also cursed), and another in which Bart finds the occult section of Springfield Elementary's library ("Gee, I never noticed that before!").
** Referenced in the episode "Brick Like Me", which is set in a world of Lego bricks. Lego Homer [[TomatoInTheMirror sees Regular Homer in the mirror]] and asks Marge if she bought the mirror in such a store.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' episode "Mother Mae-Eye'', Cyborg bought the pie that the title character comes from at a shop like this, owned by a creepy looking old gypsy woman. (Who may have been Mother Mae-Eye herself; the two looked similar.)

* ''Creator/{{Merryweathery}}'' made a [[https://merryweather-comics.tumblr.com/post/635512206686076928/the-creepy-shopkeeper small comic about these shops]], specifically noting to NEVER GO IN ONE.

%% Trope was declared Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease via crowner by the Real Life Maintenance thread: [crowner link] [=%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800&page=558#comment-13929=]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp_4Q-SUblw The not-so-sad tale of Kajmaster Kajet's friend Big Wes]] (starts at 1:08), who got tricked into buying a demo of ''VideoGame/WildArms2'' for $30 from a dealer who vanished under mysterious circumstances 10 minutes later.
* Without the mystical elements, it's not too surprising to see various shops come and go within the malls and various single-landlord shopping complexes in America.
** Same with franchised stores.
** Also, there are the travelling peddlers who display their wares at touristic places, who never settle in the same place for long.
** It's not uncommon for stores to open and close down within a month in southeast Virginia. A lot of these types of shops pop up in malls peddling airbrushed t-shirts, which despite their prevalence don't actually seem to be in high demand.
** During the fall season, Halloween-themed costume shops such as Creator/SpiritHalloween and Halloween City sweep through the cities and towns of America only to disappear a week or two after Halloween.
** Another example common in America: within a week of New Year's and the Fourth of July, in the rural areas of the Great Plains, there will suddenly be a massive number of tiny wooden booths set up in cornfields by the roadside, where you can buy any number of supposedly legally obtained fireworks over the counter from someone who always appears to be either a mechanic or a farmhand. After a week (if not exactly, then almost so), they will disappear without a trace. Occasionally, if you're very lucky, you can see the dark, faded, carved-out husk of one of these little shops of joy standing empty in the middle of a cornfield in August, looking [[FalseReassurance perfectly jolly.]]
* Pike Place Market in UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} has a section designed for rummage sales, and another section for itinerant vendors ("day stalls"). The labyrinthine architecture of the Market also lends itself to having shops and stores that are easy to miss, especially in the "Down Under" section that specializes in curios.
* London's Camden Town is home to the Stables Market where shops can appear and disappear for the same reasons as Seattle's Pike Market.
* New Orleans has the French Market, a market of many different things such as food, clothing, and hand made goods. New Orleans is particularly known for its voodoo culture, which makes it quite creepy when you buy an item from the French Market (such as a voodoo doll) and return later on to see that the stand you purchased it from is gone. In this case it is likely similar to Pike Place and London's Camden Town. Vendors may not show up the next day due to lack of stock or recent lack of sales or even recent spikes in sales.
* The ''[[http://www.thegiftofchristmas.com/ Gift Of Christmas]]'' radio special used to have a segment with a woman talking about when she was a girl and wanted to buy her mother an ornament for Christmas. When she went to buy it, a dollar had fallen out of her pocket, making her a dollar short of the ornament's price. The guy behind the counter said that he was conveniently about to mark the ornament's price down from $3 to $2, so the girl could afford it. When she and her mother went to thank him a while later, they found out that the store closed long ago.
* There have been stories of literal ghost motels, whether one believes said stories is up to them. Such as one story where a couple stayed in a motel, and it was completely empty, but the atmosphere was so creepy that they eventually left. When they came back the next day, the building was gone entirely.
* Happens on-line all too often. It's either:
## A scam - particularly frequent with companies offering free trials of their latest, most awesome anti-virus - or...
## A small-scale seller who just did it as an experiment and got sick of it after all his wares sold out (often on eBay and Amazon).
* On the Internet, of course, you can buy digital games and software from a business that didn't exist yesterday. And when you find that you've been thoroughly ripped off, you can bet it won't be there in an hour when you go to ask for your money back.
* A less sinister concept that has come in vogue as of the [=2010s=] is the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-up_retail pop-up store]], which is a purposely temporary business that only lasts for a limited amount of time, normally for some special event like Halloween or Christmas.
[[/folder]]

->'''Marge:''' Eugh! Homer, where did you get that ugly thing?
->'''Homer:''' From that little shop right over there--''(Points to an empty lot, where sand devils whirl. He gasps in disbelief, then corrects himself.)'' Oh, no, wait, it was right over there.
->'''Shop Vendor:''' ''(waving)'' You'll be sorrrrrrry!

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. In "Face the Raven", it's revealed that trap streets (fake streets placed in maps as copyright protection) are actually this trope, protected by "misdirection circuits". It's possible to stumble into them accidentally (for instance if you're talking on your mobile phone) but those deliberately looking will pass them by without notice.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "Alien Shop", Andy Pace runs into Sewell Lane in order to evade the cops, having attempted to steal from an undercover officer, and finds a strange curio shop. The shopkeeper, who is secretly an alien shapeshifter who was sent to Earth as a penance, offers him a wallet. When he later goes to the pub Dentry's, Andy finds that money that he doesn't have keeps appearing in the wallet. He quickly realizes that when he touches someone, all of the money that they have on them appears in his wallet as if by magic. As time passes, Andy becomes increasingly greedy. When his drinking buddies Red and Joe and the Dentry's bartender Phil win $43,000 on a football bet, he touches all of them to congratulate them and all of the money appears in his wallet. However, there is [[EmpathicHealing another unintended side effect]] as a delighted Red announces the melanomas on his hands caused by skin cancer have disappeared. Andy is horrified to find that they have appeared on his hands. He runs back to Sewell Lane to find the shopkeeper but he instead finds a brick wall in place of the shop. The skin cancer spreads all over his body within minutes and he drops the wallet as he has finally realized that it is more trouble than it is worth. As soon as he does so, Andy finds himself back at the moment that the shopkeeper first offered him the wallet. He tells the shopkeeper that he has finally learned his lesson. The episode ends with him and Gabby happily pushing their newborn baby along the street in a stroller.

* In ''Anime/GhostSweeperMikami'' there is a mysterious shop. Yakuchindou is a shop, which specializes in cursed items, exorcism goods, and regular antiques. Yakuchin is the owner of Yakuchindou, a store that deals with many magical items. He is a pervert and very greedy, often overpricing his wares if he has the chance. Mikami frequents his shop for Ghost Sweeper equipments such as Absorbing Talismans and Reitai Bowgun bolts. Yakuchin keeps many dangerous products that can be considered a liability, and when he gets a new item he doesn't mind using customers as test subjects to see if the item is safe for sale, as he did with Yokoshima the first time they met.

** Similarly, WebVideo/BenDrowned has its protagonist getting a haunted [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask Majora's Mask]] cartridge from a garage sale. When he comes back to talk to the old man he bought it from after the game begins acting... ''strange'', he finds that his house is for sale. Really, this trope seems to be common in creepypasta about video games.

--->Liwy said with sudden sharpness, "Where's Mr. If? [...] he wouldn't leave his hat." And she bent to pick it up.\\

-->'''Homer:''' Marge! Did you replace our regular mirror with a magical mirror from a mystical salesman at a weird store that if we went back to find it it wouldn't be there anymore?\\

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'';

** During the fall season, Halloween-themed costume shops such as Spirit and Halloween City sweep through the cities and towns of America only to disappear a week or two after Halloween.

* The trope is perspective-flipped with the Western Cuisine Cat Restaurant of ''LightNovel/RestaurantToAnotherWorld'': the restaurant is based in a modern Japanese shopping district, but manifests a number of [[PortalDoor Portal Doors]] in a fantasy world every Saturday. In defiance of the usual mystery surrounding the trope, the restaurant's chef makes quite sure to inform his otherworldly customers of the weekly schedule, ensuring that they'll be able to return for more without having to search in vain.

* The wizard shopping street, [[BazaarOfTheBizarre Diagon Alley]] in the ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' franchise is accessed through a pub called the Leaky Cauldron that Harry didn't notice until Hagrid pointed it out. He found his gaze seemed to automatically move to the shops either side.

** There's also an oden stand run by {{Kitsune}}. Watanuke only finds it because of his ability to see spirits and it vanishes after he finishes his meal.

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball''. Richard can't find the store he bought a turtle from... because it was actually a van. [[DoubleSubverted On the other hand]], the owner of that van sells a number of mysterious and sometimes dangerous things, including that same turtle (which is a NighInvulnerable biting machine), a reality-warping universal remote, and [[spoiler:Darwin (before he grew legs)]].

* In "A Circus Town Christmas," the ChristmasEpisode of ''WesternAnimation/JoJosCircus'', the Circus Town Perfect Present Store appears in Circus Town. As the teacher Mrs. Kersplatski explains, "The wind blows it in, then blows it away again!"

* Michael buys his UniversalRemiteControl from Bed, Bath and Beyond in ''Film/{{Click}}'' but finds it in a mysterious "Beyond" section.

* ''Webcomic/{{Memoria}}'': The house in TheLostWoods may not have appeared, but it's certainly not there when the police check out it.

* There have been stories of literal ghost motels, whether one believes said stories is up to them. Such as one story where a couple stayed in a motel, and it was completely empty, but the atmosphere was so creepy that they eventually left. Coming back the next day, the building was gone entirely.

## A small-scale seller who just did it as an experiment and got sick of it after all his wares sold out (often on eBay and Amazon)

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfHorror'' has one crop up in "Rotten Report of Rancid Ramen": a restaurant that becomes insanely popular overnight, with customers acting ''obsessed'' with the food. [[IAteWhat Suspecting shenanigans]], your protagonist decides to try and determine just what makes the ramen so disgustingly addictive.

* Downplayed in ''Film/LittleShopOfHorror'' where Audrey [=II=] was bought from an apparently normal plant shop. It beamed down onto a stall outside during a TotalEclipseOfThePlot while Seymour's back was turned.

*** — prologue that opened the first episode of the third season

* Creator/WilliamFWu's "[[Literature/WongsLostAndFoundEmporium Wong's Lost and Found Emporium]]" is about such a shop from the point of view of the shopkeeper.

* Ostensibly, this is where Gizmo the Mogwai was purchased in the first ''Film/{{Gremlins}}'' movie.
** In [[Film/Gremlins2TheNewBatch the sequel]], the shop gets bulldozed and replaced by ''the little skyscraper mall that wasn't there last week.''