Waterford ―The Crystal Mall experienced an electrical problem on the busiest shopping day of the year Friday that forced some of its stores to shut down for hours, with no word from management on when the situation would be back to normal.

“Of all the days to lose power,” said Arthur Caporale of Uncasville, who was out shopping with neighbor Colleen Pinckney. “This place is cursed. It’s just one thing after another.”

Caporale pointed to the fact that all of the escalators at the mall were not operating, and the only elevator had a sign saying it was temporarily out of service. In addition, there are only two restaurants still operating at the mall, and the crowds are thinner than ever with this being the first time in its history there were no anchor stores operating during the holidays.

JC Penney was the last of the anchor stores to close, shutting its doors for the last time shortly after the last holiday season.

Ashon Avent, a Norwich resident who owns T-Shirt World, said he had hoped to open his shop by the morning but as of 2:30 in the afternoon he still didn’t have power. This would have been one of the busiest days of the year at the custom t-shirt shop, he said.

“It was a bad day to lose power,” added Kylie Lamourine, a sales associate at Forever 21.

Lamourine said the shop was expecting to do about $2,000 in sales on Black Friday, the biggest in-person day for shopping in the United States throughout the year and the traditional start of the Christmas gift-buying season. But Forever 21 didn’t have enough power to run its registers and take credit cards, so shoppers were being advised to come back again to take advantage of Black Friday sales.

The hat shop Lids was open, but manager Billy Kersteter said he could take only cash, not credit cards.

“I made the mistake of thinking this year would be a smooth Black Friday,” Kersteter said. “Normally it’s personnel issues or something that is one of our hurdles to deal with But this year we covered all those bases and now it’s technology, right?”

Kersteter said early on Black Friday is pretty quiet these days at the mall, and usually picks up as the day goes along. But this year it was eerily quiet in the morning as Spencer’s Gifts, F.Y.E. and other shops that did manage to open were darker than usual because of the outage.

Managers at shops such as Talbot’s and Finish Line were surprised there was an outage because they had no such problems.

“I did speak to somebody from mall management who said Eversource is here,” Kersteter said at about 9:30 a.m. Friday. “They believe they’ve identified which transformer is down. So I’m slightly hopeful, but emphasis on slightly.”

As of 2:30 p.m., power had yet to be restored. A call and email to mall management elicited no response.

A Froyo franchise as the mall printed out an explanation of why his shop was closed, saying “Temporarily closed due to a power outage. Mall management has not given us an update.”

The shop owner, who identified himself only as Mike A, said he was disappointed that mall management had not been providing him updates on the situation and would likely be asking management to refund his December rent.

“I wish I knew even if it wasn’t getting fixed because at least then I could go home,” he said.

Shoppers at the mall were surprised by the lack of traffic at a place that once not long ago was teeming with Black Friday sales, and where shopping began at midnight on Thanksgiving. But online shopping has largely driven smaller malls into oblivion, and customers were worried about the future.

“It’s like walking into a lost, forgotten city,” said Carlos Carrion, a New London resident who was waiting for his phone to be fixed.

The Uncasville shopper Pinckney remembered the days when people would swarm the mall to fight over the latest Cabbage Patch Kids offering.

Her friend Caporale, who often comes to the mall to exercise, said he noticed the last of the mall’s functioning escalators finally stopped working earlier in the week.

“This week has definitely been a Black Friday week for them,” he said.

l.howard@theday.com