Haunted Venue?

[misterm]

I personally find the whole "Haunted Theater" thing as a bunch of BS. My stagehands insist it's my religious bent (Jodo-Shinshu Buddhist) that keeps me from buying into the haunted bit, but also every "scary thing" that has ever happened at ANY venue I have been in has always been explained. Also, people *want* to believe that things like ghosts exist, because it makes for good drama. We're in the business of wanting to believe the story... so it's not unusual that the mindset goes into ridiculous territory sometimes.

i personally don't believe in ghosts. have i had experiences in theatres/venues that i couldn't explain and made me question that? yes. emphatically yes. and i do tell my students those stories as "ghost stories" and we have a ghost light. why? i fully believe that these stories tie us to the history of our craft and the individual venues and the community. i hate learning history, but i really love learning ghost stories in the various towns i've lived in because it makes the history of the area come alive for me. for example, when my family lived in north ga, it was a blast hearing about the ghosts from the civil war that supposedly haunted the area (particularly the mountain behind my dad's church) and learning the history of the town and the stories passed on for generations; personal stories about the civil war that one doesn't read in a history book. i think we had a thread on haunted venues at one point on CB.

 

[patrickh]

I do believe in ghosts because I live in a town where stuff happens constantly. In my hometown one time at a theatre called the coliseum a very eery incident happened to me. I was alone on a Sunday afternoon after the matinee. The set was being struck by a high school that rented the space for their senior musical. The high school was only 20 minutes from the school so they made the load out in two trips. I was alone sitting in the orchestra texting when a playbill hit me in the head. I looked up and said hello? and no one replied. I thought maybe it had fallen off of a statue as the theatre was a very elaborate movie house from the turn of the century. I continued to text and then another hit me. I looked up and said hello?, this time it was a little creepy. I had locked myself into the space. No one could get in the front doors and the stage door was locked. I walked up into the mezzanine and balcony to see nothing. There where many programs in the floor that patrons had left but none on the hand rails. I walked back downstairs and this time sat down under the balcony. I was reading an email when about 20 programs fell off of the balcony at one time and the row in front of me scattering everywhere. I sprinted out the emergency exit next to me and sat down on a street bench until the high school got back. I have been in the space alone twice since then and just feel eery.
I also happen to live in the town that William Falkner was born and lived. The University that I study and work at own his home, rowan oak, and maintain it. His fictional Mississippi county in several works is actually my town. His ghost will be spotted occasionally around town.
In 1962 there where many riots on campus due to the fact that JFK was forcing integration and our governor was denying him. The army was sent in and several people died. The theatre that I work in everyday has bullet marks on the front columns from the riots that night. It is a creepy space at night with no lights on.

there's my two cents. I have many more stories

 

[JFRHorton]

One place I worked when I was just out of highschool was a converted basement/annex of a Methodist church, which was built in the mid 1700s. Dealing with a structure older than the country was strange enough as is, with odd noises and drafts. I am not superstitious nor religious, but there were definitely a couple of times when I was locking up late at night, alone, when I heard and felt things that were not the normal old building noises. Things like whispers, muffled voices, footsteps close behind, the works.
The worst was the basement platform/practicals/other random stuff storage, which had all of two flicker-y lights to illuminate it, and gave off that musty 'this-once-might-have-been-an-ossuary' feel. I had a couple of times when I got out of there as fast as my feet could carry me, because I felt like I wasn't alone.

 

[jglodeklights]

I'm pretty skeptical of ghost stories. I have pretty much ended up staffing mostly older spaces or theaters with histories of deaths, and only once felt as though there might be a presence. However, it was also 3AM and I had been in the building for about 18 hours. Maybe ghosts just know better though, it is pretty likely I would exorcise their spirit from the space That or throw my C-Wrench at them when they are really just my assistant making eery and distant sounding cat and dog meows and barks from the fly rail.

 

[JLNorthGA]

Our theatre isn't that old - mid 1980s. Supposedly we have a ghost who is the woman who was responsible for building our theatre.

That being said - we have smoke doors in the fly space above the stage. They face east. They soak up the sun. Around midday, they have a tendency to "pop" and creak. Later in the day, especially in the evening, they pop and creak when they cool. Before we had the stage wiring reworked, we always had problems - they combined the neutrals so that a single neutral "serviced" several hots. Used to have a lot of mysterious electrical problems (also had a lot of bulbs blowing out). Now that everything has been rewired, we don't have electrical problems.

So call me a skeptic.

 

[BGW]

I don't believe in ghosts persay, but I do believe that there are things out there that we can't explain.

That said, I haven't had any experiences where I haven't been able to find a reason for them. These stories are all from when I was high school. Just to preface this, the main building and auditorium were built in 1937, and definately have some creepy looking areas in the basement due to numerous unrepaired light fixtures. It's pretty dark most places down there.


1. This one is pretty minor, but still a cool sight to behold when it happens. A girl who was working in the haunted house called me one night. She had been walking down the admin hall to use a restroom when all of the doors slammed shut around her. I explained to her that most of those doors are fire doors, and that they're held open by electromagnets. Something must have tripped them while she was walking down the hall. I can understand why she was unnerved- there are over 100 of those doors in the school, and when they all slam shut on their own accord, it's pretty eerie.

2. One of my favorite incidents was when some people thought that a ghost was inhabiting the main stage area. They had been standing around when they heard a muffled gasp, a piercing shriek, and then felt a cold draft washing over them. That one was hard to track down, but it was pretty funny when I found out what it was. It turned out to be a very noisy pneumatic damper on an exterior wall. The actuator must have leaked, for it had a loud hiss (which they must have thought was a gasp) and the shutters moved with an agonizing, shrill "shriek". The damper had opened and let in some fresh cold air. Lubed the pivots and got rid of the noise.

3. One guy had been working in a tunnel alone when he heard a hissing noise, was overcome by an awful stench, and then all the lights went out. When he found a staircase and left, he found that the lights were on everywhere else. He was spooked, but I attribute that to the sketchy tunnels and that he had been setting up some nasty looking corpses for the haunted house. When I checked it out the next day, I found that one of the aged ballasts in the fluorescent fixtures had catastrophically failed and popped the breaker on the way out, leaving this guy in total darkness (no emergency lights down there). It had gotten so hot that it had boiled the resin stuff inside and had dripped everywhere. Nothing like the smell of a burned ballast.

4. Same tunnel, different stories. People always talk about eerie noises in said tunnel, but I think I've found the source for all of them. I've had several people tell me that they think someone is banging on the pipes down there, even when they know they're all alone. The east boiler room is near that tunnel. There are three boilers, two are set up for water and the other is steam. Along the condensate return pipe for the steam boiler is what appears to be a purge valve, although I have no idea why it would be there. Anyway, sometimes this valve will start making a very loud metallic clank, once every second or two. Sounds exactly like someone is hitting the pipes with a wrench.

Then there are the stories of hearing a wailing moan and shuddering noises down there. It's an ailing 10 horse circulation pump that feeds the auditorium loop.



So while I don't necesarily believe in ghosts as I've never had an unexplainable incident, I don't completely rule them out.