I Need To Build Something

I just posted to the Ashleigh Raine blog about how my last two day’s worth of work mysteriously went up in file-not-found smoke. Yeah…nice, huh?

So, instead of lamenting, I’m trying to figure out something else I can do to take my mind off of it. I’ve got a ton of sewing projects, beading projects, even writing projects, but why is it that at this very moment, I can’t decide which to do?

Perhaps that’s a sign that I should see what I’ve got that needs repaired. Between antique dolls, vintage clothes and jewelry, I’m certain I can get myself occupied.

I think the worst of the whole ordeal is simply that I lost so much time. Generally, when I put 18+ hours into something, I have something to show for it. Even a completely screwed up, ugly dress…something.

File not found… Not “File messed up”, “File misplaced”, “File screwed up beyond recognition”, “File in hiding” or “File doesn’t wanna be worked on at the moment so wait a few hours, days, weeks until it’s in a better mood”.

File. Not. Found. *sigh*

Simply Awful

I mentioned earlier that I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy… And that’s why it hurt so much that it happened to one of my best friends.

Welcome to Eddie’s attic:

The firefighters had to cut two holes in the roof. Fueled by boxes of carefully wrapped glassware and dishes, the fire burned its own hole.

Again, some very, very nice vintage stuff was lost in that fire. When he and I were up there digging through the wreckage, it was a small pleasure whenever we’d find one of a set of 12 glasses or bowls or plates that survived. Occasionally, a set of 12 was reduced to 6, sometimes 2. Although, I don’t think there were any sets reduced to zero.

He also lost several wooden lighting fixtures. In one case, the glass part of them had gotten so hot it’d melted. So surreal. And let me just say that one of the worst smells I’ve ever experienced was in this attic. The mixture of charred materials plus mold and mildew was utterly horrid. I got used to it after a while, but then about 4 or 5 hours later, I started to feel ill so I had to go downstairs.

Those bikes used to be show-quality. Yeah, bad day. Very bad day.

But…he found a smile when he told me that not all of his replacement parts had burned up. He could rebuild those bikes…and I’m sure he absolutely will.

What I learned from seeing this happen to Eddie:

Life is far too short not to live it, love it and keep as much as I can of it in the “now” rather than the “some day” because “some day” may not come in time.

Very Big Job

When I walked up to Eddie’s house, I was somewhat surprised to see how intact it was. All greenery outside was either completely charred or scorched brown and almost dead. All the leaves were also sort of frozen in the direction the wind had been blowing the night before. I wish I’d gotten a picture of that. So surreal.

 

This was the side of his house where his neighbor’s was a total loss. In his personal junkyard, there were all sorts of mangled melted metal parts. Wheels, intake manifolds, cylinder heads, hoods, front clips, the list goes on and on. The only stuff that even marginally survived were all the headers. (Go figure!) There were some differentials and other large bits that can be rebuilt, but in at least one instance, the axle tubes had melted. I’d never seen anything like this. So many original factory vintage parts… *sigh*

He met me outside and explained that the attic was what had caught on fire. He’d floored it out a few years back so that he could store some of his incredible collections of Mid-Century Modern stuff, bicycles and various other interesting stuff. An ember or two had blown in and ignited the whole thing.

The fire department blasted it with water and filled it full of foam in order to keep the whole house from going up. When I walked in, the ceiling was on the floor.

I didn’t really know where to start and since Eddie had lived in that house for more than 20 years and had zero intention of moving…well, this was gonna be a big job.

But I was up for it. Eddie is the kind of guy who’d help me if my house had burned down, so I spent a month neck-deep in soot, mildew, all the yucky-ness that goes along with picking up the pieces after a fire has ravaged a house. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, either. Just the smell of something burnt takes me right back to his place. It was awful.

But these pictures aren’t even the worst of it.

What Happened

All rightie… You’ve met my friend Eddie:

In mid-November of last year, a huge fire hit the mountains behind his house. It was all over the news. More than 500 homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

His was one of them.

He’d been at my house for a barbecue and a movie until about 10:40 PM or so. As he got closer to home, he saw the smoke. The wind was crazy, but being the kind of guy he is, when he couldn’t drive all the way up to his house, he parked his car and walked…figuring his house was probably already gone.

It wasn’t.

The fire department wasn’t there yet, but several yards were on fire, fanned by super-high winds. Eddie got out his garden hose. If it wasn’t for his quick action, his neighbor’s house might have gone up. He put out some debris that was scorching upward, licking their eaves.

On the other side of his house, he has a rather large collection of vintage car parts for 60s Corvettes and Camaros. A pile of tires had caught fire.

He tried to put it out but then his other neighbor’s house became fully engulfed. (The fire was so hot, aluminum wheels, intake manifolds and heads were reduced to puddles while fiberglass hoods became bizarre piles of fuzz.) There was no stopping this blaze. He ran inside his house and grabbed a few things as the fire department arrived.

They almost didn’t let him take his other car that was in the garage (a ‘66 Corvette [the coupe version of the convertible I have]), but there was no way he would’ve left that car there. When he drove away, he figured it’d be the last time he’d see home sweet home.

We heard from him around 2AM. He called to tell us that he was okay, but that his house was gone.

The next morning, we learned that his house wasn’t entirely gone… Well, yeah it was, but no it wasn’t.

I drove out there to see if I could help. This is my car parked across the street from his house. Notice how utterly barren those mountains are. In 2003 when a blaze came up to my back fence, there were still a few bits of green and brown on my back hill. This fire was far more ruthless.

Eddie needed help now, not next week and I was glad to oblige.

My time at the Stanley Hotel

For all intents and purposes, this was a vacation. It was not my usual kind of vacation because I really love to go and see and do when I’m on vacation. This was more for my husband. He likes to go somewhere and do nothing. Well, he did write a significant chunk of his novel on this trip. Got it out of the starting gate with a huge bang, I might add. Me, well, I had fun for a few days and was bored for a few more.

Anyhow, back in February, I’d gone to a paranormal event on the Queen Mary (which I’ll post about in the coming days) and afterward, I was hooked. I wanted to do more, so I booked the event at the Stanley hotel almost immediately. I figured that since it was so far in the future, I couldn’t turn back if I already had the tickets. I couldn’t weasel out somehow and neither could my husband. We would have to go.

And go we most definitely did.

That place is crazy with activity. It really is. I was astonished. But mainly, what I wanted to do was meet Jason and Grant now that I was part of their extended team. I’m a TAPS West Coast Home Team member and loving every minute of it, so meeting them again on those terms was so awesome.

I truly enjoyed being there, listening to all the discussions and meeting new friends.

It was also my husband’s first event. Being a photographer, he even got a few action shots during the day between investigations and discussions. It’s just hard for me not to be investigating when I’m in an area where everyone knows what I’m doing and not just talking to myself or recording thin air.

It definitely helps the photographs that the Stanley hotel is so darn gorgeous. I can’t wait to go back, but I know it’ll be awhile.

Domino update

I don’t know what took me so long to get to this one. I mean, I saw it in the theater because a friend of a friend who doesn’t know me that well had mentioned he saw me in it, so I figured I must’ve gotten some really good camera time for him to actually recognize me.

Boy was that an understatement. So far, of all the shows I’ve been in and appeared on camera, this one takes the cake. Big time. I mean, my head is as big as the screen!

The other shots may not be close-ups, but I’m still totally visible for a change. I suppose it helped that they’d placed me in the front row for some strange reason.

My husband and I saw it together and the moment I was onscreen at all, we started chuckling. Each shot built and built until we were all out cracking up because, like, my head was so freakin’ huge! It’s one of the best laughs we’ve had. We really hadn’t expected it to be like that. We’d figured okay, since I was in the front row, perhaps I was visible enough. Noooooo… I even got a close-up!

This is also one of the coolest bits I’ve been part of. I was an alien on They Are Among Us, a dead nun on Angel (in which I also had a close-up, but my head wasn’t quite as big as the screen because I was laying down and they wanted to get more blood in the shot), an insane asylum patient on The Changeling and a hooker on Cold Case and Crazy.

But on Domino… I was a recovering nymphomaniac at a Nymphomaniacs Anonymous meeting, no less. Good times!

Oh, the Theatah!

So, I was perusing a file of photos and came across a huge stack I was going to post here once upon a time. While I don’t have the mountain of time required to process all the images at this exact moment, I did have the time to post one.

And here it is:

This is the private theater of Adelina Patti. She was the first person in Wales to have electricity in her home. I snuck behind that original drop and discovered that the technology has not been updated. Every spot a gas burner would have been, there’s a lightbulb.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I mean, I’d read mountains on the topic of stage lighting from candles to early electricity, but never thought I’d get to witness it in person. This was the type of thing I’d only ever seen in pictures and illustrations. I wanted to spend hours there in Adelina’s theater.

Sure, the front of house is all gold leaf and finery, but I wanted to explore the fly gallery and all the electrics. I couldn’t quickly figure out where the controls were or I’d've definitely snuck in there, too. It was dark, I didn’t have a flashlight and backstage was in use as a storage facility during restoration.

I’ll go back to Crag-Y-Nos someday. You bet I will. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll go on another impromptu tour backstage…perhaps a ghost of performances past would show me around!

Driven to Distraction available…Finally!

Once upon a time, I was driving in my ‘68 Mustang fastback…just out for a fun drive (gas was still waaaaay cheap back then!). I had a route I used to take which reminded me of a few stretches of road where I grew up and discovered the pleasure of taking the long way home. As I turned the corner, there was a sweet ‘69 Firebird, hood up, with a hot guy standing there.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. It actually took me two blocks of deliberating before I finally said, “Fuck it! I’m going back.” I whipped a U-turn at the next opportunity and then whipped another one to pull up behind him.

He was closing up a cell phone as I came to a stop, but he walked toward me, a smile slowly growing across his lips. It seemed like he was trying to figure out whether he knew me.

Nope. We were complete strangers to each other.

I asked, “Do you need help? I’ve got tools in my trunk.”

He replied, “No, it’s okay. The car just overheated. I’ll be back on the road in a few minutes. No worries. Thanks for stopping, though.”

I hid the fact that my world was crushed and continued on my way to nowhere. *sigh*

Fast forward several years and this was the incident that spawned the opening to a novel…which is now finally available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders.

My best friend and I write as Ashleigh Raine and when she decided we should write a novel that takes place in the entertainment industry–but how do we start it?–I knew my little experience was perfect.

Except I get the guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We used a bunch of my on-set experiences, including the time I tripped while working on Threat Matrix which spawned a chapter or so. I recall using the base camp and set from one of the times I was on Anchorman. The area for the helicopter stunt was inspired by my night on a music video for 4Mula1 plus a building that served as holding on American Dreams. There were two guys on Ripley’s who inspired both Jay and Levi…and the snake incident. One of the precision drivers on Starsky & Hutch also served as inspiration for both Smitty and Cash. The cars in Jay’s garage include a few similar to ones I own (Viper and Corvette). And then there were the times I went to stunt driving school…failed the first time, passed the second and got to ride along during an afternoon of drifting which served as further research and inspiration just talking to all those stunt drivers. Oh yeah, and the week I spent being paid to drive four exotic cars which inspired the Ferrari F430 being used as a hero car.

As you can imagine, it was up to me for all the car references as well as the on-set stuff, but Jen played a critical role in it. She was my barometer. Whenever I got too technical, she could chime in with such phrases as “I have no idea what you’re talking about here.” and I could tone it down for people who don’t work on their cars and would likely get lost among the trailers on a typical base camp.

Driven to Distraction has a lot of other stuff inspired by my experiences, but if I were to list them all here, this post would go on forever. And since the book is classified as erotic romance, it’s probably better you just go read it. Or at least read some excerpts…

Part of the infamous opening scene inspired by Mr. Hot Firebird: Roadside Attraction
Part of the sex scene inspired by my cars: Garage Rendezvous
Part of a scene inspired by many little friendly races I’ve had: After Race Romp
Part of the scene using a few locations I’ve been on: Helicopter Stunt

 

Learning From Ghosts

I’ve shared a lot of my paranormal experiences here already, so if you missed them, please scroll down. Those are the biggest ones so far.

Anyhow, what I want to post about this time is a particular ghost I met in college. Being a theatrical lighting technician, I spent a lot of hours alone in darkened theaters. Because I worked in the Lighting & Sound shop, I had keys to various parts of the building that I’d need to get into in order to do my job. There were three theaters and I designed lighting for shows in all three.

Being a lighting designer means that when rehearsal is done at 11PM it’s your time to program the show over the night hours. The stage needs to be dark and it was best to work alone. I could get the show programmed faster without distraction that way even if the show needed more than one night to get done.

Usually, the light board was set up in the middle of the audience until opening night, but sometimes, I did all the programming from the light booth even though the sightlines weren’t the best up there.

Now imagine being the only person in the whole building…and being locked in. Sure, I didn’t have the only key, but whenever I thought I heard someone else, I investigated. Darkened theaters are dangerous and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Whenever someone would come on stage (sometimes the costumers worked late, too), I always brought up enough light for them to see whatever they needed until they were done and back out of the theater. Common courtesy.

Okay, during my time in this particular theater building, I’d heard a lot of different ghost stories–one night, myself and another lighting technician even got into a very long and interesting conversation focused solely on how creepy that darn place was around 3AM–but I never physically experienced anything major the whole time I was there.

Psychically…well…that’s a different story.

To my knowledge, every time something unexplainable happened, it got blamed on a particular ghost. Apparently, the guy had committed suicide on stage in the 70s. I posted a little about him earlier.

I did not, however, post what I learned from him. The most important part of his haunting of that building. Just the other night, I was talking about him with my husband and he found it fascinating, so here I am posting about it.

The very moment I set foot on the property, I could feel the ghost. As I walked closer to the building, he got stronger and stronger. Once inside the building, he got overwhelming.

Unless I acknowledged his presence.

Yeah. If I looked at him and said hello, he left me alone.

Once I figured that out, it seemed so absurd, but I tested my theory the next few days when I’d go there and sure enough. No matter where I sensed his presence, if I acknowledged him, he’d leave me alone. Whether I was outside the building or all the way in and down the hallway. The moment I said hello, he would fade.

So, I asked around to see if anyone knew more about his legend. Apparently, in life, he felt invisible. Had no friends, no one noticed him.

I guess that was all a million times worse in death.

He wasn’t mean, though. Just quiet. He wanted to be an actor, but that wasn’t going so well and he had very low self-esteem–which also didn’t help much. I don’t recall the particular incident that sent him over the edge to suicide, but still. Poor guy was stuck there even more invisible in death than he had been in life.

I really felt for him, then. And never failed to greet him each day. Of course, if I didn’t or was a little slow on the greeting, he’d be the most annoying person anyone could ever meet.

Imagine a two or three year-old under your feet, constantly jabbering to you, even singing something like “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” (…starting somewhere around infinity) and doing cartwheels and hopping and skipping and making faces at you and shouting on either side of you. “Do you see me? Hello? I’m here. Hello? Can you see me? Why aren’t you seeing me? Say something. Please, say something. I’m right here. Just say hello, please. I’m not leaving until I know you know I’m here. Where are you going? Hello? Hello? Hello? I’m here. Hello?”

Freakin’ unimaginably annoying…(but only if you’re sensitive.)

And then the moment I said hello, he backed away, satisfied, even pleased.

Day after day, I experimented with him. If I was walking in alone, I’d take the time to either ask how he’s been or tell him what I was going to be doing that day and to come visit me later on or whatever. As our ‘relationship’ progressed, I was able to tune him in more clearly, but never crystal clear. My ability just isn’t that detailed all the time. I do the best with what I’ve got, but it’s far from perfect.

He’d laugh at me on days when I really couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. He’d usually say something like, “You’re not having a good day with me today, huh? That’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then he’d fade away.

Whenever I saw him in my psychic sight, he was mostly a head and torso with legs only to just above the knee. For some reason, I rarely get arms past the elbows and legs past the knees in my psychic sight. Faces also don’t always appear and when they do are somewhat vague…as though only there for showing emotion rather than what the person actually looked like.

Sometimes, he was just a cloud of energy that I recognized as his without needing to see him at all. Like he learned that I’d know he was there whether or not he looked like a person.

I haven’t been back to see him in about eight years. I wonder if he’d greet me the moment I set foot on the property or if he’s even still around. Perhaps someday I’ll go visit him and find out. Consider that a reason for an update to this post.

I am still trying to piece together my theories on person-shaped entities versus those whom I sense as energy clouds. The ones who appear person-shaped when I first meet them, but then fade into cloud shapes tend to be the most sentient. Strangely, the ones whom I see fully (with legs below the knee and arms below the elbow) tend to be non-sentient or residual. The ones whom I sense as clouds when I first meet them are usually a lot weaker than the ones who appear person-shaped at first and sometimes I can’t tune into them at all other than simply recognizing their presence.

I don’t know what any of that means, but given my experiences and ability, I plan to piece more of it together so that I might understand it and help others understand as well. Like, is there really a correlation between the shapes entities take on or has it just been coincidence all this time? It’s not like my sight is crystal clear. It may just be the way my brain processes each event that gives the shape. I don’t know, but I hope to find out so that I can use that knowledge.

That’s another thing… I know that just because I sense something or get an image, voice or emotion from something, doesn’t mean it’s concrete. Just because I think the ghost is trying to shake my hand doesn’t mean he’s not trying to bite it or yank it off my arm or even something else entirely which has nothing to do with my hand. I honestly don’t know what the ghost is trying to do, but I do know what is being projected.

Just like when I ‘danced’ with “James”. For all I know, he could’ve been trying to throw me out the window, yet I felt like he was laughing and dancing with me. I sensed him and his movements and what he was saying, but I fully accept that I could’ve been totally wrong. The difference is that I also ‘felt’ I was correct in what I was sensing, so I went with it. At no time did I sense danger, so I interacted with him.

But really, for all I know, that icky thing in the storage room could have been him, too. He could’ve killed himself in the storage room or been a murder victim in there and didn’t want me to sense that residual energy. It’s not like I ever got a clear answer on how and when he died. There were contradictions on that topic. There are just so many possibilities and not many ways to check my answers. Therein lies the issues of credibility and scientific collection of paranormal evidence.

Which has always had me wondering whether if everyone was sensitive, would there still be the quandary of the existence of the paranormal. And wouldn’t that also deem that which is now considered paranormal…normal? And would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

In the mean time, all I can do is just go with what I feel and hope for the best.

Me and the Ghost (Part Two)

Okay, I’ve already shared the beginning of this story–the icky thing in the creepy storage room where I did lighting for a week-long symposium. Now, I’m going to get into the stuff I really don’t talk about. I’m weird enough, I don’t need to claim I see ghosts, too. But I do feel it’s time I write it all down–or as much as I can remember.

The writings I’d done at the time seem to have disappeared, but I hope they resurface in one of my old files or binders one day. I found some later writings that referred back to what I’m about to post. Unfortunately, they aren’t as detailed as what I wrote during the experience. I suppose everything happens for a reason and if they’re important, they’ll resurface later.

This is a long one, so grab your favorite beverage and get comfy…

I explained that the big room where the symposium was taking place had two storage rooms, each with a ladder up to the catwalks–and one of the rooms had something very powerful in it which made me not want to be in there. I still don’t know what was going on in there and I’m not sure I want to!

However, I haven’t mentioned the room where I spent four eight-hour days in semi-darkness (which is more light than the average light board operator gets while running most theatrical shows).

The light booth could not be reached from the big room where the symposium was going on. I had to go out, down a hallway off the lobby (which was shared with a movie theater next door). This part of the hallway was on the circuit for the theater which wasn’t in use at the time, so only the single emergency light bulb was lit.

I was given one of only three keys to that particular light booth: the janitor had a master key (but given all the dust, I doubt the room was on his list of rounds), my boss had a single key and Operations had the spare. My boss took the one off of her ring and I put it in my pocket.

The door to the light booth was marked Authorized Personnel Only. The lock itself was hard to turn and sometimes it was necessary to jiggle the key a little. The door was always locked. There was no way to get it open from the hallway without the key. Once through the door (which was hard to push open and wasn’t adjusted very well so it slammed if you didn’t hold the handle and fight with it)(this was particularly important to notice because if I needed to make a run to the little girl’s room during the show, I couldn’t let the door slam or the audience could hear it), there was a cinderblock room with a hardwired fluorescent light that could not be turned off and a set of metal and concrete stairs leading up.

The framework was metal with railings on both sides, so if you put your hand on the rail on the left, it could get smashed between the rail and the wall. The stairs were also very narrow. It wasn’t possible for two people to walk on the same step at the same time. There were twelve stairs after about four plus a landing and number eight was loose. When I stepped on it, it wiggled and made a bit of a noise. Not a lot, but definitely a recognizable sound.

Even on my first ascent, I thought those things were dangerous. Between smashing my fingers once (it only took once to learn that lesson!) and the disorientation caused by the shaking, loose stair, I did not have much confidence in their safety and always took them one at a time and with much care. They weren’t rickety, but they shook as a unit and the idea of falling down concrete stairs while my flailing arms and legs could get caught in the rails wasn’t comforting. Also, if that step number eight decided to crack open and break away, I am small enough to fall right through…onto the cement floor. No fun, either.

At the top of the stairs was another landing in front of an opening that led to the light booth itself. The carpet was maroon and brown with a ten-inch lattice and flower pattern that reminded me of the 70s. Right next to the doorway was a light turquoise fiberglass and metal chair. Straight ahead from the doorway was the sound rack. There was a reel-to-reel machine, a graphic equalizer, some speaker patch panels, a few amps and a rack-mounted, ten-channel sound board. None of this equipment was to be used for the symposium. Their audio was handled from an auxiliary board downstairs and didn’t hook into the house system at all.

The room was about twenty-five to thirty feet long and about fifteen feet deep. There were windows on the long side overlooking the room below. As customary, one pane was missing nearest the sound rack in case us technicians needed to hear what was going on in the room below or if during load-in or load-out upstairs and downstairs needed to communicate. Near the back wall, there was a miscellaneous pile of lighting gel–some in an accordion file and some in a messy heap around the file. Many were cut as circles for followspots, but some were square for regular stage lighting.

On the opposite side of the room was a chair and table with a small light board set up next to a house light panel built into the wall. That was where I got to spend my time.

On the first day, about an hour into the symposium, I noticed that I kept glancing back at the chair near the door. After the fourth or so time, I started to really wonder why I was doing it. On the fifth, I realized it was because I’d thought someone had come into the room. But I was the only one around who had a key, I didn’t hear the downstairs door in the echoey concrete entry and step number eight didn’t make its wiggle noise. (Would you believe that during my time up in the light booth, I went into the stairwell specifically to figure out if it was possible to step on step number eight without it making noise and couldn’t do it silently!?)

Well, if all that was true, maybe I was sensing a ghost. The thought no sooner crossed my mind than I had a gut feeling that yes, ’someone’ was in the room with me. Hmmm…

The symposium was pretty boring for me and it was easy to figure out when they needed the lights up or down, so why not see if I could tune in and figure out the presence?

On the next time I turned around, I didn’t just glance, I stared right where I felt the largest concentration of energy. Then I smiled and whispered, “I know you’re there.”

The energy in the chair went from sitting to standing and moved toward me. The words, “You know I’m here?” came into my mind. “You really know I’m here?”

Remember what I said about reading this for entertainment value if you’re a skeptic? Well… from here on out, you really have to suspend your disbelief. I’m not writing fiction here, I swear it. I’m writing what I experienced. It’s entirely possible you’ll think that this is just my imagination. Feel free, but I’m going to go on with my story anyway.

“Yes. I can feel you. I can’t see you exactly, but I can feel you.”

Remember how in previous posts I said most of what I sense are emotions or I sometimes get vague imagery or sound? Well, this case is no different. But because I had so many hours up there alone with this entity, rather than be afraid, I tried to tune in, to understand, to be receptive and hopefully make a new friend. I did not sense any danger.

The entity started moving around the room and I turned my head, watching its movements.

I chuckled. “I can’t see you exactly, but I know you’re moving around.”

“Wow.”

“Wow?”

“No one else who’s come up here has done that.” The entity stopped about three feet away from me.

My mind’s eye started to tune the spirit in as a sort of light shadow overlaid on my physical sight. The entity was shaped more like a man than a woman and I realized that his voice was more masculine than feminine even though it wasn’t exactly clear in my head. I kept smiling. “Did you want them to know you’re here?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes. Maybe.” It was like he’d never really thought about it before. “No one really comes up here much anyway.”

“What’s your name?”

Okay, this is once again where I have trouble. I’m terrible with names. It took probably four times of me trying to interpret his name and he may have given up on me and just settled on “James” because it was close enough to whatever his real name was, but when I called him James, it seemed to fit the best. It felt the most correct out of all the names I struggled with. (See why you need to suspend your disbelief! My ability gets hard to interpret verbatim, so it’s reasonably unreliable when I communicate. As for sensing location of the energy, I’m usually right on.)

The next four hours with James were mostly about me trying to tune him in when I wasn’t bringing the lights up or down as required for the symposium. I felt zero danger, in fact I felt pretty good up there alone, locked in with a ghost.

The following day, I opened the downstairs door and went up the stairs to ghost the lights in order to do my dimmer check. I greeted James and told him I’d be right back. He seemed glad to see me and glad I knew he was there again.

I needed to adjust the focus of one of the lights, so I went into the creepy room to the ladder, climbed up, did the adjustment and went back down. I lingered in the creepy room just to see what would happen. Visions of the black, jagged, clawed, wicked thing this time with red eyes flooded through my head, so I left. Who knows if there really was something that looked like that in the dark corner in the back, but that’s the image it gave me to chew on, so rather than piss it off more than it already was, I walked out. Whether it knew I was there, I don’t know. It seemed so wrapped up in emanating hatred and vicious disdain that I couldn’t tell if it was sentient or not.

I went back up to the light booth and the symposium got underway. That day, I’d brought a binder to write in. I wasn’t writing stories at the time, just my thoughts, journal entries basically. I wrote about James a little bit. He looked over my shoulder and laughed and asked me to write a few things. I got them wrong and he laughed harder.

That afternoon, I got really tired of sitting at the table, so I went to the pile of lighting gel in the back of the room. There was a swatch book and a grease pencil, so I started picking up unmarked gels and matching them in the swatch book so that I could mark and file them. James had left for a while, but he came back when I was sitting there on the floor with the gels.

I picked up a bright Barbie pink one and couldn’t put it down. James seemed excited. I tried to tune him in because it seemed like he had something to say about it.

As best as I could interpret, he said, “That’s the color pink my girlfriend wore when we went to our high school prom. A strapless dress with a big flower.” Although, I couldn’t figure out if the flower was in her hair or on the waist of the dress or maybe the dress had a flower on it and she also put one in her hair. He was so excited that he was going too fast for me to keep up. “Do you know where she is? I miss her. I was going to marry her.”

My needle skipped off my record. “What?”

“I miss Annie. Do you know where she is? Can you find her? I want to see her again. I want to be with her. We were going to get married…” And then my interpretation skills started sucking again, but it seemed like he was trying to say that he died just before they were about to be married. (At a later time, I’d written that he said he’d died as a result of falling down the cement stairs in 1978. I don’t know what to believe other than that he knew he was dead and it had been untimely.) I felt a borrowed sense of longing and knew I was picking up James’s emotion because at the moment, I wasn’t really missing anyone.

So, there I was, still holding the pink gel and trying to tune in to James. I explained I wasn’t sure I could help him find her. He left for a little while and I kept going with identifying the gels.

I got to another pink one and he showed up again. “Thank you.”

“What? Why are you thanking me?”

“You’re talking to me. It’s okay you can’t find Annie. I miss her, but that’s okay. I’ll find her someday.” His emotion went from sort of sad to a disguising happy. “Stand up. If you can hear me, stand up.”

“Stand up? Why?”

“Just do it. I want to show you something.”

Uh-oh, in the past, when a ghost wanted to show me something, it wasn’t particularly something I wanted to look at.

He sensed my apprehension. “I just want to dance with you…like I did with Annie.”

Okay…write off my sanity completely now! I stood up and good golly I swore I felt his hand on my hip, his other hand in the air, waiting for mine.

So, I danced a few bars with a ghost. Go ahead, laugh, make fun of me, whatever, but bottom line it was fun. Even during the experience, I was laughing. There was a certain kind of happiness and whether I was really dancing with him or not, who cares? I had nothing else to do at the moment.

(But answer me this, would you think I was crazy had I just danced by myself for the sake of dancing? Not so much, I bet. But because I think I was dancing with a ghost, you might think I’m nuts. Funny how that little detail colors the event. Now do you see why I don’t talk about this experience much?)

I broke away because I needed to change the lights. He thanked me and either left or I simply lost track of him.

At the end of the day, I thanked him for helping me fight away the boredom. There were only two more days left.

That next day, not much new happened. We talked a little about various things. This was when I tried to figure out how he’d died and still couldn’t make heads or tails of it although it really seemed like if it wasn’t because of falling down the stairs, he’d somehow died in that building somewhere. He did, however, know he was dead. He said it had taken him awhile to figure it out. “At first, no one saw me and I started to really wonder what was going on, but after awhile, I kind of figured out that I must be dead. I believed in ghosts when I was alive. This must be what it’s like.”

I asked him more about ‘what it’s like’, but couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. The emotions I got were happy at times, sad at others, a little frustrated, but ultimately content and okay with it. He said mostly, he just missed Annie and that I reminded him of her. There was a sense that perhaps time where he was and time where I was were totally different things, but he didn’t actually say that.

At the end of that third day, I told him that tomorrow would be my last day up there and I didn’t know when I’d be able to come back. “I’m gonna miss you, though. And whenever there’s another event in here, I’ll try to get on the crew for it.”

“Please do. You know I’m here. No one else can see me.”

“I don’t actually see you very well, I sense you.”

“Whatever. You look at me. No one looks at me.”

Wow. That seemed so important to him. His loneliness finally clicked with me. (I know, I know…took me long enough!)

“I’d like to really see you, James. Maybe tomorrow you could show me.”

“I’ll try. It’s really hard, but I’ll try.”

“Okay. Oh, one more thing before I go… What is up with the stage left storage room? What is in there?”

“Don’t go in there.”

“I don’t like to. I don’t want to. What’s in there?”

“Just please don’t go in there. It’s not good. Don’t go in there. Please don’t go in there. I really mean it. It’s not good in there.”

“I know it’s not good in there. I hate it in there.”

“Don’t go in there.”

“Sometimes I have to.”

“Use the other ladder or run, don’t walk if you have to go through there. It’s not safe.”

“What is it?”

“Just don’t. Please don’t. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“It’s just a room.”

“Don’t go in there, okay? Do you hear me? Don’t go in that room.” He was adamant.

“Yes, James, I hear you. I’ll do my best to stay out of there.”

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yes, see you tomorrow.” I smiled and felt him give me a hug. It was kind of strange, but I felt his energy surround me completely. Seriously, I felt him just like feeling any other friend giving me a hug.

The next day was the last day. I wrote more in my binder journal but aside from him greeting me when I arrived, I hardly sensed him around much at all. He popped in and said hello, even made me laugh a few times. But for the most part, he just wasn’t there.

About an hour before the symposium was to end, I was writing in my journal about nothing in particular. I’d brought the lights down low because they were watching a movie that was to last about a half an hour.

All of a sudden, I got the distinct feeling that someone had come into the room. As I lifted and turned my head, I reviewed the fact that I hadn’t heard the slamming door downstairs, nor the wiggle noise from step number eight and then clearly, but still in my peripheral vision because my head wasn’t all the way turned toward the doorway yet, I saw a man walk from the doorway to the sound rack.

I stood and walked toward the rack, wondering if I’d just zoned out and missed the door slam and step wiggle and someone affiliated with the symposium or perhaps Operations had come up to see how the show was going, “Can I help you?” or maybe someone was just lost, “Hello?” and maybe they didn’t see me over there in the corner when they walked in. It was rare that anyone who wasn’t part of the crew would walk into a light booth alone during a show anyway, so why was this guy up here?

There was no one there.

But I swear I saw a man wearing faded blue jeans, 70s-style Nike-type running shoes, a baseball shirt with a white torso and yellow diagonal sleeves. There was even a number on it which I couldn’t read and on one sleeve, there were two red stripes, a black one on the other. He had blonde shaggy hair that came just below his ears and he was young–college age or so.

And good golly, he reminded me of the stuff I’d talked about with James.

I stood there, staring at the whole-lot-of-no-person next to the sound rack and swallowed hard. What had I just seen? Someone had walked in. I knew it. He was three-dimensional and far from imaginary. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing at attention. Maybe I’d just seen a ghost. Had I really just seen a ghost? No. Wait. Yeah, it sure as hell seemed like it. The more I replayed it in my head, the more I knew that since there wasn’t a human standing next to that sound rack, I had indeed seen a ghost.

“Did you see me?” James asked.

“Yes. Yeah, I did.” I was still in shock.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I’ve never actually seen a ghost before.”

“Well, now you have.”

I laughed. “Thank you, but next time, could you give me a little warning? I wasn’t expecting you. I was kind of scared.”

“Don’t be.” He faded away while I stood there dumbfounded for another minute or so.

I didn’t feel him much the rest of the day. During the load-out, I avoided the creepy room as much as possible. When I went back up to the light booth to shut everything down, we said our goodbyes and I really didn’t want to go.

The following week, I was back to work in the live theater next door–the one I normally worked in. That symposium was kind of a fluke and I sadly never worked another gig in that big room.

But one night when it was quiet up in the other light booth, I was programming the light board for a jazz concert and I felt James behind me. Faintly, but he was there. I turned around and let him know I knew he was there. He was very difficult to tune in to communicate with him, but from what I could understand, it was hard for him to really be there in that particular theater even though it was only about a hundred-fifty feet from the other light booth.

I worked in that space for a few more months before finding another job. On nights I was up there alone, I felt him come and go, but yeah, it was hard to clearly tune in to him there.

I haven’t been back to those spaces in about ten years, but as you can see, our time together hasn’t faded much and I hope it never will.

According to the writings I found from a few months after the symposium, James was always comforting, kind and compassionate. I always felt good around him. That’s one of the ways I knew he was there. Just like Tex in that other theater, James confirmed that ghosts aren’t bad, they’re just different.

If I ever get the opportunity to go back to that space, you bet I will. And for James’s sake, I’ll stay out of the creepy storage room.

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