A Little Late…

…But the man was legendary, so I suppose my tribute can’t possibly be too late.

I learned recently that the man who taught me how to properly swab a deck and cuss like a sailor died this year.

Read the obituary for John Delaney, Former Scene Shop Foreman of San Joaquin Delta College, here

When I arrived in the theater department at Delta College in 1992 because “I’d taken a theater class in high school and thought maybe I might like to try it again”, I was lucky enough to also be in the cast of Spoon River Anthology. (Not a whole lot of surprises here. It was a cast of 78 and I think 79 or 80 auditioned.)

Because we were all required to procure a chair for us to sit in on stage, I was escorted into the bowels of the theater. But someone had already snagged the chairs cushy enough for the rich Dora Williams (Yep, I played a murderess) so I went back upstairs into the scene shop.

JD hooked me up with a chair carcass and then proceeded to show me a thing or two about a thing or two and that I’d need to get some fabric and some stuffing, but he had the upholstery tape I’d need.

Ummm… Okay, JD. I’ll take your word for it. I ain’t never redone a chair before, but what the hell?!

Over the next week, JD showed me how to use the old rotten fabric to be a pattern on the new fabric I got. He showed me how to use wood stain. He showed me how to use that upholstery tape across the frame so my butt wouldn’t fall straight through the chair. He showed me how to cover the bottom and staple it so that it wouldn’t be ugly.

In turn, I showed him I can build anything I put my mind to.

During opening weekend, I got laid off from my little craft store job. John White noticed I was upset and at the end of the conversation, told me not to worry because on Monday I would be on the clock in the scene shop.

That chair JD showed me how to recover was what got me the job. I still have that chair. I’ll never get rid of it. That thing reminds me how far I’ve come and how much farther I can go with just a little bit of help.

Over the next three years, I learned how to build flats, cut steel pipe, wield a saber saw, safely use a pneumatic nail gun, paint without dribbling, get straight on every screw, sew backdrops, use the fish on the table saw, build banisters, properly mop a stage, hang scenery, use a chassis punch, operate a band saw with incredible precision, lament about and fix old cars (namely his old Dodge truck and my ’68 Mustang fastback), use a wood lathe, tap and die nuts and bolts, wash paint brushes and cuss like there was no tomorrow.

But even through all the scenic conundrums we faced, JD always had a plan of attack. He always knew how to approach the project even if he didn’t know for sure how it’d work out.

And then there was one time when I was a Master Carpenter for our production of Hair. The director wanted two puppet heads made for Mom and Dad. Their mouths had to move…only powered by the jaws of the actors who’d be wearing the heads.

The small head had a diameter of about 2 feet and was only 2 feet tall. The other was almost 3 feet tall. They were molded by the costume department and built from papier mache.

Once dry, they were brought into the scene shop. They were now officially “our problem”.

Me: Hey JD, the heads are here.
JD: Shit.
Me: What kind of guts are we gonna put in them?
JD: Well shit, they got nothin’ in ’em?
Me: Yeah, they’re just shells. What’re we gonna do?
JD: Goddamn. I dunno.
(I was stunned. My jaw dropped.) Me: What? You don’t know?
JD: No fuckin’ clue.
Me: But…You don’t…I don’t…How are we… You’re just fuckin’ with me, right?
JD: Nope. I dunno how we’re gonna do it, but we are, goddammit. Somehow. Even if we gotta stuff ’em with goddamn Kotex, these bastards are gonna work.

We brainstormed for a few days. JD had the idea to take a couple of old hardhats we had laying around and affix all-thread to them and flush mount it through the heads with j-nuts (or them other similar nuts that are escaping my memory at the moment but mount flush and press fit so as not to turn).

So we got the hardhats in there okay, but that didn’t solve how to hold them to the actors’ heads nor did that solve how to make them talk.

We bounced a few more ideas off of each other. Heat setting, self-adhesive velcro worked as sturdy chin straps. But again, how to make ’em talk?’ We were running out of time.

JD took a box cutter to the mouths and then pondered the shells he’d cut out.

JD: We need a fulcrum…and something to mount these pieces of shit to. Maybe a hinge.
Me: Ummm… Okay, but these are hollow and we still gotta figure out how the actors can make them talk.

The light bulb went on above his head and he retreated to the tool cage for some two-part foam. He filled ’em up and we shaped them a little so that the actors could still get them on, but all the while, we kept wondering what kind of hinge and mechanism we were gonna build to make them actually move with the actors’ mouths.

Somehow the next day while I was putting some finishing touches on something else, the idea came to me.

Me: JD! I figured it out! Did you figure out how we’re gonna make ’em talk? How we’re gonna attach the mouths?
JD: Nope, the bastards are still sittin’ there.
Me: We can use lightweight fabric for a hinge.
JD: Well goddamn. Yeah, we could.
Me: And with all that foam in there, we can shove a couple of pieces of coat hanger into it and put a piece of cardboard on them to hold ’em steady.
JD: Shit, let’s try it!

We did. When I put that first puppet head over mine and made the mouth move, we were both so glad…well, relieved anyway… It was only a day or two before dress rehearsals, but we’d come through even without having any idea how we were gonna make it work.

As you can tell, I look back fondly at my days in the scene shop. I learned so much about stagecraft and even more about life. I don’t freak out during crises. I don’t. The show must go on and there’s always a way to make it happen even if you don’t know how.

Goodbye JD. And thank you for EVERYTHING!

Vintage Sewing Patterns

As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, I’m not only making beaded jewelry, I’m also back into another of my loves: vintage sewing patterns.

My best friend got married over ten years ago, I’m not sure exactly which year in the late 1990s because that part of my life is kind of a blur, but anyway, I was to be one of her bridesmaids. The dresses would be easy because we all went on a shopping trip and found what we needed. Tons of fun. However, there was still the rehearsal that I seriously did not have a dress for.

This was back in my hardcore theater technician days. I wore all black jeans and t-shirts, all the time because it was easier. I even carried my wrench in my back pocket, flashlight and multi-tool on my belt. I spent more time backstage than I did working on my car or doing homework. I did not own any dresses.

But I love shopping at thrift stores.

And at one of them, there was a vintage sewing pattern for 29 cents. It was for a cute, 1970s full-length dress with little flutter sleeves. It was a size too big for me, but whatever. It was so cheap, it didn’t matter.

Oh yeah, did I mention I couldn’t afford to buy new clothes? Let alone a dress that was in brand new shape to wear to the rehearsal?

Anyhow, I hit up the discount fabric store and got some floral fabric. It was lightly tie-dyed navy blue with very small pink flowers on vines. I didn’t have the money for a long zipper, so I planned to do some kind of front closure. I didn’t know how to do button holes on my thrift store sewing machine, so I found some snaps on the sale rack.

From there, I cut out the pattern, didn’t adjust it properly to fit or to accommodate the snaps. Whoops!

In order to resurrect the dress, I just went with it and added a tie to the waist to pull it in. Once it was on, no one could tell that I’d screwed up the pattern. At least I couldn’t and I got a ton of compliments on that sweet dress.

But then it shrank when I laundered it and since I couldn’t wear it anymore, I donated it back to one of the thrift stores I frequented. Sometimes I wish I’d kept it just for the memories.

Now, I still don’t buy new clothes and I wear mostly vintage…

And now that my Etsy store is full of vintage patterns, I can make whatever I want…and modify it properly for a change! I’m not selling that flutter sleeve dress pattern, though. One of these days I’m gonna redo the navy blue dress…the right way!

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!

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.

Little Bits and Part One

I’ve covered the stories I usually tell whenever someone asks if I believe in ghosts or why do I believe in ghosts or if they straight out ask me to tell them one of my ghost experiences. If you missed them, please scroll down because what I’m about to post kind of needs a little set up.

I haven’t covered some of the smaller things… Like the showerhead that came on and off as soon as my husband and I entered our hotel room in Windsor, UK. Or the time I thought I felt the spirit of a young girl who’d committed suicide in the dorm building across from where I was living, so I asked her for a sign and the hallway light came on despite the fact that I was the only one in my dorm at the time. Whether that was really her or not, I don’t know, but the light came on when I’d asked for a sign. ‘Someone’ was there.

I’ve also left out the year or so when our gang of 5 turtles would randomly start paddling like they’re about to be fed, but there’s no one in front of the aquarium. They were all looking at the same place and expecting food, but the spot was empty. What were they looking at? Or more specifically, who? They don’t dance when you put a chair or other object in front of the tank. They only dance for people. Both my husband and I witnessed that together as well as alone. Makes me wonder how the turtles could see the ghost, but we couldn’t. And where did that person go? The turtles haven’t ‘danced for no one’ for about five years now.

I also just recently remembered an early morning when I was in fourth grade. We had a spa outside at home. I’d folded the heavy cover back half way like usual. There was no one around but me. Since it was about 4:30AM, I fell asleep lounging there in the nice warm water like I did most mornings before school.

Then I heard, “Wake up, wake up, wake up!” in my grandfather’s voice, startling me. I opened my eyes in enough time to catch the heavy spa lid about an inch from my nose. The wind hand blown the cover over and would’ve caused serious damage to my face and neck had it landed. Talk about a scary close call. There wasn’t even time to scream.

Now, in the next two posts, I’m going to write about someone I have told very few people about…like maybe three people total. And I don’t think I’ve told them everything. I do, however, tell just about anybody what happened at the end of this tale. The rest is somewhat personal, but mostly it’s hard for a skeptic to believe. I have not done any research and I wouldn’t even know where to start. I also have no evidence. So, if you don’t believe in ghosts or that I’m sensitive to them and want to keep reading anyway, pretend it’s just a story and hopefully it will entertain you.

In August of 1997, I was a lighting technician assigned to do the lighting and run the light board for a symposium. It was five days of easy money as far as I was concerned. This was to take place in a large sort of banquet room with a high ceiling. There were two storage rooms on one end. We set up several risers to be a stage. There were lighting positions up on a ledge where we had some lights clamped to a few pipe-and-base setups.

Obviously, this wasn’t a major theatrical production. For the most part, they were going to use the house lights, but when they showed slides or movies, they needed different lighting in order to see what was on the screen.

I hadn’t worked in the space, but I’d been in there once before. A big room without windows. Nothing special. During the load-in, all I was in charge of was lighting. There was a podium set up, so I figured I’d get up onto the catwalks and get it lit first.

I walked into the stage left storage room and my breath caught. Hard. I was practically blinded with a sort of darkness even though the light was on.

What the hell was that? I stopped. Good golly, I felt uncomfortable, but I had a job to do.

Oh well. Whatever. Get to the ladder and get up it so I don’t have to stay in there.

I climbed up two rungs at a time and got out onto the catwalk–which was literally a ledge that went all the way around the room, without guardrails or anything. I did what I needed to do with the lights and since that took me around to the other side of the room, I went down the opposite ladder–the one in the other storage room.

Okay. I climbed down to the floor. That room did not have the same effect on my sixth sense as the other creepy room, but I felt as though there was something on the other side of wall it shared with the other room…something very bad or at least very powerful. Hmmm… Kind of strange, but whatever. I took the mental note and continued working.

The day wore on and I got the lights ready before helping with some of the chairs and staging. My co-workers went into the creepy storage room and stood there talking and joking amongst themselves. I went in and thought I was going to die of creepy-wacky-weird-o-matic-ness, so I backed out to the doorway and made excuses not to actually come into the room.

I look back now and laugh my ass off. I’d never done that before and haven’t done it since!

My co-workers thought nothing of it because I’m a hard worker. If there were some nasty (fake) handprints on the door, it wasn’t strange to see me wiping down the door or even picking up (fake) dirt or lint from the floor. Yes, I made up stuff to do which would keep me from going into that room unless I absolutely had to.

Every single time I went into that freakin’ room, I got bombarded with either black imagery with sharp edges or a sort of deep wheezing, growling breath and of course an overwhelming desire to not be in that room. I did ask one of my co-workers if that room felt strange and he said no. I suppose it was just me, but at least the energy was confined to only that room.

Why was this such a big deal? Why don’t I talk about it? Well, honestly, it’s not the thing-in-the-room part of the story I don’t talk about because it was so personal, etc. There’s more to the story…in a different room…with ‘someone’ else…who essentially solidified many of my beliefs in the afterlife and how much of it works. There are exceptions to every rule, though. Nothing is certain.

And someone else in the position I was in might see things much, much differently than I did.

Like the essay I wrote in 11th grade about Thoreau and Emerson… I wanted to work on one of the many stories I wrote after school, but I had to write the stupid school essay, so I combined them. I used the characters from my story and put them in the essay. My teacher thought it was the most brilliant essay ever turned in to him. A+

He saw something in my writing that I did not intentionally put there. He interpreted that essay differently than I did.

To me, much of paranormal investigation is subjective like that. In a philosophy class that I never raised my hand during, when it came to the existence of ghosts, I just couldn’t sit on my hand any longer and shy little me found myself in a debate with a guy who didn’t believe in ghosts.

I asked him, “Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“No. Of course not.”

“With all due respect, sir, that’s probably why you don’t believe in them.” A hush fell over the class. “I have seen a ghost and if you were in the same situation, experiencing the same thing I experienced, you’d likely believe they exist, too.”

He didn’t appreciate that and said things which equated to me cavorting with Satan. I was discouraged (from ever speaking out in class ever again), but not vanquished. Others in the class seemed shocked that I had actually spoken out and began sharing unexplained occurrences in their lives and it was so nice to hear that I wasn’t alone. I thought the one guy was going to start crying or something. He was utterly mortified. Can you imagine what he would’ve done if I’d owned up to being sensitive, too?!?!

This conversation happened about a month after the experience I’ll post next time. Not everyone is going to believe it and that’s totally fine with me. Non-believers can treat it as entertainment.

I know in my heart what I experienced and honestly, others may have interpreted it differently, but the triggers were there for me to experience it the way I did and if I’m not true to myself, who can I be true to?

So, next time I’ll share the week I spent one-on-one with a ghost.

Touch me, Tex

I’ve already covered a few of my paranormal experiences with audio and scent…which leads me to touch. I haven’t experienced a whole lot of touch that I can attribute to supernatural occurrences because I was able to either debunk for sure or there were too many other possibilities. But there was one time, with a ghost in the first theater I worked in. His name was Tex.

He was not an actor or a stagehand nor did he have anything to do with the theater…except that he’d helped build it.

The theater building was erected in 1978 or so. I worked there from 1992-1996 while attending classes. It houses two main traditional theaters, a black box theater, a green room, some dressing rooms, a costume shop, a huuuuuuuuge scene shop and various necessary storage spaces in the basement and on the three stories above.

Tex was a construction worker from…you guessed it…Texas. He was working on the second floor one day. There are two main staircases, one at either end of the building plus another secondary one that hadn’t been built yet. It was time for lunch and rather than walk all the way to the other side of the building to go down the completed stairs, Tex wanted to use the stairwell he was nearest. The building was barely framed at the time. I don’t know if much of the third floor had even been constructed yet.

The nearest stairwell didn’t have stairs yet, only a platform at the next landing. Tex figured he could just jump down the 15 or so feet.

Poor guy…he somehow tripped and skewered himself up through the crotch on a piece of rebar. He did not die immediately, but he was in such a difficult place to get to that eventually he suffocated on his own blood before rescuers could get him down.

When I heard that story, it had only been about fifteen years since the incident had happened. I’d always felt a little odd in that particular stairwell, but I was never afraid.

As part of my introduction when I first started working in the scene shop, the foreman told me that if I ever use the freight elevator, make sure I turn the key off after I was done…because Tex likes to make the elevator go up and down. He sometimes did it when the key was turned off and removed from the elevator altogether! In other words, Tex was part of the family there in the theater building. He did no harm, just a little bit of mischief.

I know a few other people who encountered him. I’m guessing that because of the nature of his demise, he was really big on safety. Now, in theaters, we do the unthinkable sometimes: we stand on the top rung of ladders–the one where the stickers warn you not to. It’s just something we all do at one time or another. It’s not good practice, it is unsafe, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

A friend of mine was working very late one night painting a set. She was all the way at the top of the ladder, stretching to reach a corner when she felt the ladder start to tip. She prepared to grab on to the scenery in case the ladder fell all the way over, but suddenly, the ladder righted itself. She looked down and there was a man in overalls and with a Texan accent telling her to be more careful. She thanked him and turned back to her work before realizing that she hadn’t heard any of the stage doors open or close before the man was there, nor had she heard his footsteps even though he was wearing work boots. She also heard neither of those sounds after he’d steadied her ladder.

Another friend of mine had found a door to the big theater unlocked one night. He was about twelve years old at the time, waiting for a ride after a school program had ended, and curious. So, he went inside the theater. For one reason or another, the ghost light wasn’t working (That’s generally a single light bulb on a stand placed near the front of the stage so that if there’s scenery or whatever, anyone who goes in there in the dark can make their way around. Theaters can be very, very dangerous places.) but he walked out onto the stage anyway. The illuminated Exit signs provided enough light for him to see that the stage was empty, but he couldn’t really see much detail out toward the middle. The floor is black, too.

He walked out from stage right, intent upon going to the front of the stage in the middle and look out into the audience. The space was magnificent. The proscenium opening was 60 feet wide and the house seated 1400 in bright red velvety seats. He got to a certain point and just stopped. ’Something’ prevented him from going further. He was a little scared, but more curious than anything. He backed up and stepped forward again, but something made him stop. Pulling a coin from his pocket, he flicked it out in front of him, wondering why he couldn’t go further.

It took awhile to finally hit something.

The orchestra pit was at basement level…about a twenty-foot drop. One more step and he would’ve fallen. In fact, his toes were right at the edge. Shocked at whatever force was holding him and even more shocked that it was a damn good thing the force had stopped him, he was frozen right there, trying to make sense of it all.

Then the temperature dropped and wind picked up, swirling around him, blowing his hair, scaring him and he ran out the way he’d come.

Yes, the air-conditioner was always on, but no, it never swirled with the force of wind–especially front and center stage–the entire three years I worked day and night in that particular space. The only time the air-conditioning freaked me out was in the basement because the ceiling was low and the vent was right at head height and the cold air would be surprising as I came around one of the lighting racks. My friend and I believe he had likely been ’saved’ by Tex.

There are numerous other stories about him, but those are my two favorites. My experience with him was somewhat less dramatic.

I’d gone down by myself into one of the storage rooms under the smaller stage in search of a cardboard tube for a project I was building upstairs in the scene shop. I knew where they were. I just needed to retrieve one. I always felt Tex’s presence strongest in the basement and this day was no different. When I got the storage room open, I discovered that some wooden chairs and another box of tubes had been placed in front of the ones I needed to get at.

Great. Well, I could either wrestle everything out of the way or lean way far over in order to get what I needed. Being lazy, I leaned…and as I looked at my target tube, I thought to myself, “Gee, it would really suck if I fell.”

I felt two fingers jab against my upper back and sure enough, it sucked to fall into that other box of cardboard tubes. And then I felt laughter. Tex was laughing at me…but he’d also taught me a lesson. I was uninjured in my fall except for a tiny scratch on the underside of my chin. But Tex–Mr. Safety–was laughing his ass off at my expense.

It’s because of him that I believe there are some good spirits out there. Not all are mean or in despair. I hope to go back and visit him one day. I don’t even know if he’s still there. If he is, I hope he’s still helping people, keeping them safe–or at least teaching them how important safety really is!

Interjection about where I stand

All right, I’ve opened my can of worms and started posting some of my experiences with the paranormal. I feel it necessary to add one thing:

I am not a professional ghost hunter (yet). I’m just some weird girl who was born sensitive to all that’s around me physically and psychically. I haven’t taken classes. I have never finished reading any books on psychic abilities. (I get bored after I start them and never pick them up again.) I have not actively pursued ghost hunting although, I have worked in several haunted theaters as well as a haunted studio (the first purpose-built soundstage in Los Angeles). So while I haven’t done full-fledged investigations, I’ve spent many, many hours alone overnight in darkened theaters.

And let me tell ya…There are A LOT of people hanging around those places.

When I first got involved in theater, the resident ghost was sort of a joke, but everyone had stories and no one could figure out why the elevator used to go up and down at random times–without tangible passengers–sometimes when the key was turned off. I still thought I was crazy in that I kept feeling at least one unseen presence during this time period.

I’d fancied myself psychic, but my divination skills suck and I have yet to find a way of changing that. I used to do tarot readings for my friends, but that was mostly for fun. I don’t recall ever being “right on” when I read. Sensing ghosts, however, is something different.

In the early days, every time I was in a theater by myself and felt someone else nearby, I’d call out whether I’d heard them or not. I rarely got a response, but I’m also not sure I wanted to hear one! Darkened theaters are creepy and hazardous enough without paranormal activity going on. But through my having to work amid these conditions, I discovered that what I’d been sensing since childhood really were ghosts. They weren’t my over-active imagination.

In fact, as much as I know and believe the things I’ve experienced are real, I still look for validation. I still want further proof that I’m not insane. I’m an odd girl who never fit in, so it always feels good to have proof I’m not crazy, just sensitive and weird.

I’ve had experiences at all hours of the day although most have been at night. Most have been in the dark. Most have also been in places that are less traveled by people. Like, in rooms that don’t get used every day. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had experiences that don’t fit that category. I mean, “someone” opened my refrigerator and rummaged through it and my kitchen gets used every day.

Also, I’m only blogging my favorite experiences or the ones that come to mind when people ask me if I believe in ghosts. I know there are several experiences I’m leaving out simply because I don’t remember them. If they didn’t leave a big enough impression on me, I suppose they weren’t important anyway–or at least didn’t change the way I look at the paranormal world. And some of them…well, even though I’m a published novelist, I find it difficult to describe them.

I mean, yeah, I can say that when I was in high school, whenever I visited my grandmother, I hated to go into her retirement home because all I could hear were screams and moans and people I didn’t know were coming up to me, asking why no one talks to them anymore or why their relatives don’t visit anymore and who’s that crazy lady living in my apartment now or go away and let us suffer in peace.

Maybe at some point I’ll dive in and write a post sort of fictionalizing that kind of experience so that those who are not sensitive can see what it looks and feels like to try and balance the dead with the living. (I always visited Grandma with at least my mom and there was noooooooo way I was going to let on that anything might be paranormally affecting me. No way, no how, no sirree.) It was always tough to focus on the living while I was being bombarded with all the other information, too.

Also, it wasn’t until just yesterday that I finally got a voice recorder. I even got a few EVPs. They’re class C and hard to understand even after cleaning them up a little, but I got ’em. I’m one step closer to listening to the spirits attached to my antique doll collection.

Okay, I feel I’ve given enough of my background in order to continue. In fact, my next post will be about one of my favorite ghosts.

Hear Me Out

I’ve already covered scent, so now I’m on to hearing. I don’t have witnesses to the actual experiences I had, but others have reported the same things at different times.

I’ll start with the earliest audient one I remember. I was about 12 or 13. I’d spent the night at my best friend’s house. She had three cats at the time and when they wanted to come in to her bedroom when the door was closed, they’d scratch at the door or meow or sometimes both. A few times, when I’d get up to let one in, I’d see nothing but tail and back end running down the hallway.

She shared a room with her sister and it was at the end of the hallway. The nearest door was about fifteen feet away, so if a cat was going to scratch and ditch, it’d have a ways to run before hooking a right turn into the bathroom. Beyond that was her brother’s room, which was beyond the point where the cats could slip through the railing in order to use the stairs as an escape route.

But they rarely scratched and ditched.

That morning, we were engaged in girltalk. Me, being closest to the door, assumed that since I heard the telltale scratch, a cat must want in and I should get it. However, the sound was a bit odd. I almost wasn’t sure I’d heard it. While it definitely came from the direction of the door, it still sounded a bit strange to me for some reason. In fact, when I got up to answer the door, my best friend looked at me sort of sideways, wondering why I’d gotten up so suddenly.

I opened the door and no cat was there. Not even tail and backside scurrying away.

We thought it was weird that I’d heard the “cat”, but she didn’t. Apparently, all the women in her house had either had the same experience I did or tripped over a shadow cat on the stairs in the middle of the night when the rest of the household cats were accounted for in other parts of the house or had stayed outside.

While I believed in ghosts, I really didn’t want this kind of thing happening around me. I’m weird enough as it is, I don’t need supernatural stuff going on around me, too. Although, I also have to admit there are times when I just didn’t want to be alone and thankfully, ’someone’ was always there. Usually my grandfather, but there were others, too. I worked in theaters for a decade and every theater has at least one ghost.

At a certain theater, I only had the opportunity to do one show. It was late in 1995…around Christmas. I can do sound, lighting, set construction, costuming, special effects and props. I’m basically a one-woman show backstage. On this particular show, I was a lighting technician and then during the shows, I operated a follow spot. Anyhow, I was brought in a little late to the game. The show was already designed and the lights were hung. I was assigned to adjust the focus of a few lights and hang a special.

I was up in the catwalks all by myself. There was only one other person there at the time and he was nowhere near the stage. I don’t recall if he was in the scene shop or had gone out to the storage shed outside near his car. I just know he wasn’t around.

I can focus a light with the rest of the lights on, but it’s a whole lot easier to isolate the one I’m focusing, so I had very few lights on. The stage was mostly dark, as was the house.

I hung the light, plugged it in, went into the light booth to bring up the dimmer and went back to the catwalk to focus.

Step step step step step step. Stop.

’Someone’–who sounded like a man wearing dress shoes–had just walked from stage left out to the middle of the stage and stopped. Was this ’someone’ about to audition for a play? I saw no one. I wasn’t even sure I was hearing what I heard until the third or fourth step. I ’sensed’ activity, but I wasn’t in a position to really dive in. I mean, this was my first show at this place and at the time, yeah, I was sensitive (always have been), but that doesn’t mean I always use my sense nor do I always seek out activity. In fact, up there in the unfamiliar, darkened theater, I was kind of scared.

I sighed and went on with my work anyway. When my boss came back, I asked him if he’d heard the footsteps before.

“Yep. That’s George. No one knows how he got here. He also likes to turn on the house lights in the middle of shows. Other people have bigger stories about him, but he’s only done the footsteps for me.” (Yes, most of us theater people are quite nonchalant about the ghosts we “work” with.)

Sure enough, out of twelve performances, he turned the houselights on four times. There was a fifth time that could’ve been someone backstage, so I’m leaving that one out. Part of the training for a light board operator there was to be ready with the houselights because the slider would be all the way down. First, you’d have to realize that the houselights had come on, then press the button to take control, bring the slider up and back down again. It usually took three to five seconds, but that can be a long time when the audience is wondering what in the world is going on.

Although not an audient experience, there was also a blue glow that sometimes appeared in the furthest corner of the light booth. I hated going into that area whether night or day. If I had to grab equipment, I did it as quickly as possible. I only saw the glow once and I wasn’t really sure of it because some of the onstage lights were on and could’ve been reflecting off the front glass of the booth.

Except the blue glow was its own light, backlighting the light board operator’s chair, and one of the equipment shelves.

To me, George–and whoever else was there–was unhappy. I never sensed anything positive except when mischief was happening and even then it was more like vicious humor. I think he liked to see people being scared. When I ran the follow spot for the show, I stayed away from the rear wall of the light booth. That was where I felt the greatest despair. I also did my best not to be in there alone. I wasn’t afraid that something bad would happen to me, I was afraid of what I might see (psychically or physically), what I might learn about the source of the despair.

Theaters attract people who want to make it big. There’s nothing like hearing an audience roar with applause after a show, when all the focus is on you. It’s unreal. The sad truth is that there isn’t enough time in a single lifetime for every actor to get more than fifteen minutes of fame. So, I’m guessing some stick around beyond their lifetime, still hoping for their big break.

Although, not all theater ghosts are actors or stagehands. How do I know this? Well, that’s a whole other story I’ll share later, I promise. It’s one of my favorites.

April Fool’s Day was early for me

So, I had literally a couple minutes before I needed to leave for yoga class. Earlier in the day, I’d embarked upon a sort of odd project. I’d gotten a messed up antique doll on ebay probably a year or more ago. This particular doll had been the victim of a bad eye-setting job…and whoever’d done it used some sort of permanent, hard goop. Usually, you get the head a little wet and the plaster falls right out. Not this time. (I forgot to take a “before” pic. Darnit.)

I soaked this one in lacquer thinner and it sort of made a difference, but not really. The goop got a slightly mushy…enough that I was able to scrape out most of the trouble and only one of the eyes broke, but it wasn’t catastrophic. I can glue the eye back together and the seam probably won’t even show once that eye is installed.

Aside from the crooked eyes that I absolutely will not tolerate in my collection unless they were set crookedly at the factory back in the 1890s, this doll head had already been glued together once. I pulled that poor repair of her shoulders and part of the back of her head apart so I could get at the eyes a little easier. While I scraped, I discovered another two hairline cracks in her forehead…the hard way. Oh well. What’s done is done.

Okay, now here we are back to the initial paragraph… Two minutes before I was to leave for yoga class, I went back out to the garage to do a little more scraping for good measure while the mystery goop was still a tiny bit mushy. I got off a couple big chunks and was about to pick up my mat and head out.

But, just one more scrape…

OUCH!!!!!

I took the following pic two days later… after Krazy Gluing my finger back together. Notice the nice sharp point of the bisque porcelain? That was a hard stop against my knuckle. There’s a dime-size patch where I can’t feel anything and I’m of the opinion that’s a damn good thing. The joint and bone still hurt like crazy. The whole finger is swollen and won’t bend all the way, but at least the gash has sealed back up thanks to the Krazy Glue. It turned a little purple and green for a few days, but now aside from the lack of full bending ability, the dull pain is at a minimum. I haven’t tried to get my ring off, though. I shudder just thinking about it!

Why do I go through the torture? Well, honestly it has been quite a long time since last I really hurt myself. My husband and various friends hate me for that, too. I’m always so careful. When I worked in the scene shop, co-workers were amazed how I could wallow in paint, dirt, glue and sawdust all day but still manage to go home without wrecking my clothes. I’ve had close calls with the table saw, radial arm saw and did a nice manicure with the band saw once. I’m just like that. Somehow I stay out of trouble. So when something like this happens, I take it like karma and simply pay my dues.

Also, though, this doll is a mold #154, supposedly made by JD Kestner, one of the finest German manufacturers of the day. There aren’t a whole lot of these girls running around and dog gone it, I think she’s pretty.

Plus, she’ll be a great bigger sister to another project 154 I have if I ever get her finished. This little cutie just needs a body, wig and dress. But you see why the broken 154 is worth it. She’s gorgeous.

The broken one needs gluing, resetting the eyes, patching the body, reattaching the arms and a dress if I don’t already have one laying around, but she’s actually closer to being done than the little one. I tend to only put antique heads on antique bodies, so sometimes it takes awhile to find just the right body. I’ve had the small head for almost ten years now. I haven’t actively looked for another body, but still that’s an awful long time to sit on my shelf.

So my April Fool’s Day foolish stunt happened a little early this year, but that’s okay. I was able to go to yoga class and managed not to bleed everywhere, so that was good. I have also reactivated my interest in working on my collection–which I think was the real ‘reason’ I was given this karmaic injury.

I’ve got plenty to work on. These are the ones unfit to display:

Some are closer to done than others. Some were solely purchased very cheaply for a challenge and practice. This can be an expensive hobby, so I tend to stick to the girls who’ve been heavily played with or otherwise damaged. I’d hate to see their history be forgotten just because they’re cracked up or paint is flaking off. These were all toys at one point and in many cases, they were probably the ONLY toy a little girl had. That’s kind of neat to me.

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