Meet Commando Barbie

About five years ago, I got up the nerve to wear a particular outfit to a romance convention. That evening, I was dubbed “Commando Barbie”. Okay, cool. That was fun. The outfit was great–$12 on the sale rack at a Forever 21 in, like, 1999. It hung in my closet for years because I was determined not to get rid of it until I’d worn it at least once. Thus, in 2003, Commando Barbie was “born”.

I wore it to Comic Con that year and caused a bit of a double-taking stir as I cruised about the Expo floor. One guy in a booth full of knives, swords and various other weapons just stared and said, “Wow…” before he’d even realized he’d said it aloud.

See, Commando Barbie is much hotter, cooler, better than I could ever be. I dunno what it is about her, but she’s really got her shit together. I, however, am her dorky alter-ego. I have difficulty speaking, going places and I’m just so darn uncool. I’m far too shy for my own good and could really learn a thing or two from Commando Barbie. Her social skills are far better than mine. I, in fact, have no social skills.

In a slightly different outfit, Commando Barbie (and her two best friends, Wendy and Jen) met Jamison Newlander and Corey Feldman, the Frog Brothers from Lost Boys–her favorite movie (and mine. We’ve got that in common.)

She even got up close with Gareth David-Lloyd, Ianto Jones from Torchwood. (BTW-you should seriously check out the band he fronts, Blue Gillespie. Awesome, sexy, hard blues. Makes me want to go back to Wales again real soon and catch a concert. I also haven’t been to all the castles in the south yet.) (Gotta love the T-shirt he’s wearing, too. All day long, having his pic taken with numerous women. See, now that’s the kind of skills Commando Barbie has and I could only dream of. That shit’s hilarious!)

Here she is right next to the Lost Boys: The Tribe booth… As herself…

And in her vampire-hunter gear.

I really wish I were as awesome as she is. In fact, walking around Comic Con with my best friend Jen (together, we’re the Ashleigh Raine writing team), I remarked how I wish I wasn’t such a big dork. I mean, here I am goofing off with a Dalek… Yeah, a Dalek from Dr. Who for heaven’s sake. “Exterminate! Exterminate!” Not cool. And there I am dorking it up, trying to be all cool in my camo and failing miserably. Nice. Help me Commando Barbie! Please put me out of my misery!

And what was Commando Barbie doing…instead of a Dalek? Well, she got her picture taken for Hustler magazine…for their “Hot Chicks of Comic Con” project. Of course.

Why can’t I be more like her? Instead, I freeze up when people try to talk to me. I trip over my own feet and quite often I have significant difficulty discerning where my ass ends and my head begins due to their close proximity–one being firmly shoved up the other all the time. *sigh*

When I grow up, I wanna be Commando Barbie. That bitch has everything…

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!

The Starter Wife (2)

I was so glad to be back on this show. Last time was great. This time I was actually booked with my Viper rather than being bumped up.

I got there, parked in a dirt lot before being directed up to the set, survived wardrobe with flying colors (she actually loved what I was wearing and the fact that I’d brought a ton of choices. Why can’t all costumers be that awesome?) and got the car appropriately backed in just in time for the first rehearsal. Then, the scene was shot–without any picture cars in the background–and I was sent to holding. Ummm…okay…

About an hour or so later, I was brought in to do about three takes for a tiny little scene and then ushered back out to holding. Ummm…all right…

An hour after that, I was wrapped. Ummm…yay!

Unsightly and Peculiar

So, the other day, my husband emails me this image…

Granted, it was with a bunch of other ones, but my first thought when I saw it was “Oh! I wanna shop there!!!!! Where is it?!”

Sadly, it looks like false advertising. I mean, I don’t see anything truly unsightly and peculiar in that photo.

And I should know what unsightly and peculiar clothes look like… This is only a tiny part of my wardrobe:

Not just one ugly polyester pantsuit, there’s three or four there…including one that’s plaid burlap. Oh yeah…unsightly…peculiar… That’s my taste in clothes.

Here’s a section from what I call my “everyday” pants…

Do you see why I got irritated by the costumer who told me “less is more” on Yes Man? These pictures are only a fraction of the clothes I have. I’ve also got a little over 100 yards of fabric in my collection. Some vintage, most not, but it’s all ready to go the moment I get inspired to design and build a garment or two. In fact, I did that last weekend and screwed up pretty bad!

I created a pattern using an existing, well-fitting pair of pants…and then forgot to add the seam allowance! When I went to try them on, I couldn’t figure out why they were so small…so tight I couldn’t even pull them all the way up. My husband started laughing with me as I wondered what the hell I’d done wrong.

Thankfully, I had about a half yard of scrap with which to fashion a peculiar solution to my dilemma. He thinks the pants are still somewhat unsightly, but I haven’t hemmed or put the waistband on them yet. He did agree that my creative attempt at salvaging them went well. They hardly look like I screwed up. They look more like I meant to build them that way. Yay!

This from a man who thinks my clothes are unsightly and peculiar… I don’t know why he’d think that…

And let’s not forget:

 

Okay, so perhaps that pic is best left forgotten. 😉

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

 

Haunted Dolls…

I’m no expert on haunted dolls, but I do have a rather large collection of antique dolls–the kind that were played with, not the kind that have spent the last century on display–and I’ve experienced paranormal activity in my home after acquiring some of them.

Also, being a sensitive, I can kinda sense which ones are “different”.

Now, none of my dolls have moved more than can be attributed to gravity or other purely natural circumstances. They don’t (as far as I know) become animated and run around on adventures all night. I’ve never put a doll in one place only to find her in another later on…unless someone put her there.

In most cases, I got these dolls from flea markets, eBay, thrift stores or they were given to me by family or friends…and then there was the one I found right on top in a trash can almost as though whoever threw her out had hoped someone else would come along and rescue her.

I do not collect display-only dolls. I have a few, but they just don’t have the history the other girls have. A broken finger, missing paint, cracks, dents, chips, rips: all those things are what I prefer when I look at a doll.

And those are the things that devalue dolls the quickest. For instance, I could buy a doll for $300 in perfect condition or get the same doll for about $80 in broken condition. Hmmm… I can rescue a piece of history at a fraction of the cost of a perfect doll, and it’s a piece of a person’s history, not just of doll-making. Gee, tough choice. I’ll take the cheap, interesting one with stories to tell over the girl who sat on a shelf or in a box her whole life.

So when I say that when I got this doll she was missing eyes, wig, dress and one of her arms had fallen off, you understand why I had to have her. I don’t recall exactly how much she cost about 4 or so years ago, but I’m betting she was under $100. At the time, in mint condition, she was worth a little over $200 probably.

Honestly, she wasn’t in bad shape, just far from display-ready. I ordered a wig (still kicking myself for buying a new one instead of waiting for a used one in her size), found a set of eyes in my stockpile and set them (she was supposed to have sleep eyes that open and close, but I still haven’t gotten up the nerve to give those a try especially on such a small head) and then hunted through my collection of dresses. The only one I had that’d fit was one my mom’s grandmother had made for one of her dolls when she was a kid. It was far from antique looking, but I put it on this doll, got her a doll stand and put her on display. The one she’s wearing now, is a hand-sewn antique I got within the last six months.

I’ve already chronicled the paranormal activity that happened around the time I got this doll. Since then, I don’t believe anything else has happened that I can attribute to her. I’ll post pictures of some of my other “different” girls later… One of which I considered getting rid of, but just couldn’t because I didn’t want to shove the “problem child” on another unsuspecting person.

In all honesty, as long as a ghost isn’t bothering me, I don’t mind the company. I’m not going to throw out a ghost for opening my refrigerator once or twice, but I’d consider it if it kept turning on all the lights in the house over night. Them electric bills can get costly!

So, in other words, I’ll be posting about my doll collection and the many facets of them. From the restorations I do to the ghosts who are attached, I plan on covering it all. Why? Because I like sharing my collection. Whenever new people come to my house and see my dolls, if they ask about them, I have to refrain from talking their ear off over how the dolls were made or where I got them or what I’ve done to them. My dolls are something I enjoy talking about, so why not share them here on my blog? I’ve got a few hundred of them and each one has a story…

The Starter Wife

I hadn’t driven my Viper in awhile and the thought crossed my mind to bring it to this gig because it was upscale and there were other people booked with cars, but I just wasn’t sure so I brought my Prowler.

I was to be playing an upscale drug addict in a high-dollar rehab center for the last three days.

Arriving at the location, I was instructed to park on a street. I think that’s a first for all the gigs I’ve been on. It was private property, but it was just strange that all the cars were on the street. Anyway, I got there okay and went to wardrobe after grabbing some breakfast. They mostly liked what I had on. After being instructed to change my tank top, they gave me another cute one to put over it plus some jewelry…and a different pair of shoes.

They were killer.

Yeah, four-inch heeled sandals. OUCH!

I could barely walk in them to begin with because they offered zero support to my ankles and the bottoms were thin enough that I could feel the pavement. When I got to the set, we were on cobblestones and tile. It was absolutely no fun.

However, before we got there, they did ask if anyone else had upscale cars and I offered up my Prowler. The hero car was also silver so there went that idea. Oh well. They still gave me some extra money for it and that was nice.

I gotta laugh at my shoe misfortune a little, though. During the exterior scene, I was asked to do a cross that involved going up the stairs around a fountain and no matter how hard I tried, I could not keep the pain from showing. I tried walking slowly, smoothly, fast, whatever and in the end they decided they didn’t want anyone walking in the background. I’m fairly certain that was mostly my fault because other people asked if my feet were hurting in those shoes.

Yeah, they were killer.

So killer, I put on my loafers immediately just to not be wearing those things.

I spent much of the rest of the day in holding except for one scene where the ADs came running out to holding hollering while pointing, “You…and you! Come now. We need you!” I hauled ass to the set while asking if I should bring the other shoes. They said I looked fine and put me in the scene at the last second. Fun stuff.

Then they needed another stand-in and I got chosen because I resembled the actor a little. I was about the right height and hair color, so I got upgraded. That was nice. I did a couple scenes including a dream sequence one where I was standing in for a sort of Lady In Waiting. While I stood in, one of the set dressers put a ribbon with flowers around me. Yay! I love souvenirs!

The next day was spent mostly by the pool. Even though they really, really, really wanted me in a bathing suit, I declined. My worry was that if they put me in a bathing suit, I’d be expected to go in the pool.

I get cold easily…and I can’t swim unless the boat I was in sank. Yeah, I’m really that pathetic.

So, with more down time I managed to read When Ghosts Speak by Mary Ann Winkowski. Great read. I highly recommend.

Oh! I almost forgot… As I was coming away from the wardrobe trailer toward the changing room Debra Messing was getting into an SUV to go up to the set. I guess she recognized me from standing in the day before and smiled at me. I was already returning her beaming grin by the time I realized that I wasn’t just smiling at some random pretty lady, I was grinning at a principal actor. Eye contact is usually a no-no, but we weren’t on set, so it must’ve been okay.

And I just gotta say, that woman is gorgeous! She smiled at me in the morning and the rest of my day was equally as wonderful.

The following day started with a bang of a different sort. I was used in the first scene along with the rest of the addicts. I don’t want to give away the scene, but lately I’ve been on a few shows where I’m required to do some real acting in the scenes. Remember all my listening on Raising The Bar? Well, that skill came in handy once more on this show… Yay!

And then I spent the rest of the day in holding, having some great conversations in between reading On The Loose by Tara Janzen. I dunno why, but I just couldn’t concentrate on reading. Oh well. Another good day over all.

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.

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