Movie Theater
I used to work in aGeneral Cinema in Redondo Beach, California. There were threetheaters on the grounds (three seperate buildings), the largestof which I worked in. This theater was also directly adjacent toa LARGE old cemetary. When I first started there, I heard theother workers joke about "the ghost" in the theater. Ididn't think much about it, thinking the proximity of thecemetary would lend itself to ghost stories, legitimate or not.After a few weeks, I was given a tad more responsibility andwould open or close the theater with one of the assistantmanagers.
The theater had an upstairs projector like any other theater.There was a small employee locker room (since we wore uniforms)that you had to pass through the projector room to get to (theprojectors are automated, so there was never anyone up there).Next to that there was a tiny room where we popped all of ourpopcorn. For starters, the projector room always freaked me alittle. It was VERY dark and shadowy, and unless you happened tobe coming on or going off a shift the exact same time as someoneelse, you were always up there alone. I thought I saw things movein the shadows out of the corner of my eye as I walked through it.I could've imagined that, I guess, but what was definitely notimagined was the Really Cold Spot. This happened on the wall thedivided the popcorn room and the projector room. Popping cornalways generated TONS of heat (and was thus the least- favoriteduty of the theater workers) and since there was no ventillationin the room, it got stiflingly hot in there. The wall between thetwo rooms always heated as well -- except for the Cold Spot. Itwas at eye level, roughly the shape of a head and shoulders (likea "bust" of someone). No matter how long you'd beenpopping popcorn and how hot it got in the popcorn room andsubsequently the wall, there was still a Cold Spot. What's worse:the spot *moved*. Not while anyone was actually feelng it (as faras I know), but it would be at different places along the wall,and it would move sometimes within minutes of someone locatingits position. It was weird. Once another woman reported seeing *eyes*in that corner of the projector room, and she never went upstairsagain, just stashed her personal stuff in the manager's officeand changed in the restroom. One of the assistant managers alsorefused to go up there, at least by himself. The other assistantmanager had an interesting story to tell, too, which I'll get toin a minute...
My own experiences (other than the Cold Spot and the generallycreepy feeling up there) were mainly limited to the concessionstand. Doesn't sound like a very spooky place, does it? As Istarted opening and closing, often back-to-back, I began tonotice weird things happened overnight. Cabinets I *know* Ilocked (with keys and a small padlock) were unlocked and open inthe morning. Supplies were moved around and knocked over in thesupply room directly behind the concession counter. *Several*times I felt a cold chill and a breeze, like someone had just runpast and I was feeling the wind in their wake. Twice anotherworker behind the concession stand reported feeling the samething the same time I had. I *suppose* someone could've come backin and done all that overnight, but it would've had to have beeneither the two assistant managers or the manager himself. We werea pretty small, closely-knit group; I doubt *any* of themwould've done anything like that, ever. And keeping it up over ayear seems even more unlikely.
So: the assistant manager's story. One night she was closing withone other woman. They were getting ready to leave and the otherwoman had gone back up to the employees' room to get her things.There's an in-house phone in the projector room, and she calleddown to the office to tell the asst. manager that there wassomeone in the theater. She said there was a weird woman standingdown by the curtain. The asst. manager went to check it out. Thiswasn't all that unusual, sometimes transients tried to stay inthe theater after closing, and since the alarm hadn't been set itwas possible (albeit unlikely) that someone had managed to sneakin the exit doors and was down there messing around.
The asst. manager went into the theater. What she saw was a pale,greyish-looking woman in a plain long skirt and a blouse. She hadlong hair pulled bakc at the nape of her neck, and the asst.manager said she distinctly remembers seeing the skirt moving andstrands of hair moving behind her head, as if there was a breezeblowing, but there wasn't a breeze inside the theater! As theasst. manager walked down the aisle towards her, she told thewoman the theater was closed. As she got closer, she could seethe woman's mouth moving, as if she were talking, but the asst.manager couldn't hear her saying anything. The woman wasn;tlooking at her but out into the theater. As she got closer, thestrange woman suddenly looked straight at her as if noticing herfor the first time, and suddenly VANISHED. No movement, nodisturbance behinmd the curtain, NOTHING. She was simply thereone moment and gone the next.
The assistant manager was extremely shaken, natch. She ran out ofthe theater back into the lobby. She nearly had a heart attackwhen she thought she heard footsteps coming after her -- she *did*hear footsteps but they were those of the other worker runningdown the stairs from the projector room -- *she had seen thewhole thing*. She had been watching from the window in theprojector room until the strange woman vanished, then she freakedand ran out of the projector room and down to the lobby. Neitherwoman would stay in the theater by themselves after that.
Just a note: I never met the woman who'd been watching from theprojector room, because she'd quit before I was hired, but I *did*get to know that assistant manager. She was a very level-headed,calm woman whom everybody liked, and I can't imagine her makingsomething like that up. The fact that the *manager* believed herstory -- although he wouldn't tell me any others -- gives it evenmore credibility.
Whatever happened, something weird was definitely going on inthat theater!