Ghost Stories

Dinner Theatre

Until it's closurein December of 1991, a dinner theatre/restaurant operated forover 20 years in Sunset Beach, CA (just north of Huntington Beach).The restaurant was on the second floor, while the theatreoperated on the bottom floor. The building is fairly old, andI've been told that it had previously been an Irish bar.

Anyhow, I was a performer at the theatre during it's last threeyears of operation, and during that time some rather oddhappenings took place in several different areas of the building.In no particular order, these are the ghostly events...

After the shows were over and the restaurant closed for theevening, the asst. manager often stayed late going over the daysreceipts. On occasion the cast and crew of the theatre alsostayed late for rehearsals. On many occasions we heardinexplicable laughter that seemed to emanate from the upper floorof the building and echo down the stairway. Also common was theexperience of witnessing the elevator ascend or descend entirelyof it's own volition. These experiences happened with suchfrequency that one of the asst. managers actually quit because ofthem.

On one occasion a female performer came running out of the ladiesroom with a terrified look on her face. She claims that she saw aman standing behind her when she looked into the mirror, only toturn and find nobody there. Thereafter, she wouldn't enter thatrestroom, or any other restroom in the building, unaccompanied.

The most unusual experiences involved the dinner theatre. Wewould often find props, preset the night before, in strangeplaces the next day. The techs would complain of unexplainableequipment problems, such as sound board settings being preset andthen changed, "quirky" lights and unreliablemicrophones that were nevertheless in perfect working order.

But by far the strangest experience happened shortly before wewere informed that the theatre and restaurant were closing forgood. We were in rehearsals and had stayed late one night longafter the restaurant staff closed up for the evening. We cameback to the theatre early the next morning to continue withrehearsals to find that every piece of tape in the building haddisappeared. The first thing we noticed was that all of the stage"markings" had been removed. Then we saw that the color-codedtape markings on the microphones and microphone stands had beenremoved. The tape markings on the sound boards had been removed,as had the rolls of tape in the tech booth. The manager then camein and found that even the answering machine tape had disappeared!A subsequent search of the offices and other areas of thebuilding revealed the same mysterious lack of tape.

The staff and crew of both the restaurant and theatre werequestioned, but we never were able to explain this strange event,and it was chocked up by all to another ghostly shenanigan.

Although my fellow performers and I have all gone onto otherendeavors, when we manage to get together the "DinnerTheatre Ghost" is still a frequent topic of discussion andspeculation.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share this experience!

Beth