Many of the tales of eerie experiences told by Town and Gown volunteers begin with something like:  “I was alone at the theater...”  This is especially true for the male volunteers.  Does whatever--or whoever--causes these occurrences knowingly materialize when finding a man alone?

Paul Weber’s experience is typical in this regard.  He was at the theater by himself one morning, preparing for a show.  Paul explains, “I heard somebody say just clear as can be:  ‘Paul!’”  He walked throughout the building, seeking whoever had called his name.  However, no one else was there.

Bill Balcer’s experience goes one step beyond Paul’s.  Bill heard his name one day while working alone in the box office.  And he glimpsed someone walk by a door to another room.  Despite what Bill heard and saw, further investigation led to a dead end.  No one but himself was present.

There is a long, cavernous hallway that runs along the spine of the theater building.  Kevin Worley hadn’t turned on the lights before walking through it one time when he was the only one around.  “Every single door along there was closed,” he says.  “And yet, when I got down to the end of the hall, I heard one of the doors slam.”  Since the hall is in the center of building, any noises from outside--say, a car door being swung shut‑‑would have been muffled.  The slam Kevin heard was sharp and distinctive to that hall.  Appropriately, Kevin was working on a play called The Uninvited.  It’s about an English estate that is home to a ghost.

Though You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown has a much lighter mood than Kevin’s play, Seth Phillips had what might be the most chilling experience of all while working on it.  Seth was unable to sleep one night, so he came to the theater to build some props.  It was around 2:00 AM.  He heard some odd noises, but he dismissed them as being mechanical or possibly the product of his mental state and the late hour.  So the noises didn’t deter Seth from his work.  What happened next did, though.  “I felt a hand brush from my right shoulder down, and I immediately just stopped,” he says.  He went out the nearest exit and didn’t return until morning to shut off the lights.

If a ghost is responsible for these occurrences, it manifests itself around women during less isolated moments.  For instance, Susan Weber was at a rehearsal where her husband, Paul, was directing.  To get a prop, she had to leave the stage area and walk down the same hall in which Kevin heard a door slam.  Instead of a door, though, Susan heard the footsteps of someone wearing heels following behind her.  She explains, “I know it wasn’t the echo of my footsteps because I had tennis shoes on.”  Spinning around to scold her husband for trying to scare her, she found no one there.

Charissa Prchal had a “corner-of-the-eye” sighting in the lights and sound booth.  The two boards that control lights and sound are side by side in a room that looks out at the stage from above.  Occupied with the lighting board, she felt someone behind her straightening up some shelves.  At first, she didn’t bother to turn and see who it was, assuming it must be the woman running sound.  But then that woman came walking up the stairs. Like Susan, Charissa found no one behind her.  No one physical, that is.

Another weird event in the booth happened when Bonnie Cain was operating sound.  The play was Dial “M” for Murder, and during one of the performances, the phone on stage starting ringing.  By itself.  “I promise I didn’t touch anything,” Bonnie asserts.  At least two subsequent productions using this equipment have had no such trouble with unscripted phone calls.  If there were some flaw in the wiring, did it repair itself somehow?

Any one of these stories could be explained away as a fluke.  A short in an electric wire or a simple puff of air might be blamed.  Or were these tricks of the mind?  After all, theater people tend to be very imaginative. 

Nonetheless, the frequency with which these events occur deserves contemplation.  While no one of the stories provides proof that a ghost prowls the Town and Gown Theater, examining them all together suggests that some supernatural energy might be active.  This energy appears to recognize gender and to know when someone is or is not alone at the theater.  In other words, it seems to have consciousness--and perhaps a rather dark sense of play.