Many of the tales of eerie experiences told by Town and Gown volunteers begin with something like, “I was alone at the theatre...” 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 theatre 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 theatre building. This deep, narrow corridor is made all the more claustrophobic by being lined with out-of-tune pianos, hats from various eras, memorabilia from past plays, pipes, ductwork and boxes that might not have been opened in years. It’s a difficult hall to light well. 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,” about an English estate that is home to a ghost.
The vibrations the hallway emits are less audible and more intuitive for some Town and Gown workers. “You stand at one end of it,” says Charissa Prchal, “and you look at the other end and you know you’re not wanted there.” Charissa has doubts about the existence of ghosts, but Linda Thrasher says, “I’m not all that skeptical myself.” Though she hasn’t had any waking encounters with the supernatural at the theatre, the hallway has appeared in her walking nightmares. Linda is a sleepwalker, you see. She once dreamed about being left behind at the theatre ‑‑ locked in with the lights shut off. “I actually woke up as I was running down our hallway at home,” she explains, “thinking that I was running down the hallway that runs by the shoe room, prop room, etc.” So ominous is this hall that it haunts even the subconscious.
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 theatre to build some props. It was around 2:00am. 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.
Off the hall is a costume shop and this leads to a room packed full with dresses, coats, suits, shirts and so on. Much of it is authentic apparel dating back to the start of the last century, possibly earlier. All that fabric makes speaking a curious thing: a person must yell to be heard by someone standing a few yards away in the same aisle, and the shouted words become muted and “tinny” as if over a bad phone line. A Physics professor might be able to explain this, but what explains the behavior of Bogie, Susan’s three-month-old puppy? “A puppy is usually real excited and wants to explore everything,” Susan says. However, after she put Bogie down in the costume room, “he would not budge. He just froze, so I had to pick him up and carry him. He was really jumpy wherever we went in the costume room.” Did Bogie sense some immaterial danger, some psychic stain that can never be washed out of one of those old dresses or suits?
Charissa 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. A dim red light fills the booth during shows and this might contribute to the ghostly atmosphere up there. 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?
Finally, during the run of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in September of 2009, some smoke was detected in the light booth and there was a problem with some of the lighting equipment, which prompted the theatre to be evacuated and the fire department to be called. Then President, Jared Cranke, was notified and came out immediately to help. After searching the entire building, the Stillwater Fire Department determined that someone should stay the night at the theatre. That task fell on Jared’s shoulders. After returning home to acquire some nighttime essentials – comfy clothes, scary movies and lots of Mountain Dew – Jared returned to the theatre with his girlfriend, Megan Lantz, to “camp out” for the night in the lobby. In the middle of the classic film, “An American Werewolf in London,” there was a loud metallic clang that seemed to come from the green room or somewhere backstage. Jared and Megan walked through the green room and all through the backstage area of the theatre, looking for anything that could have fallen to make the clanging sound. They saw nothing, until they returned to the green room. On the counter near the sink was an aluminum serving tray. At first, Jared thought it could have been set on its edge and simply fallen, but on top of the tray was a piece of paper that wouldn’t have remained if that was the case. Oddly enough, the scrap of paper was scribbled with the words “Diet Coke.” Jokingly, Jared asked loudly, “Are you thirsty?” Thankfully, no answer came in response. After recreating the sound by one person returning to the lobby where they were camped out and the other dropping the tray flatly upon the counter, both Jared and Megan decided this tray was what made the sound. But who dropped it? And why would a ghost be on a diet? No other occurrence was reported that night.
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