As partially reported on my student film 100 percent report...
Theatre Ghost/s
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
The
17th student film
on which I worked was titled
100 percent.
We filmed at the Allen Theatre
down in South Gate.
Originally a movie theatre, now it hosts live band concerts and such.
I learned from its owners that it is also host to a few ghosts.
When my segment was done and I was wrapped and waiting for my promised ride home from director Teresa Paoli, I watched for a time while they filmed across the street in a parking lot.
Knowing I had a lot of time on my hands, I went back to chat with the theatre's pleasant owner John and with his [wife?] and a young female worker and a young male worker named German, and I got a few more stories about the place.
John indicated how every night they put up the theatre seats, yet every single day, come the morning, two of the seats, always side by side, will be back down.
And not just the same two seats; they are random sets of seats, as though whatever pair of ghosts spend the night sitting together and watching whatever it is they watch during the silent darkness always choose another part of the auditorium in which to sit.
Theatre worker German and I found another commonality as well: our mutual interest in and fascination for the famous
Key West
(Florida)
haunted
doll
Robert.
German indicated having written a screenplay about Robert, but didn't have the skill with which to construct his own version nor did he know anyone who could replicate the famous not-so-inanimate doll.
As to the theatre itself, apparently many decades ago, a young girl (less than ten years old or so), was murdered, her body stuffed into an upstairs air vent (and was there for as long as it took for her to be found).
The young female worker, early in her tenure working at the theatre, once witnessed the little girl's ghost running about, even before being made aware the place was actually haunted.
Footsteps often can be heard on the upper floor when it is well known No One Is Up There.
During concert evenings and such now and then, the occasional bewildered customer will ask of the management, "You let kids in here?", the dead girl having been spotted, darting in and about the concert goers.
An appendum to the Overnight Occupied Seats is that now and then, an up-turned seat will drop down while one is standing right next to it.
While waiting, and the film crew had gone across the street, I had gone into
community theatre mode,
and I up-turned all the chairs that I could in the auditorium myself
(I left alone those seats that had camera equipment on it, and one available seat seemed jammed).
I also told John and the ladies how each time I'd walk from the front row towards the stage area, all the hairs on my legs would instantly rise, my skin immediately going to goose flesh.
I cannot tell if it's just psychological or if it's Something Else.
It happened each time I passed the front row.
From the seats all the way to the back everything was normal.
The auditorium
Robert...
Monday May 11, 2009
At the LA City College screening of
Strictly Background,
German Sanchez attended and spoke with me after the Q&A, relating to my dismay that the Allen Theatre had since changed hands, the new owners of which callously had had the auditorium seats torn out.
Jerks.