Posts Tagged ‘School Board’
How to Catch a Ghost: Try Flirting.
The ghost hunters show up at the Wayside Theatre in Middletown, Va., during the September run for Unnecessary Farce, a screwball comedy, and before opening night of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. They are looking for "George," the so-called "colored usher," who worked in the ’40s at Virginia’s second-oldest professional theater.
George, the story goes, lived and died on a porch just off the second floor that was dismantled during a theater renovation a few months ago. Now George is possibly hanging out at a balcony in an upper section—seat CC1—where he used to sit and watch performances after showing people (black only, this was during segregation) to their seats.
Theater types claim George, or some other ghost, is hanging around in other places as well. The stories they tell involve ghosts lurking among the dress racks in the costume room and creepy feelings of being followed on the stairs.
"Sound is not trustworthy in this booth," says Wayside actress Thomasin Savaiano, the hunters’ tour guide, as she escorts them to the hub of the operation over the stage. "[The monitor will] shut off everything, and it’s entirely rearranged in the morning."
The scene that follows is familiar to anyone who’s watched the plumbers-turned-spirit-catchers on the Sci-Fi network’s Ghost Hunters or those earnest Penn State kids on A&E’s Paranormal State. The place empties out, and the D.C. Metro Area Ghost Watchers haul out their A/V equipment (seven cameras wired up to a central command center next to the snack shop) and wait.
True to TV, they also try talking to the ghost, telling him to move a spindle on the sewing table—"It’s a very light spindle…" This is where the woman of the group, Jan Cunard, comes in. She’s the flirt.
