A friend recently told me an interesting story about an old theater that's allegedly haunted. I think it's in Mobile, Alabama, and if he told me the name I've forgotten it. I'll ask him again and I'll look into it. If there's any more info I'll do another post.
What's interesting is that supposedly if they have a bad play, at least in the opinion of the alleged spirit that haunts it, they'll find a penny somewhere, and they're always wheat pennies and sometimes even Indian Head pennies. That's a cool story anyway, and supposedly even skeptics think it's legitimately haunted.
It reminded me of another old theater in Montgomery, Alabama where there was talk of it being haunted, although that was largely due to the antics of the Bud Greene band. I've told this story before but it's classic, and as always who cares?
Sometimes with Bud Greene the breaks could be as much fun as the sets were, and this was such a place. They'd converted the old lobby into the bar. In the theater section they'd removed maybe 2/3 of the seats and put in a dance floor and tables. The bands of course played on the stage.
During breaks they'd play music in the bar area and most people would go into there. It'd be quiet in the theater part, so a few couples would go in there when they wanted to have a quiet romantic chat on the break.
About 15' up there was a catwalk that ran above the stage and around the room. Stage lights were hung from it, shining on the stage and toward the room. The drum kit was well-lit. You could take the stairs and go through a door and come out over the stage. O' and I would go up there with a joint and a pocketful of pennies.
We'd slip out onto the catwalk and sit above the drums. It was great because we'd be sitting behind the lights in total shadow, so no one could see us even if they were looking right at us. We'd take turns dropping pennies down onto the drums. We'd have a contest to see how many drums and cymbals we could hit with one penny.
Of course the first hit would startle the shit out of everyone in the room. They'd all look toward the drum kit and see that no one was there. They'd get sort of bug-eyed and tilt their heads. Yeah we were 30yo juvenile assholes but we thought it was hilarious. Even though nobody could see us, the trick was not to laugh and give ourselves away.
People would start murmuring about the place being haunted, and that was the best part. We'd wait a few minutes until people would go back to their romantic conversations and then we'd drop another one. It'd freak people out, especially when we'd hit several drums and cymbals with one drop.
We thought it was great to see everybody staring in confusion at an empty stage. A penny dropped from that height made a surprisingly loud sound. It sounded like someone was hitting the drums rather than a penny falling on them. We called our obnoxious little game "Pennies from Heaven."
I'm guessing a few people figured it out but we never heard anyone mention it. Mostly people would be talking about the place being haunted. The difference between the two "haunted" theaters was that in our case, the "ghosts" were O' and me, and we didn't drop any wheat pennies or Indian Heads. I guess haunted is haunted. Good times.
No comments:
Post a Comment