The Case Of The Happy Haunting

 

While wandering in a nearby town, we passed this charming old streamline moderne movie theater. While it's not disused as such, I think it's now only used for special events. At any rate, it was empty at the time we were passing by.

I'd seen a few movies here in my youth. Mostly it was my cousins who hung out here. It was their preferred spot for date nights. As for me, though, I don't have any particular memories attached to it, besides seeing one of the less-impressive Indiana Jones films a long time ago.

And as for my husband...well, he's not from around here, so he'd never seen the place before in his life. 

None of this mattered when we walked by and felt what we would call the atmosphere (or maybe the ambience) of the place. We stopped and breathed it in. We compared notes. 

"It's almost creepy, except it's not," said husband.
"It feels energetic, alive" said I.
"It feels as if there are a hundred theaters here, all existing at once"

"It's like...."

At which point I again ran into the problem of not having words to describe such a thing.

Thinking about it later that evening, I realized part of the problem is that I'm a more of a visual person, so these feelings often come with mental imagery. Most of which would sound stark-raving insane if spoken aloud. But I did hit upon the idea of trying to use a collection of images to convey what it was that I felt there (I also discovered  that my computer no longer has a program to create a photo collage. Grr.)

So here goes Some of these may obviously be related to movie theaters, some less so, some extremely not so, but it's as near as I can get to what was going through my mind when standing outside the doors. In no particular order:

Anthropomorphic food, anyone?

I cannot guess what the images above would convey to anyone else, but personally, they seem to suggest a particular sort of happiness, an innocent, giddy materialism. Analogous perhaps to being a child in Woolworth's, knowing that you could buy something in this multi-colored wonderland with your nickel.

I asked the hubs what he thought, if these images reflected what he'd sensed outside the theater.
"Pretty much," he said "though I would have added cars. 1940's era cars."

Middle son hadn't been at the theater with us, but I thought it would be fun to get his opinion anyway. I asked what this collection of images suggested to him.

"Pure 1950's" he said.
"Even though some of these images are from the 70's or later?"
"It's the color scheme. It screams 50's."

He was right about this, although the 60's and 70's had been in my thoughts as well. It does seem, in a way, like a version of "a hundred theaters all existing at once."  Maybe a hundred layers of pop culture, consumer culture, existing all together.

Perhaps decades of happy movie-goers lining up there had left their echo. Always looking forward, always optimistic. A bit like that atomic-age architecture, reaching for the sky.

 I did some research on the theater the other night, and discovered it's said to be haunted. I don't doubt it. After all, there's really no good reason a haunting can't be happy.