Echoes

Much of my childhood was spent in the dimly lit netherworld of movie theaters and skating rinks. One of the theaters my brother managed had a rather eerie atmosphere. These pictures are modern - the building has undergone quite a bit of renovation in recent years - but it gives a hint at least of how it looked back those days. Despite any resident ghosts, the place was a sort of safe haven for me, a place of endless Twizzlers and SweeTarts and fizzy orange soda. 

I originally posted the tale of my experiences at another site, which I've reposted here:

Back in the 80's, my brother was the manager of a movie theater. It was a huge old building, built during the age of the silent movie palace. I spent a good chunk of my childhood there - bro would put me to work cleaning the auditoriums between shows and making popcorn at the concession stand. The rest of the time I'd roam the place, which was full of nooks and crannies. It was a bit maze-like, so that was pretty fun. I was quite fond of the place.

Probably all theaters have a creepy feeling after hours. When my cousins would visit, we'd listen to what my cousin Nancy called "theater echoes" - those sort of faint, disembodied voices you hear in a place like that. I suppose it's the acoustics that cause it, I liked to imagine it's some sort of trapped sound that just bounces around for years and years. Anyway, that's probably not too unusual in a place like that, but it did add to the atmosphere.

Sometimes I'd get the distinct feeling I was being watched, but I put that down to the cranky old projectionist - he'd been working there since the 1920's and I was forbidden to go into his booth (which was covered in nudie pictures the times I did sneak a look!) But some other things weren't so easy to pass off.

One was the thing we called "the bat" It wasn't a real bat (though occasionally one got in) because it would have to have been huge, able to move at warp speed and disappear from even an enclosed space instantly. The thing we would see was a large black shape like a wing that would appear in the corner of our eye. Turn to look at it, and it would appear in the corner of our other eye. I recall sitting on the stairs one day for ages, intently watching the thing flit through my peripheral vision - I was determined to look at it properly, you understand. But no luck.

This wasn't scary at all, just weird, and I thought it was just me until one day the staff were standing around and started talking about it - same large black shape, same peripheral flitting.

Then there were some nights, at 12 or 1 in the morning, my brother would be up in the offices finishing the day's paperwork when we'd hear distinctly human sounding footsteps slowly pacing the roof of the building. I recall bro saying that this happened all the time, and not being especially concerned about it. The roof wasn't flat though, so it couldn't have just been someone taking a stroll up there.

the basement

What was somewhat scarier was the basement. That's where the marquee letters were kept, and we'd have to go down there late at night when it was time to change the sign. The basement had a dirt floor and was always cold. Some of the older staff members attributed any haunting activities to this place, because years back one of the workers, a janitor who'd been allowed to sleep there, had died of a heart attack. I tried to stay away from there, not the least because the basement door was inside the men's restroom - the horror stories practically write themselves.

But the thing that really, truly convinced me the place was haunted were the candy machines. For decades, there'd been a couple of candy machines in the lobby, selling gumballs or candied peanuts for a nickel. Probably these machines has been used thousands of times over the years, but while my brother was working there, they'd decided to remove them. Still, after hours when everything was quiet, you could still hear them loud and clear - non-existent coin going into the slot, turn of the invisible crank, immaterial candy rattling down the chute. Over and over, clear as a bell. Everyone who worked there knew the sound.

This is probably the most harmless and innocent of all ghostly manifestations, but very convincing to me. 

Looking back, I think this place wasn't seriously frightening because any hauntings were strictly of the Stone Tape variety.

Edit - I've just looked it up and found an article claiming the theater is haunted - but blaming all the haunting on the ghost of the pervy projectionist! Silly. They should have asked me. Although I'm sure his shade is still hanging around.

The Mysteries Of Fate (And Other Publications)

While coming to the uneasy realization that I did not fit in with my peers and was indeed the proverbial square peg in a round hole, it made sense that I would draw closer to my cousins. We at least understood each other, and visits with them were always an adventure

It was in March of the year I was 11 that my sea-side cousin came up to Grandmother's house for Spring Break, toting a bagful of old Fate magazines. Her friends' hippie parents, she said, had stacks of them, and had given her these to keep. These were digest-sized magazines, printed on newsprint stock, full of (as stated on the cover) True Reports Of The Strange And Unknown.

These true reports might never live up to skeptical scrutiny, full of anecdotal evidence and personal accounts  as they were, but that was not a worry to me. As far as I was concerned, this was news from from the world of strange phenomena by people who'd wandered the territory, either by accident or design. The sense of wonderment that ran through the articles was very appealing as something that seemed - as near as I could observe - to be missing from the ordinary world.

Which isn't to say I was too credulous. Even today I only believe 50% of what I read, and which 50% is always liable to change. It didn't matter so much if it was objectively true, since perception is a funny thing. It was more that someone believed it to be true, and was willing to share their thoughts with the rest of us. The reader could decide for themselves. Also, the columns on Cryptozoology, UFOs and parapsychology provided a more detached view of things.

That said, one of the best parts of Fate were the ads.

 

Many proclaimed secret knowledge or hidden truths, to see into your future or past, or to bring good fortune. Many seemed to communicate with the (endlessly fascinating) language of signs and symbols.

This was satisfying to an unconscious mind devoid of spoken language but hungry for meaning. It made sense, too, because the invisible world was in so many ways beyond description. Words just end up in a tangle. A symbol gets right to the heart of the matter, the thing you know without being able to say how you know.

It seemed to us (while we sprawled on grandmother's floor among the pile of magazines) that the part of you without language was the part of you that perceived the Unseen. The part of you that just knew. That's what they called it in Grandmother's family, "knowing". It was no more complicated than that, really. To try describe it in words just confused matters.

Despite the appealing nature of these ads, I never had the urge to order anything. I was a do-it-yourselfer by nature. Learning about a subject was all well and good, but where was the fun in having it all done for you? I was content to ponder such subjects, but several of my cousins independently decided to take it to the next level.

There was an ad that had appeared, not in Fate, but in the back of  many other publications. It was for The Magic Power of Witchcraft, by Gavin and Yvonne Frost.

My recent Catholic schooling, with its emphasis on the dangers of the spiritual world, had made actually buying a book on witchcraft a bridge too far for me. Besides, I couldn't imagine how I'd explain such a thing to my mother when it arrived in the mail. The promises made in the ad didn't necessarily appeal to me, anyway -  spying on people's antics behind closed doors and the power to crush my enemies weren't my sort of bag. My cousins, however, had no such compunctions, and ordered away. The book even came with an amulet - that was pretty cool.

This state of affairs probably leads to a couple of questions, such as - why would buying a book on witchcraft be so much worse than the fortune telling, second sight and casual spell casting that already existed in the family? I suppose it was the ritual content, for one thing. These family quirks could be seen as "natural" or even "god-given" gifts that needed very little training to achieve - most of it was a matter of intent and grabbing the right signal from the ether, or whatever it was. No need to invoke any spirits, or anything like that. 

I don't necessarily feel this way today, mind you - I don't have any problems with such books or rituals when used wisely (though I do believe some of the books are booby-trapped - not necessarily the one mentioned above, but some of them are). Even so, I'm still not a big ritual person. For me, it's the simpler, the better in most cases. 

Secondly -  the question might be asked, does witchcraft work? Short answer: hell, yes, it does. If things were already weird before the actual practice of ritual magic came into it, things became really, really weird afterwards. Incredibly, flagrantly weird. There were reports of ghost lights and apparitions. Tales of levitation at inopportune times. Visions of the future appearing in bowls of ink. The night hag of sleep paralysis began to visit, and we experienced shared dreams. Some of us had to cover our mirrors, as things that shouldn't be seen there had begun to turn up. This is to say nothing of the mysterious aura (for lack of a better word) that began to develop around one of the cousins and her entire house. We had become weirdness incarnate. 

I suppose the moral of this story is that it's never a good idea to let a group of untrained pubescents practice ritual magic. It probably opened some doors to things we were not ready to handle. But it worked, all right. It still works, for good or ill. In the aftermath, some of us tried to put these things aside, or sought other forms of spirituality or faith, but it was not easy, or even very successful. It's like trying to disown your eye color, or the talent you inherited from your old auntie.

Today, so many in the family  - whether we consider ourselves practicing "witches" or are affiliated with a religion or not - can still feel the crackle of magic in the air if there's a working going down, or feel a spell or hex that's been thrown at us like sticky glue.We know how to listen to the invisible world with one certain part of our attention while keeping the rest occupied. We also know that we shouldn't think about it too hard, or want it too much, because otherwise it will run. These are things we know in our bones.

We can hide it (some of us better than others) under a guise of normality, because we know these things have no place in in the ordinary world. But underneath we know. We've had to embrace our inner weirdness.

I've come to think that the title of the magazine was accurate. Some things are fated. Ultimately, there really is no escaping your true nature.