The Haunted Auditorium

From: D.J. (eosastraios@aim.com)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Wyandotte, Michigan
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Sun Jul 27 22:14:42 2008

At my high school, Roosevelt High School, I am president of the Paranormal Club. We have many places within the city and county we like to go, but one place in particular is our definite favorite. The auditorium, built in the 1920s, has had its fair share of stories as well as a tragic past.

The school itself was built in 1926, named after Theodore Roosevelt. It's the city's only high school and is recognizable for its slight gothic style. The auditorium is a piece in itself. It has a large balcony and can seat many people (I'd estimate 800 or more). The stage is the centerpiece, of course, with a large wooden framed carved by Irish workers out of a single piece of wood. On the sides of the auditorium, up in the balcony, are five large paintings done by CCC workers commissioned during the New Deal. They depict the history of the city on one side, and the state of Detroit in the 1920s and 30s on the other. Oddly, there were supposed to be six paintings, but one is unfinished.

The ghost stories began when a painter supposedly fell to his death from the balcony while painting one of the large images. His ghost is said to permanently be pacing in the balcony, angry that he could never finish his work. The stories then took a turn when a young actress was said to have fallen to her death as well from the balcony. From there, the stories go on and on.

Our club knows all of the stories very well, and we all keep them in mind. However, we never expected one of our hunts to turn into something amazing like what I shall describe.

It was one of our end-of-the-year hunts, in mid-spring. We divided our group into two teams, both equipped with tape recorders and digital cameras, but only one with a video camera. Each group would have about forty-five minutes backstage, followed by forty-five minutes up in the balcony, around the main seating area, and on the stage. I led one group while one of my friends led the other.

We began in the front, taking pictures and feeling for cold spots in half-darkness. The only lights on were some stage lights. I placed my tape recorder on the stage and left it while my best friend walked around with another. Soon, we began to feel cold spots in the mid-seating area, supposedly where the actress fell to her death. One of my friends explained that at one point in the hunt, while walking to the back doors of the auditorium, she froze in place and was unable to move. Another friend said she thought she saw someone walking to the backdoors. However, she did not see the door open but when she turned back, no one was there.

The rest of the front stage hunt turned out to be uneventful after that, until we went to research our evidence. Until then, our groups changed places and my group went backstage.

It was there that very strange things began to happen. We were in complete darkness with only a small flashlight and a video camera with nightvision guiding the way. Within minutes of being there, I was overcome with nausea and vomited in a trashcan, though I hadn't been sick at all beforehand. Then one of my friends began to cry on the floor, saying she didn't know why she was crying. Several of us began to get the same feeling and attempted a seance to find the root of it. The seance soon became serious as one of my friends said that she was feeling overcome by something, as though something was trying to control her. As soon as she said that, a crash was heard from the pottery room, though the door wasn't open enough for anyone to get inside. I looked back in the pottery room with several friends and at the same time, we all saw something move within. A friend shined a light inside the room, but nothing was inside except pottery, cleaning materials, and paint.

I became nauseous again and went inside the small bathroom at the backstage. As I dry-heaved, the water within the toilet began to steam and the pipes became very hot. I was very frightened and told everyone that we were about done.

Gathering our equipment, we went back to the classroom we consider our "base" and began going over the evidence. While listening to the tape recorder I had placed on stage, we gathered some astounding evidence. Several minutes into the recording, there were a few people talking quietly when all of a sudden, in a moment of silence, a quiet, raspy voice says, "Did you go here?" Not even five minutes after that, when we had all cleared the stage, there was the obvious sound of someone wearing high heels walking across the stage. Of course, none of us were wearing high heels. After this, there were several other unintelligible whispers and that was it.

Then, on my friend's tape recorder, she caught one very interesting recording, the only one she got. While talking backstage, there is a quick silence when one of my friend's humorously says, "Of course, it's always me that makes an awkward silence." As soon as she says that, a soft whisper says, "Awkward silence."

However, the most astounding piece of evidence we caught was on the video tape. Though we caught very little on the tape that we couldn't explain, there was one thing that happened that was completely unexplainable. As I was getting over my nausea, I walk past the camera and say, "I'm alright." Adam, the cameraman, laughs before turning the camera to the end of the backstage area. At the very end are two very clear figures, wearing all white. One is curled in a fetal position while one in black suspenders is standing up straight and staring ahead. Adam doesn't see this and begins to move the camera down when the figure standing moves its arm and the one in the fetal position turns its head. We didn't catch this the first few times until we watched it again, then caught it.

Of course, this is only a little bit of the evidence that there is in that auditorium. All I know is that there are certainly restless spirits in there, some good, some bad. I think that some are bound there not by death, but by the need to put on just one more play, or paint one more scene. And they won't leave until we applaud them.