Halloween

A short post.  Just a remembrance of Halloweens past.

When I taught tech theater at San Mateo High School, I used to take Halloween off from teaching. Instead I would turn off all the lights in the theater but the ghost light, get all the kids to sit down house left and tell them ghost stories. Some of the stories I remembered from stories my dad told around the campfire. I usually made up a ghost story or two about the theater itself.

 One story I refined over the years was of Phil the construction worker who was working on the grid late one Friday night. The rest of the crew left the theater, and Phil miss stepped and fell into one of the cable slots and got stuck. Being a large man, he didn't fall through, but was stuck for three days. where he hopelessly banged on the grid with his hammer calling for help. Help didn't arrive until too late. Now, when the theater is dark, you can hear him bang his hammer.

After my first year of telling this story, I would recruit a student who'd already taken the class to sneak off and get a hammer. At the end of the tale, they would bang the hammer on something in the back of the theater. It was awesome watching the reaction of some of the kids. I can be a pretty good storyteller.

There was another story of a little girl who got left in the theater and ended up locked in the booth. How she died varied on the year, but sometime when you turned off the booth lights you could catch a glimpse of her face reflecting in the glass.  Especially when you print out and paste a little girls face on the back wall of the booth.

Man I miss messing with young minds.

For a long time there was this full size cutout of a guy we called Chuck.  I've no idea what show he was from, but Chuck always ended up in the darkest places, where you would turn a corner and he'd be there.  It was kind of a fun game, trying to scare folks with Chuck.  He often landed in the booth bathroom. 

My dad's favorite scary story was about some kids exploring an old haunted house.  In the last room the saw an eerie coffin floating toward them.  Not to be deterred, the kids whipped out some Vic's vapor rub and stopped that coffin. 

Happy Halloween.