Small town in Ohio. I began working for a local non-profit that was restoring an historic theater/cinema and all of these events took place there. I was not the only one to witness some of these events, but because the building was bought by a local church and donated to the non-profit; as well as for the sake of it's reputation, we were all told rather strictly not to mention/talk about any supernatural events. Even if asked directly about them.
When I first started as the Executive Assistant, my boss the Executive Director; joked about how employees believed the building was haunted and some of them even refused to go in specific parts of the building. Being a believer of the supernatural, but knowing a lot of stories can be simply chalked up to imagination, I never expected to see anything... I was very wrong.
The building being restored was an active movie and performing arts theater; my job during the week was to act as an assistant for the non-profit and as a cinema manager on weekends. My boss was a micromanager who was VERY particular, so it took nearly 2 months before I was allowed to close down by myself. The first event happened the very first time I closed without her.
After the last movie, myself and about 6 other employees were cleaning up. On Saturdays we did a deeper clean than just sweeping up popcorn; mopping, wiping down chairs and bathrooms ect. I was in the lobby talking with an employee when another employee we'll call D, asked me to go upstairs to turn on the brighter lights in the cinema area. D was one who refused to go upstairs, even with a group.
I immediately jog (yes jogged, it was my first time managing these employees by myself and wanted to make a good impression) over to and up the stairs to the projection room where the lights are. I passed nobody as I did this; D had gone back into the cinema area and the other employee I was talking to started vacuuming the lobby. But, when I got to the door of the projection room, I saw that the lights had already been switched on; so I jogged back down to the cinema area. Nobody was upstairs with me during this time and the upstairs lights were off except in the projection room.
When I got to the door of the cinema, I noticed D and another employee T standing in the middle of the room looking up into the windows of the projection room. They see me walk in and both look shocked as they look back up to the windows. At this point I've reached them and look to where T is pointing. There I see a shadow-like figure moving around in the projection room. We all are seeing the same thing; a shadow walking back and forth across the room upstairs.
Now, to be fair, anyone would look shadowy from this angle, lighting and distance... So though I was creeped, I wasn't freaking out like D and T. I tell them it's probably another employee, even though I KNOW I didn't pass anyone upstairs, and get back to work.
A couple minutes after I've left the area, D comes to get me saying she's found muddy foot prints. I follow her down to the very front of the cinema and see muddy bare foot prints starting by one of the emergency exits. It had been raining all that evening so my immediate thought was that someone had come in the emergency exit. I grab some employees to check the doors and restrooms, but I was honestly too afraid to look upstairs after the shadow person. We didn't find anyone, but upon closer inspection we noticed that the footprints went about 15 feet from the exit doors and then just stopped... Only to reappear in an entirely different area of the room. The seating area fit about 450 people so the room was huge, and we found 5 very distinct places where the prints started for a few feet and just stopped. These were muddy, bare, average size, foot prints; they didn't look like anything else and all 4 or 5 of us agreed on what they seemed to be.
Trying to be a good manager I attempt to act cool and ignore my goosebumps to mop them up myself. D told me that she'd seen these prints before and told my boss, who brushed it off, and of course 2 weeks later it happened again. This time they weren't in the same spots and it wasn't raining, but there they were.
Months later, I was in my upstairs office. My desk faced the door of my office, which faced the door into the projection room. As I was at my computer, I felt an odd tingle sensation over my whole body and thought I saw something move behind my computer. I looked into the projection room expecting a mouse or bat (normal occurrence). Hopefully this part makes sense - I had my eyes focused and on the lookout for a critter, after not seeing one I sort of pulled my gaze back from the projection room and into the doorway of my office and literally it felt like my heart stopped. It physically hurt. In my doorway was a very translucent, almost clear figure. I felt like it was a man and tall, nearly filling the entire doorway, but it had no discernible features. You could easily see through the middle of the figure but the outside edges had this odd wave-like quality to them; like heat waves on a road.
I didn't move and looked down at my keyboard waiting for it to go away; but terrified at the idea of it coming towards me. Eventually, the feeling of being watched left and when I looked up it was gone. The whole thing was probably only a minute or so, but it felt like hours.
Another time I had gone upstairs to grab a report for the boss. She had just had someone there about renovations so all of the upstairs lights had been left on after they left.
I was going through all the rooms (parts of the building had been used as an apartment by the person who built it in 1905 so there were a lot) turning lights off before heading into my office for the report. While there I got a landline call, but a few seconds into the call it went to static and a few seconds after that, the call dropped. In a matter of seconds I hang up, grab the report, and walk out of my office backwards turning out the light. When I turned around every light I had just turned off was back on. Every... Single... One. I felt my stomach drop and ran down the stairs; heading straight outside to have a smoke with shaking hands. I'm not sure if the interference on the call had anything to do with this event, but it was an odd coincidence if not.
Once, my boss, the hard nose skeptic experienced something. I was returning from a late lunch to attend a board meeting I wasn't excited to attend. At this point I'd been at work for 9 hours and only left for about 30 minutes to grab food. When I was walking up to the main glass doors I saw my boss looking out the door with a rather angry face. So of course I was annoyed thinking she was upset with me for leaving for half an hour (something she did often but that's another story).
After walking in she told me that she thought someone was in the building. As we were searching, she told me that while in her downstairs office she heard a man saying "hello". She called back to it and looked around, but found nobody. Thinking maybe she had butt dialed or there was a phone glitch, she checked her cell and the landline; neither of which had anyone on the line. Still hearing the hellos, she started trying to follow it; yelling "hello" back. But each time she got to the area she thought it came from, it would call out from across the building. Of course we found nobody when we searched.
Other incidents:
- Seeing a full bodied white translucent man in a suit walking between seats in the cinema area before disappearing.
- Contractors swearing they saw a figure or heard talking in the building when nobody was there.
- Sink in the men's restroom turning on full blast nearly every night. It was so bad that I began taking pictures of it off each night for proof, because boss thought patrons were leaving it on and I wasn't catching it before leaving.
- Feeling of being watched when alone or an overwhelming sense of fear for no apparent reason.
Though it's old and there were reportedly at least 2 fires, there haven't been any confirmed deaths in the building. But the man who built it was at one point a vaudeville star. After the first fire and the fall of vaudeville; there was a second fire that took out the majority of the stage area and the entire 3rd floor. At this point he was bankrupt and some believed he set the fire intentionally for insurance money. He sold the building to a man who turned it into a cinema. My theory is that the vaudeville star is haunting the building.
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