Stage 28

I was about 11 years old when my dad took me to his work to see what he does for a living. He works at Universal Studios which I always thought was a fun place to go.

As we were looking at all of the stages where movies, commercials, and shows were made, he asked me something that sort of made me a little uneasy. Remember that this was back when I was 11 and I did not really have interests in spirits. He asked me if I know what a ghost is. I said yes so he could show me whatever he was planning on showing me. He sprung up and said "Great!"

As we were riding in his golf cart he took me to his building to get keys. He is a locksmith so it was fun to see his office where he had keys and locks everywhere! One of his partners in his office is named Jim. He was a very nice man and he really knew how to start up conversations. He asked me what I was going to do with my dad today. I told him that we were going to see stages. My dad popped his head out of his little room where he does research on the computer and said that we are going to stage 28. "Stage 28?" Jim said, "Are you sure that you want to go there? I heard that it was a haunted stage. Well, if you don't know then I will tell you what it is. Stage 28 is where they filmed The Phantom of the Opera, the old movie. Now, I forgot who played the phantom but he died shortly after the movie was released and he comes to haunt that stage..."

Suddenly, my eyes were bugged out. I could say nothing more for my dad said that it was time to go. I sat back down into the golf cart staring at my dad still bug-eyed. "Aww, come one! This will be fun," he said to me trying to comfort me. But nothing helped. I was truly scared out of my mind. And right when things got a little better, we arrived at stage 28.

It was locked so I figured that when we went to my dad's building we got the keys to unlock it. The door slid open and the first thing that I saw was the setting of where they shot "masquerade". It looked like it had not been touched in 20 years. We walked in and turned on all of the lights. To my surprise, it seemed kind of welcoming, in an odd way.

My dad and I stood in the middle of the set and looked around at everything. My dad opened his mouth to say something when we heard a speaker go off in the room. It sounded like someone mumbling. I got scared a lot. I yelled at my dad saying that he did this on purpose. That he hired Jim to say that stuff about this and he had a recording up in the booth up stairs and played it. He laughed and said that he promises he didn't. He offered to look up in the booth to see if anyone was there. To my very surprise no one was there and it was pitch black.

Suddenly I felt this pinch on my back and I yelped. This frightened my dad for he grabbed me and carried me down. I didn't get all of the drama of him carrying me down, but it felt good. As we entered the set floor again he suggested that we leave. I sure was on the same page as him because when we started walking out I quickly looked back and in one of the parts where people could sit down in the set, I saw a white mask floating in the blackness.

This was my first encounter with a ghost and now every once in a while I always drive back up to his work to take notes on what I see.