A Haunting Kind of Theatre

I produced my first professional show when I was twelve. I also acted in it, wrote it, directed it, designed it. I’ve had a very long career in the theatre and learned much about the art form, but the lessons from my first production haunt me still. 

I grew up in a little hamlet in a rural community. My parents bought the house I now live in when I was six. They were looking for a good fixer-upper and, boy, did they get one. It’s a monumental Victorian (a full three floors) that dominates the surrounding landscape. When my folks bought it, it was badly run down. It had been empty ever since the old lady who built it died there twenty years before. Because of its size, decayed condition and history, it had become a legend in the area for being haunted. When I was a kid, I used to have to walk my babysitters upstairs to the bathroom, so daunted were they by its gruesome reputation and ominous presence.

One gloomy October afternoon, my rascally cousins from out of town were visiting, and we were playing kickball with the neighborhood kids when the topic of my creepy house came up. The neighbor kids asked us what the attic was like. Trying to impress, we told them that if they ever went up there, they’d end up running away screaming their pathetic little heads off. “It’s where the ghosts all live,” I teased. They vehemently denied being afraid of the house (or being scaredy-cats in general) and the debate raged to such a fevered pitch that I finally challenged them to put their money where their mouth was. 

“Betcha a quarter!”

I had laid the gauntlet which the neighbor kids did not hesitate to take up. The duel was on. We made an assignation for sunset the next day.

While discussing the bet on the way home, my two cousins and I realized that if we didn’t scare the hell out of those twerps, we were screwed. There were about two dozen kids in the neighborhood and, at a quarter each, that came to about six bucks we’d have to shell out. At that point in our misspent youths, we couldn’t scrape up more than a handful of change between the three of us. Whatever we did, we’d have to make it good.

Now my cousins and I had been mounting little plays at family gatherings for years, and when we did, all the adults agreed that we were the greatest thespians since Shakespeare. The answer seemed obvious. We’d make a haunted play so terrifying the neighbor kids would pee their pants and pay us a quarter.

As we began to formulate plans, I came up with a script. The attic is three full, unfinished rooms, the Great Room of which is the size of a loft apartment. It was filled with broken furniture, cobwebs, dust and old crap a family keeps over generations because they can never find time in their busy schedules to haul it to the dump. Better yet, it had closets that wrapped around the entire floor tucked under the eaves, so you could traverse from one room to another without being seen. Even better, the walls were made of some old cardboard-like material that was very thin and amplified sound extremely well. And… it was dark up there. Very, very dark. From those surroundings, I drew my inspiration.

When we informed my mother of the proceedings, she got right into the spirit of things. She acted as props master, suggesting we take a visit to a neighbor who was a retired doctor and teacher at a medical school. When she called him and let him in on the plans, he said, “Come right on over, I’ve got just what you need.” He greeted us on his porch with a toothy grin and a big box. “Just don’t break ‘em, and bring ‘em back when you’re done.” 

My cousins and I had a frantic night and day between then and our appointment with the neighbor kids. We threw together costumes, arranged the attic to suit our script, created homemade special effects and rehearsed until we got it just right. When sundown came the next day, we were ready. My little cousin was going to handle box office, ushering and sound. My big cousin would handle special effects, and I would act. We were thespians on a mission and we were gonna make some scary shit.

My mom quietly disappeared when the neighbor kids arrived at the door. We had shut off all the lights in the house so its gloom was deep in the shadow of the setting sun. My little cousin, as instructed, commanded the kids to deposit their quarters in a jar before he brought them up to the third floor. If they thought to retrieve them on the way out, they could have them. At the attic landing, he ushered them into the smallest room, which was dimly lit by a single candle, and warned them to keep quiet. “So you won’t disturb the spirits,” he told them. Then he silently shut the door and left.

While the kids waited, huddled in the lowering dark, cousin number two began working special effects. Hidden within the wraparound, cardboard closets, he shuffled the circumference of the room in halting footsteps while gently scratching on the walls and breathing heavily. His work was sheer artistry in its subtlety, never rising in volume beyond the barely discernible.

He went on for about ten minutes, until he could hear the little ones whispering that they wanted to go home. Then he softly moaned, “Where is it?” That was my cue.

I slammed opened the door to the room and a good half of the neighbor kids nearly shit their britches. I carried with me a lit candelabra and was costumed in a semi-rotted suit of tails some male relative had gotten married in a couple of generations ago. I told them I was wearing the clothes the former owner was buried in. The kids winced. “It keeps them quiet when I wear it,” I whispered deadly serious. Then I began to weave my little drama. 

“When we moved in, we discovered some things left up here in the attic. Things that belonged to the old woman who died here. Family heirlooms. We think the old lady kept them so the spirits of her family would stay tied to the house.” I beckoned them to follow me into the next room. “Come on, and I’ll show you. If you’re not … chicken.”

As we entered the cobwebbed Great Room, now lit only by my candelabra, some of the kids were visibly shaking. I passed an old rocking chair and gave an offhand remark, “That’s the chair she died in.” At that point, cousin number two (still hidden in the closets) pulled the string we had rigged to make the chair rock by itself. One of the girls whisperingly shrieked, “It’s rocking, it’s rocking!” I shrugged nonchalantly, “Yeah. It happens sometimes.”

Finger to lips, I led them across the dark room to a decaying dress dummy my mom had used in college. On top was perched one of her full-length wigs that we had cleverly arranged to waft in the draft when my hidden cousin cracked open the closet door. “For some reason, she kept the hair of her niece. The poor girl died in an asylum,” I intoned. My cousin cracked the door and the wig wafted. “They say she hung herself. Suicide.”

A shiver ran through the crowd.

Next I took them to a rotting leather jewelry box my mom had discovered in an old trunk. “We think these belonged to her little grandson who was blinded in a fire,” I confided as I opened the box revealing a pair of fish eyeballs I had dug out of crab pot bait in the freezer. “Don’t know why she kept them, but it’s funny how they seem to move when you look at them.” I swayed, imperceptibly, back and forth.

The kids all hushed out “eeuuuww” at the same time.

I then guided them to a cloth covered form in the corner of the room. “This was her husband. At least, that’s what the sheriff thinks. But it was too old for an autopsy. He said to keep it here, ‘so as not to disturb its rest’.” I tugged on the strategically placed sheet and it cascaded to the ground, uncovering a life-sized skeleton from our neighbor-doctor’s anatomy class.

One of the teen-aged boys exclaimed “Holy Shit!”, and I knew we had them.

Finally, I took them to our pi?ces de résistance, an inverted wooden box we had mounted on a rusted trunk. “This is the weirdest thing the old lady left,” I told them. My hidden cousin started faintly tapping a heart beat on the interior of the closet wall. Thump-thump, thump-thump. “Sometimes, late at night, we hear her looking for it.”  The volume and rate of the heartbeat increased into a rapid throbbing. “It must have hurt for her to take it out,” I flinched as I lifted the box. “It’s her heart,” I moaned pointing to the jar full of a preserved human heart our friend-doctor had loaned us. “Sometimes,” I hissed ominously raising my voice.  “She screams for it!”

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! my little cousin howled from the darkness.

Two dozen voices burst into frenzy as the neighbor kids fled down the stairs in such a panic I thought the banisters would break.

My cousins and I split our sides in laughter.

Fifteen minutes later, the neighbor kids were back with more quarters. When they came back the third time, their parents came with them… and paid full price.

With the proceeds, we bought enough candy to make ourselves diabetic.

Of all the shows I’ve done, I think I’m proudest of that. It seems to me, now, that it took me a career to grasp the lessons of a child.

Theatre must be engaging in its simplicity.

Theatre must touch the primal core.

Theatre must weave story, audience and environment into one.

Theatre is not a place. It’s an experience.

Theatre is a gamble. Play to win.

Theatre is not for adults. It’s for the child in all of us.

Anon.

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