Ghost Stories

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the Mounds Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. From the outside the Mounds Theater looks like a strip club or adult theater, but on the inside it looks like an old time movie theater. The Mounds Theater is said to be haunted by 3 spirits, a 10-year-old girl, an usher, and a projectionist named Red. As many of you know I believe that there is a ghost, spirit, energy, entity, or whatever you want to call it that co-inhabits my apartment, so I am open to the idea that there are forces in this world. The guide did some demonstrations for the large group and most of it was easily dismissed or at least explainable. Then we went to the basement in a small group, the basement was separated into two rooms with a large opening between then. When we were down there nothing really happened, as we got ready to leave one of the kids that was with me was taking pictures in the second room, everyone was going up the stairs and myself and the guide were the last two at the bottom, I looked back at her and I saw something go from where the kid had been taking pictures into the part of the room you couldn’t see. I said to the guide, “we have to wait for him he is still in their taking pictures”, she responded, “I’m the last one down here”, I said “but I just saw something go back into that room”, I looked up the stairs and saw the kid who was taking pictures at the top of the stairs leaving the basement, myself and the guide were in fact the last two in the basement, needless to say I hauled some major ass getting out of that basement.

When the large group moved on to its next stop there were only 5 of us and the guides left in the theater, the guide asked if “we wanted to do a blackout tour”, which meant all the lights in the theater were turned out and all we had were flashlights. The response from all of us was “absolutely!” We went through the theater, back into the basement, and up to Red’s projection room, many times with flashlights off in total blackness. Again in the basement, the same basement where I had seen something, things got intense. We were in total darkness, you could not see your hand in front of your face, and you could hear a pin drop in the silence. All of sudden my friend Kelly started to freak out and said she couldn’t take it anymore and we needed to get out of there, nothing had happened and we couldn’t figure out what was freaking her out. We all agreed to leave, before we did however, the guide said wait one second. He hit play on the audio recorder that had been recording during the silence and there in the white noise you could clearly hear a voice say, “don’t leave yet”. Needless to say we didn’t heed that request and we got out of there. When we made it back up to the theater we asked Kelly what had freaked her out and she turned to Eric, who was standing to her left in the basement, and made him swear on his kids that he had not been messing with her. He swore, and she said that she felt breathing on her neck and a small tug on the hair on her left side. Eric responded by making her swear on her daughter’s life that she hadn’t messed with him either, she swore, and he told us that he had felt something touching his right arm. The space between them was the corner of the room that I saw something move into when I was in the basement earlier.

This didn’t deter us, we wanted more, so we made our way up to Red’s projection room. Now this one may be even harder for you to believe without being there but I will tell you, I was there and I believed. We went into the projection room and some of us had dowsing rods, which is no more the a wire coat hanger cut and bent into and “L” shape, you hold the short end and point the long end, the theory is that if you ask the entity a question, that they will move the rod and point to things. Rick had been holding one tight in his hand the whole time when had been in the blackout, so tight that he said it was stuck to his skin and didn’t think it could even move. As soon as we walked into the projection room and stopped, his dowsing rod immediately twisted in his hand and pointed to the right hand projector.... Red’s projector. Rick handed me the dowsing rod and the hair on my hand stood up slightly and the dowsing rod again pointed to Red’s projector. A few minutes later Kelly was holding two dowsing rods, one in each hand, we told Red if he wanted us to leave to make them cross, nothing happened, when we said if it was OK if we stayed they slowly crossed each other. Red is known to not be a fan of women, a man scorned, so Kelly asked if he wanted her to leave, she was the only female in the room, the dowsing rod in her right hand started to pivot back and forth as if Red was shaking his head no.

Lastly we moved from the projection room to balcony in front of it. This is where Red, who was a prankster, is said to have jumped off the balcony in an attempt to scare the people in the back row, resulting in him breaking his leg. As we stood at the railing, Rick’s dowsing rod kept pivoting to the right and pointing to the same place on the railing. Rick had been quiet and we asked, what he had been thinking about, and he said, that he just kept asking Red were he jumped. Shortly after that Kelly was standing on the far left and she started to again get uncomfortable and said that she felt as if there was someone next to her and then the dowsing rod turned left as if Red was saying I’m the one next to you, she moved several times and it kept pointing back to that same spot, now next to me, it was time to call it a day.
I know it may be hard for you to believe these stories because you weren’t there, but I am telling you, four of the five of us had experiences in that theater, experiences that can’t be explained.