Caspar, the FRIENDLY Ghost
First a disclaimer: even after all the following, I am still undecided as to the existence of ghosts. On one hand, I am a pretty pragmatic person, and like solid evidence of things; on the other hand, this all happened to me personally, NOT some friend-of-a-friend or whoever!
I’ve been a movie theater projectionist for a long, long time now; occasionally in newer theaters (my current one is a five-year-old IMAX — woot!), but many times, especially in my earlier days, I’ve worked the oldest places in the area. For one twelve year stretch I was at a theater built in 1911, which is where I encountered Caspar.
Now, you’ve got to understand that I like getting in early: just me, peacefully checking out my equipment before anybody else comes in for the day. And for some years now, film is not fed through projectors on reels: we use big ol’ 4-5 foot wide horizontal discs (“platters”) that require a certain amount of bending and stretching. So there I am, alone in a locked room in a locked building, bending over with my head stuck in-between the platters and my butt in the air.
All of a sudden, I heard this sort of a giggle, and somebody pinched my butt. (I may not be Miss America, but I know a butt-pinch when I feel one, thankyouverymuch!) Very weird, and it sure was a shock. I checked: yes, I WAS the only one in the building; no, there was nothing within reach I could have possibly bumped into. I told my boss when he came in: if I had to be freaked out, let’s share the joy!
A year later, it happened again. We’re not talking some Amityville-horror type of giggle either: it was definitely a HAPPY giggle, then the butt-pinch. When I told my union brothers (projectionists are part of IATSE), one of them came up with the name: after that, everybody in the union local called my visitation Caspar the Really Friendly Ghost, for obvious reasons. Speculation as to his identity centers on one old projectionist who literally dropped dead in that booth back in 1968. I was the first female projectionist ever to work there; the old-timers who used to know the dead guy agreed that yes, he was indeed the kind of guy who’d do that.
The third time I heard that happy little giggle, I stood up, turned around and said “If you try anything, I’ll smack you silly!” to the empty room behind me. There was this SAD sort of giggle in response, but no pinch. The next day, my extremely reliable/never-any-trouble projector stripped every single gear in its motor. You should have HEARD the service tech laugh his head off over that one! A week after we completely rebuilt the projector, there was that happy giggle again….. that time, I kept bent over until after Caspar got his butt-pinch in. And for the rest of the time I worked there, once a year I got that giggle & a goose. As near as we could tell, that was Caspar’s “fee” for projector maintenance…..
I stopped telling my union brothers about all this after the year the guy in charge of our monthly newsletter put in a paragraph about “Paula reports Caspar has made his annual visit to the _____ Theater, and he has once again pinched her rear end.” The very next sentence was “All members, living and deceased, are reminded that sexual harassment is not permitted.”
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June 15th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
wow, in the modern age a guy would have to be dead to try that, unless he wanted to get killed.
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June 16th, 2009 at 3:29 am
I had worked at a dollar theater in my area on 2 different occasions, about 5 years apart. A year after I left the first time, one of the janitors was replacing the lights in theater 1 and fell about 25 feet onto the seats ( killing him ). The second time I work there i was in the projection booth getting everything set up and the projector for Theater 1 turns on by itself (it was the last one that needed to be set-up and I and the Manager were the only people in the building)….. Power outages in that area only, the sound getting really jacked up, and a bunch of other things made working there one of the more unusual jobs i have had
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June 16th, 2009 at 4:08 am
I’m on the same page with ghosts. I require proof of everything. At this point, I can say the phenomena commonly known as ghosts exists. However, I can’t say exactly what the cause of that phenomena is. And yeah, my own experiance exceedes the parameters for emperical testing. I went to college at Vermont Tech, and ran into a few “ghosts” a year. Also, we had a Veteran’s cemetary near there that was “interesting”. One time some buddies went down just to wander at night, no mischef intended. On the way back I got blinded by the floodlights that illuminate the flags and almost stepped on a grave. My buddy put his hand on my shoulder and sorta nudged me back onto the walking path. I turned to thank him only to realize he was about 10 yards behind me and a Corporal in WWII uniform was standing next to me for a sec. I looked at the grave and it belonged to a Corporal. I can only assume he politly kept me from accidently walking on him. That was about the most direct experiance I had.
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June 16th, 2009 at 4:46 am
The house I grew up in sits on the site of an old tavern on one of the older roads in Maryland, predating the Revolutionary War. From time to time we all saw people in colonial garb, only to have them disapear.
My brother and I – before AC – would go into our bedroom at night in the summer and be able to see our breath on a regular basis. The cool air felt good, and we were not bothered by anything.
My dad denied ever seeing any of this, but refused to ever be alone in the house. He now lives in another state.
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June 16th, 2009 at 5:34 am
While I always try to maintain a healthy level of skepticism (let’s face some people will say anything if it gets them attention) I had the joy of living in a townhouse which I and my roommates believe was haunted. For the most part there wasn’t a lot of evidence but on more than one occasion the front door would fly open on its own including one time when I had had just set the deadbolt five minutes previously. Only ever happened while someone was downstairs, but seeing as I was sitting on the couch with a direct line of sight on the door when it happened after setting the deadbolt I am inclined to say proof positive on that place being haunted. At least it was a benign spirit.
dimly Government – I don’t know that a bright government would be any less dangerous
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StoneWolf reply on June 17th, 2009 4:11 am:
I hear you on the attention thing. My freshmen year my roomate one day tries to wake me up because he thinks there’s a Wendigo (Angry native american spirit) in the woods by campus. I wake up long enough to decide its construction equipment and go back to bed. He keeps trying to wake me up until I just punch him in the head. He didn’t sleep all night, despite the fact I explained to him that it was construction equipment and that someone was building a house just down the road. How did I know? I saw it myself about a day before they decided night was a good time to build. My poor roomate didn’t sleep for a month, the “Wendigo is out to get me!” I never could tell if it was a ploy for attention or glarin insanity.
Captcha; buries 11-what, bodies?
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June 16th, 2009 at 5:34 am
I worked an old grocery store that had voice and crowd noises after the store closed and my mother worked in an old building downtown Huntsville on the second. Her office faced the stairs and she would hear footsteps go past the open door up to the closed third floor. She could hear doors open and close and what sounded like desk drawers being messed with. The third floor had no furniture and all doors were kept locked.
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June 16th, 2009 at 6:43 am
I grew up in my grandmother’s house, which was built in the 1870’s. My mother, an only child, used to talk about seeing a boy of about 10 in the at night. I have often heard footstep in the upstairs hall when everyone was downstairs in the living room. Other times I would hear footsteps up and down the hall in the middle of the night and I would say “Would you please stop it?” and the noise would stop immediately. We never named him, but he wandered around the house for at least 50 years.
Captcha – candle crypto- sounds spooky
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June 16th, 2009 at 7:43 am
My grandfather died in his house when my dad was in high school. When I was a kid we would visit my grandmother there. At night we would see him in the house and sometimes we could hear him yelling in Greek. I also had a best friend who had a poltergeist in her house. Very childish, but not malicious and sometimes rather sweet. Mostly it just moved things around (like putting the HUGE vase from the living room into the bathroom) once it had a tantrum and knocked all the books from the bookshelf onto the floor. When my friend and her first boyfriend broke up she came home from school that day and found a little bouquet of flowers (you know, the tiny handful your three-year-old picks and is so proud of it) on her pillow.
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June 16th, 2009 at 8:14 am
My wife and I used to live in an older apartment building when our kids were preschool age. One day we were running around getting ready to go visit grandma so we were both pretty stressed. I was doing a final run through to make sure we had everything when I walked by my son’s room and saw someone sitting down playing with they toys. I called his name and told him we needed to go and I hear him in another part of the house reply. When I looked back into the room I noticed that the little boy I saw wasnt there anymore. Apparently this little boy liked to play with my sons toys because both me and my wife saw him on several occassions. If either kid saw him neither mentioned it.
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June 16th, 2009 at 10:01 am
I am of the more “classic” belief when it comes to “ghosts” in that there are two distinct types of “hauntings”. One is that a traumatic type of event can leave an energy imprint, like recording on a magnetic tape. This explains, to a point, why some “sprits” are seen in one place only or doing the same thing time and again.
The second is the spirit/soul/etc. of a person or animal that either does not realize it has died or was not ready to depart, and hangs around on this level for whatever reason.
Having seen and experience both types of “hauntings” I believe that no matter what your religious or philisopical leanings may be, that “ghosts” do exist.
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June 16th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Dear God, I’ve exerpienced too many to go into detail. The most recent though still brings tears to my eyes. My mother works in a governmental building in the local town where she is the caretaker. Ever since she has been there its been haunted, a very angry ghost who liked to throw things, and th static charges when he was unhappy were fiece. However we found telling him to go away with extreme impolitneess worked well.
About two years ago a lady walked in and was chatting to my mum, when she turned a full 90 degrees, looked up and started talking to the ghost. Now we knew it was a man and very tall, but that was it.
Turns out our boy had been stuck to the site for 65 years. Yep he’d been there since 1944, and long before the building was constructed around him.
Mum asked questions, to which our spook replied via the interpreter. Pieces started to slot together from what she and I had seen of him, and what the medium was saying. His Spitfire had faulted and crashed near by, the wreck had been brought to what was at the time waste ground and split up. He didn’t know which bit to go with as he shouldn’t have died then. He got trapped on the site and took to haunting the building that was constructed 30 years later.
The instant we had a name for him his entire demenour changed, he was happy, full of joy and the building felt so different. He was only stuck there until he could get his story across, that the crash wasn’t his fault, it was engine failure.
Its been about 18 months since we did his debrief, and my mum thinks he is now popping back for visits. I know that building has felt so damned empty without him.
LOng story short, 6 months later i am sat making notes and asking questions as I debrief a WW2 Polish Pilot.
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June 16th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Lucky me, I get the kind of thing that is only a little weird. One house I grew up in used to be a church, and possibly the other end of the world because there was also a church across the street. However, I remember that, for the longest time, for no apparent reason, I would easily slip on the stairs and at night I would find scratches on myself when I woke up. Strange coincidence though, it was also about when I stopped beliving in god. Now i’m a neo-fatalist.
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June 16th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
My only encounter with a “ghost” was several years ago when I shared a 2-bedroom apartment with my sister. I was home alone at the time and heard the sound of a creaking door open. A few minutes later I hear it again. As we don’t have any creaky doors I thought this was a bit odd so did a quick circuit around the apartment – nothing. The creaky door sound keeps occurring and I’m starting to get a bit unsettled. After a more cautious search, I found my ghost – my sister had left her computer on (and the monitor turned off) and was logged into an instant chat app. The sound effect whenever one of her friends logged in happened to be a creaky door. I told her to always log out from then on.
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March 21st, 2014 at 10:55 pm
I have seen a ghost. A few years ago, I hired out on the SS Arthur M Anderson as a deckhand. On one of our last ore runs, we were heading past the location where the Fitz went down. My great-uncle went down on the Fitz in her engine room, so I would go out on deck and pay my respects. That day, it was extremely foggy. I looked out to where the Fitz rests, and saw the silhouette of an ore boat, not too dissimilar from the Anderson. The weird thing was, she had no running lights, and when our captain sounded our horn at her, she didn’t respond, like most other ships do. The other freighter then faded into the mist Later, I was talking to one of my crewmates who had been on watch in the wheelhouse, and he told me that there was nothing on our radar when the freighter appeared. To this day, I believe that I saw the ghost of the Mighty Fitz.
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