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To catch up with this story if this is your first time visiting scroll down. And again I state this is a true story.


"How can I help you boys today?" asked the old man behind the counter of Gold Medal sporting goods. "We're looking for inflatable rafts." "We have a couple of them in the back, are you guys planning on going fishing?" "Sorta". Well ok you'll probably want one with rod holders and..." "No we just need the smallest raft you have." "Why so small?" asked the now very inquisitive shopkeeper. "Well it needs to fit in a basement." I said back to him. "Oh I see you guys are going fishing in your basement, that should be lots of fun. I had many adventures in my basement as a young boy. Why I remember....." The old man yarned on for 20 minutes nonstop while showing me and my buddy a variety of inflatable rafts. We ended up buying the 2 man raft as we figured there was no way we were going to send a guy into the flooded basement of the theater by himself.

The plan was simple. We were going back into that building and mapping it all out no matter what shrieked at us. We were young, stupid, and bored and this place had just way too many possibilities as a clubhouse to let a stupid ghost bring us down.

It was decided to go back in Tuesday morning. 2 teams of 4 each. One team's mission was to explore the basement as best as possible. The other team was to explore the upstairs again except this time we had cutting edge technology, the Fisher Price PXL2000 video camera for kids! We were going to catch the ghost on video and become millionaires! Oh yes thanks to one of our buddies parents spoiling the hell out of him we were now outfitted with gear to match the best ghosthunters around. Not only did we have the camera this time though but we also outfitted ourselves with weapons. Who knew what we would find in the basement so we each carried with us some form of weaponary just in case. BB guns, pocket knives, even a small sledge hammer, who do you think carried that? We went to the local parish and bought 3 vials of holy water to carry with us and to bless the weapons. We were all set now. We had the power of God behind us along with the newest technology, nothing could stop us.

We arrived at the building with duffle bags full. One by one we entered through the hatch in the air vent. Once inside we set up a base camp. As 3 of us took guard duty the rest of us took turns blowing up the raft. The building was quiet except for a couple of birds near the hole in the roof above the stage. Once inflated we carried the raft across the theater floor to the door leading to the staircase. "The door is closed guys." "It can't be, we placed that big ass cinder block next to it last time we were in there, it couldn't be closed." But sure enough it was. The door sat there silently mocking us, daring us to open it once again to reveal the pathway where suddenly we were all having second thoughts about treading into. "Let's do this." and with that we opened the door. Inside the stairway was as dark as ever. The kid with the hammer drove nails into the door securing it against the wall. It was an idea he picked up from a game of Dungeons and Dragons once. The basement team dragged the raft down the steps while the team set for upstairs readied the camera and tape recorder we had brought along with us.

The basement team was all set. The raft was in the water and floating. 2 of the guys hopped in while the other 2 secured the boat with clothesline to make sure they could pull them back in a hurry. Meanwhile upstairs the other group ascended the steps now very slowly. Three flashlights pointed straight ahead as the camera rolled. Again the temperature lowered as they walked down the hallway. In a couple of the rooms more writing was found on the walls. Nothing of significance really except that they were all written in red, maybe with a marker. We wandered between the rooms in total quiet looking for clues to the building's past but not finding any. When we came to the room now known as "Edward's" we stopped. The camera had stopped working. We all looked a little puzzled. We turned it off and turned it back on and it booted right back up. As we walked into the room again it shut down. Now we're freaked. We knew it wasn't batteries as we had put fresh ones in. Once again we rebooted the camera and went into the room. The mattress was there along with the Bible in the corner. Nothing happened out of the ordinary. We started to walk out of the room when we heard the basement crew running up the steps yelling. We were all for running at this point and met them at the landing in the stairs. They had heard something moving in the basement waters and it wasn't them. The guys on the stairs dragged them back and they all hauled ass upstairs fully convinced that whatever was in the water was coming after them. It was just then when we heard at the bottom of the steps that sound you hear as someone exits water. Zoom! It was again another foot race to the air vent hatch. Each guy trying to out race the others. Running across the main theater area felt like running a mile. We reached our gear and started grabbing all of it. A couple of us flashed our lights towards the door to the stairway. As we stood there the door closed. "Holy shit!" one of us said and that was it we were all leaving there pronto. "That door closed after being nailed open." "That was impossible!" We packed up our base camp and left the building leaving the raft behind in the basement. There wasn't one volunteer willing to go back down there to retrieve it.

In the following months we resumed playing baseball in the parking lot. None of us ever really thought about venturing inside as we were fully convinced we were not wanted in there. We did do research on the address at the local historical society. The theater was built in 1909 by an old mill owner of the area. Live acts performed there all the way up through the 20's until the theater was converted to show movies. After that there wasn't much in the old papers about the place. It would host the yearly Christmas show for the area and would take an ad in each week's edition to promote what was showing there. In the late 60's it was bought and turned into an adult theater. Discussions with people of the neighborhood revealed the thought that there was more going on in there besides sex on the screen. There was talk of the old dressing rooms upstairs being used as a brothel. Apparently the owner would give girls off the street a room to stay in as long as they worked for him. The civic association got the place closed in the late 70's and boarded it up to keep out the homeless and drug dealers that were now now becoming more and more prevalent in the neighborhood. So it stood there for 20+ years until me and my friends found that hatch and entered it.

The building was torn down in 2002. Someone said the demolition crew were shocked to find a 2 man raft in the basement. They were even more shocked when they found human remains buried in dirt in the main theater area.

The End