He's an old man, sometimes angry, sometimes wails, but he's here in the shadows of the Inwood. There are numerous stories, but I'll lay out a few for ya...

David Kimball's Ghost. A psychic once was having drinks in the Inwood Lounge (connected to us) and asked the manager on duty if someone had died here. When the reply came back affirmative, (an assumption, but more on that later), she said she knew this: she could feel the presence of the spirit on the large Inwood stairway leading up to the other auditoriums. Now that's eerie considering the lady knew nothing of Inwood history. The Hispanic janitors have heard him wail and they have been spooked. So much so, in fact that they want additional bucks added to their contract for compensation. I discovered this through an interpreter, by the way.

David Again? My assistant manager, Paul, was watching a movie after-hours in auditorium #2. He was the only person watching. Typically, the night manager at the Lounge is the last person out of here as they turn off A/C units, neon, etc. They walked into #2 on their way to turn off stuff and noticed Paul's shadowy figure watching the movie and ANOTHER figure several rows behind him. The next day, they asked Paul what he was watching and with whom. He replied that he was by himself. They told him otherwise. While threading up a movie in the upstairs booth, I peered through the porthole glass and into auditorium #2 (a pattern, you say?) and there below was this shrively old man with glasses staring up at me with a rather unhappy look on his face. I almost had a heart attack. He made me so nervous that I went immediately to #3 to thread up hoping he would leave. When I came back, he was gone. When I returned to the booth some fifteen minutes later to start my film in #2, guess what? The film was broken! Now, how many times after you've threaded up a film, do you return to find it broken? Not damn many, I'll wager! One myth here is that the ghost is a former union projectionist who "died" in the fire back in 1980. That's simply not true. It is true that a disgruntled union man started the fire and almost did himself in with the gasoline and whatnot, but from the information I can gather, no one actually died. If that's the case, then who is my ghost? As a mechanically inclined individual, I was quick to get into the projection booth, and as a poor individual, I did more than enough closing usher shifts in order to add on a few extra hours a week. The original booth of the theatre was still operating from both portholes, one to each small cinema, and as soon as I began to hang out in the booth I began feeling a certain sense of an overlap of time. I could smell the sharp scent the old carbon arcs make when they heat nitrate film. I heard and sensed a person behind me, staring at me. I saw the silhouette of a person in the booth from the floor, when I knew the booth to be empty. All that said, it really did not give me much pause at first. The fact of the Inwood's hauntings were common talk among the staff of the theatre and the staff of the bar that shares our name and lobby space. Besides, this was not my first supernatural experience, my childhood home had ethereal residents - but that's for another compilation. All told, I pretty much took the Inwood at face value it was an old place, why shouldn't it have a few ghosts? Besides, nothing really intense happened...for awhile.

Alexandria's Ghost. I had been at the Inwood about six months when I first saw The Lady in the Cream Suit. It was really late, nearly 2 AM, and we were showing a couple of midnight films. It had not been very busy, and even the bar was slowing down, the hum of conversations barely clearing the glass dividing wall. Occasionally, one of the barkeeps would laugh, a shrill, bubbly shriek that would snap me out of the reverie that comes at the end of a very long shift. It was hot, our AC had shut down, my theatre duties were done except for locking the exit doors after the films let out. My art history and medieval law were read, and annotated. I looked at the clock: Over twenty minutes to go! I wandered out of the concession stand and over to the staircase that winds down the inside of the Inwood's massive, over-two-story lobby, curving over the concession stand and down to the left side of the front doors and the usher's stand. I was leaning against the newel post, staring into the upper balcony, when I noticed that an odd feeling was beginning to pass through me, like a steady, low grade shock. I backed away from the newel - there were old neon conduits there, I thought that I may have inadvertently made contact with a live end. The feeling continued, and I looked up.

A woman was in the upper balcony. She was dressed in a just below the knee length skirt, pumps, and a cream colored jacket with short sleeves. She wore a minuscule hat with a net. I watched her, not remembering tearing her ticket or having seen her stunning vintage outfit. I thought about calling out to her, asking if I could be of help - but somehow I could not speak. I could no longer hear the sound of plinking martini glasses or the deeper clinks of pint glasses being washed just behind me, over the wall. The woman seemed agitated, she kept running up towards the balcony doors, and coming back out again. Finally, she shrugged and began to hurry down the stairs, towards me..... and she was gone. The barback was stacking glasses, brittle little thwops reverberating. I grabbed the newel post, slumping on the bottom step...and the stair flooded with sound - the first movie was out! Where had twenty minutes gone? I struggled up and ran to get the doors. I did not sleep much that night; I felt like I had drank a lot of coffee. But I hadn't.

I saw her every couple of months after that, always late, always alone. The woman who owned the bar had also seen her. Each time the same scenario was played out - the woman never reaches the bottom of the stairs. She seems to have lost something, she retraces her tracks, looking all around, down at the floor, in and out of the door to the balcony. I remember being taken to a funeral when I was very small by my father and grandfather. We went up to the casket to pay last respects; and I saw my grandfather drop a penny into the silk-lined box. When we got back to our pew, I asked him why he had given a penny to my dead great uncle. In hushed tones, he gave me a condensed version of the journey to the afterlife, and how the boatman will ask the dead soul for a coin, fare for transport to the Land of Bliss. "The coin is for the boatman."I have since decided that the woman who lost something is looking for her purse. I believe that the coin of passage is a certain preparedness for death, and if a person was unprepared, that she would be doomed to look forever for her coin of passage. Where is one of the commonest place to leave something? You know, we all know. And who is to say that people don't leave their souls behind, like umbrellas and single, forlorn gloves, under the seats of a palace of escape and transport, in the balcony of a movie theatre?