Nightmare on Leitersburg Pike

Before Covid-19, I used to work at a haunted movie theater, or at least that’s what my coworkers and I believed. For context, Leitersburg Cinemas, also referred to as LC, was located ironically in the middle of nowhere surrounded by cornfields and a poorly lit parking lot. Additionally, twenty years earlier, a manager died of a heart attack in the building. Honestly, I spent a majority of my time there doubting that the place was haunted. However, there was one night in particular that made me believe that LC was truly haunted.

This haunted Friday night in July of 2019 appeared to be an ordinary night at first, but unbeknownst to me, things would soon drastically change. I was working with my good friends, Lilly and Jenna, as an usher, which is someone who cleans the theaters after movies, and with Gustavo, the professional cleaner LC hired. He spoke predominantly in Spanish, and since I was the only worker at LC who could speak any Spanish, we became friends. At 12:45am, I was standing in the main theater hallway dumping the trash with Jenna and Lilly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gustavo rushing towards us. His eyes were wide, and his face was pale. He motioned for me to join him by the snackbar, and with a backward glance at Jenna and Lilly, I obliged.

“Gustavo,” I began in Spanish. “Is everything alright?”

He shook his head with great certainty and replied, whispering: “Los fantasmas.”

My eyebrows furrowed, and I asked, “Ghosts? What about ghosts?” At that moment, he grabbed my arm and hurriedly led me to the Knives Out standee near Theater One.

“I just saw a man walk right through the standee and enter Theater One!” he exclaimed.

He then described that the man was tall, wearing jeans and a green T-shirt, and had light hair. However, his proclamation struck me as odd for three reasons. One, all the customers had already left the building because all the movies had ended. Two, there were no male employees working tonight. Three, the Knives Out standee had a cardboard box attached to the main base that blocked people from being able to walk right through. When I explained this to him, he continued to protest. After I reassured him that Jenna, Lilly, and I would check it out, he cautiously left to resume his work. Once Jenna and Lilly were done with the trash, they joined me by the doors to Theater One, and after I explained the situation to them, Lilly paled and muttered something inaudible.

“Well, are we going to check it out or what?” Jenna asked with a wide grin on her face. “The theater’s been empty for two hours.”

Glancing back at us, Jenna flicked on the lights and opened the door in one quick motion. As we meandered down the aisle, nothing seemed out of place. However, when we reached the front of the theater where the screen hung, Jenna abruptly stopped. Her spine stiffened as she stood frozen with her eyes locked in the direction of the stairs that led to the back door. In the glow of the emergency exit sign, I saw it. Or rather, I saw him. About that time, Lilly had inched closer so that she was looking over my shoulder, and about five seconds later, she let out an ear-piercing scream. Simultaneously, we all turned on our heels, ran out of the theater, and slammed the door behind us.

I still shudder when I think about that night. The creepiest part of that whole experience wasn’t seeing the man, but the fact that the next day when we looked at the tapes from the cameras facing Theater One, no one but Jenna, Lilly, and I had entered or exited from the time Gustavo came to get me to when the three of us came racing out of the theater. Although it sounds crazy, my friends and I know what we saw. There was a man matching Gustavo’s description in Theater One. So the next time your coworkers try to warn you of some eerie activity at your place of business, consider listening to them.