The Haunted Theater

Yesterday, this cute blond-haired, blue-eyed boy asked me to go on a picnic with him at the park

So we did.

We had sandwiches and soup and pretzels and chocolate mousse. Getting soup out of a thermos with a spoon can be hard:

And we played frisbee:

And then we saw this very cool building across the street that looked like a very old movie theater that had been closed down for many years, even decades:

There were even very old movie posters in the window, faded from the being in the sun for so long. We went over to investigate the building. Maybe there would be old movie theater seats in there, or old ticket stubs from movies viewed in that very building during World War II. Or maybe old popcorn tubs or old movie reels of films that starred Gene Kelly or Audrey Hepburn. Maybe the place would even be haunted!

But when we went to investigate, we were ridiculously disappointed to find out that the whole place was just painted to look like a movie theater. The ticket window and the front door aren't even real! Inside are sound system parts for cars. Now, we probably should have figured this out before we went over to look in the building, because the name of the supposed last played movie there is "Sound Advice," and really, it's kind of small to be a theater. But how much cooler would it have been if it was an old shut-down theater that was haunted? Much cooler.

Perhaps I was so anxious for it to be an old shut-down building with hidden treasures because of a story I heard recently on the talk-show This American Life.

I listen to This American Life while I am doing artwork, or cleaning the house or making dinner and I love it! Throughout each episode they tell all these interesting stories about all these random, unheard-of individuals in the U.S. It is fascinating! All the stories are connected in an episode by a similar theme. And you can listen to it for free on the internet. Here is a link. The true story I heard earlier this week was about these two kids who stumbled across this boarded up house, and decided to break in and look around. Inside the house they find a newspaper on the table from 1938. There are clothes strewn throughout the whole house, even a fancy dancing dress hung in the closet of what looks like a teen-age girl's bedroom. They find the wallet of the father with money still inside of it, on his bed-stand in his room. There's food in the cupboards, old letters and bills. Everything is still in the house as if something disasterous happened and the whole family had to flee. Throughout the episode they try to find out what happened to the family, but it's hard because no one in the small town will talk to them about it, they tell the kids to mind their own business. Anyway, it's a fantastic show. Here's the link to that episode, if you are dying to find out what happened to the family.