Scareforce (3 page)

Jim was reluctant to take the complaints seriously. He thought that they must be mistaken. The sounds probably emanated from
somewhere in the audience. The moving draperies were just caused by errant breezes circulated as people came and went from
the theater. The area behind the stage could be reached only from a single door at the back of the building or from the stairs
leading up out of the audience seating area. After the complaints the back door was always found to be securely locked. And
certainly no one had entered from the house. Jim himself acted as usher during the showing of films whenever he could and
he had never seen anyone attempt to climb the stairs and go back in the wings.

As the complaints increased, he kept a more vigilant eye on the premovie activities in the house. It was during one of these
nights, as he was watching the house fill up for a film, that he witnessed an occurrence that convinced him that something
strange was responsible for the disturbances. While surveying the audience, he glanced up at the stage. He was astonished
to see the curtain on the side lift up and continue up until it was at least five feet off the ground. It was if someone standing
behind had lifted it up to get a look at the arriving audience. But anyone lifting the curtain like that would be in full
view to everyone out front. There was no one behind the curtain.

Jim seemed to have been the only one to notice the curtain move, or at least the only one to understand that it was impossible.
He signaled to the projectionist to hold the start of the movie for a few minutes and proceeded to search the area behind
the screen thoroughly. He found the door locked and the area behind the screen totally empty of any living thing.

On another occasion, Jim had been advised by the environmental health office that a sister theater on another base had been
severely reprimanded by the inspector general for all manner of candy, gum, and old popcorn found under the stage. The garbage
had been thrown there by hyperactive children and was drawing in mice and rats from the neighboring fields.

Jim hired a young airman to clean under the stage. The area was reached by way of a small door set in the center of the stage
and usually nailed shut. Jim was in the office of the closed theater catching up on some paperwork while his part-time janitor
cleaned.

After about half an hour, Jim heard the doors from the audience area bang open. He was surprised to hear a loud, “I quit!”
from his new worker. The airman didn’t stop to explain. He just left by the front door as rapidly as possible.

Jim ran into the young man later that evening in the recreation center. It took a large pizza and couple of beers before he
would tell Jim what had precipitated his hasty departure.

He said that he was under the stage, deeply engaged in scraping out the antique residue from the snack bar. He had a trouble
light with him but he had moved a few feet away from it. As he reached forward for a handful of trash, his hands passed through
a cold area. It was shocking enough for him to draw his hands back. Suddenly, from right next to his ear, he heard a loud
voice say, “Get out of here!” The voice sounded very angry, but there was no one with him in the crawl space. He left so rapidly
that he didn’t notice until later that he had received several scratches and bruises in his haste to leave. He displayed the
injuries to the sergeant. Jim was not able to convince him to return to the theater. Jim ended up cleaning the area himself,
without incident.

The most recent happening in the theater, and one of the strangest, took place on another late night after the theater had
closed. Jim was in his office, finishing up some paperwork. His office was a tiny alcove, just big enough for a desk and chair.
He was concentrating on some figures when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement. “It was as if someone
had poked his head in the door, bent over, and glanced around at me,” he said. “At first it looked normal and didn’t really
register. It was only after it had happened that I realized that he couldn’t have poked his head in the door to my left: the
door was to my right.” The visitor Jim had seen would have had to poke his head through a solid wall. Jim concluded that he
had done enough work for that night and quickly closed the theater.

There are many reasons why a theater on a base might be haunted. Young men and women entering the military are often sent
far from home. They’re forced to be grown-ups almost overnight and they’re isolated from friends, family, and, on some bases,
even from the local town. It’s natural for them to gravitate to a place like a theater. It’s cheap, fun entertainment and
a great place for meeting others of their age. They go on to different assignments and too often to war and an early death.
They may carry with them fond memories of the base theater. Maybe some are even drawn back after their time on this earth
has passed.

Whatever their reason for being there, Jim continues to run the theater the best he can for all the patrons. He did add that
the motion picture
Ghostbusters
was an enormous hit. Professional appreciation? Who knows?

Y
OU can argue the relative merits of divisions, regiments, and brigades, but any military member knows that the strongest unit
in the Air Force is the family. Without families, few could handle the pain and suffering of a military career. True military
families understand the sacrifices necessary to keep the country strong. As the following story demonstrates, family love
transcends the normal boundaries of time and space… and life.

In the old days the military was not a place to be if you were a family man or woman. The top sergeant used to berate those
so inclined with the adage, “If the Air Force wanted you to have a wife, it would’ve issued you one!” That attitude has happily
died away with the advent of the modern Air Force that “wants to join you.”

Business learned long ago that a happily married worker is a stable and loyal worker. It just took the military a couple of
hundred years to get the idea. Now, convinced of the value of the military family, they go out of their way to accommodate
families. But even with all their good intentions, the reality of military life sometimes places great hardships on families.

The Freemans were such a family. Ted, the father, was a respected and professional sergeant. He was an electronics specialist,
a profession in demand virtually everywhere in the Air Force. His wife, Vikki, was a teacher and a new mother. Their son,
Teddy, was barely seven months old and already the favorite of numerous uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents.

Ted had spent an arduous three years working at a stateside base getting a new system on-line and running. His hard work had
been rewarded with a plum assignment.

Lakenheath was a US military base in Suffolk County, England. It was in a beautiful part of Great Britain, not far from London.
It was the kind of assignment that young families like the Freemans dreamed of. Even the form used to request assignment to
the base was jokingly referred to as a “dream sheet.” It was everything that they wanted. And it couldn’t have come at a worse
time.

The Freemans’ assignment arrived in the same week that Vikki learned her father was afflicted with a particularly ravaging
form of cancer. He was indeed dying from it. There was no hope. And there was no accurate way to determine how long he had
left to live.

The minute Ted found out about his father-in-law’s illness, he wanted to cancel the assignment. He was ready to apply for
a humanitarian reassignment, one of the finer inventions of the military. He wanted Vikki to be with her father during the
trying times to come.

Vikki’s father wouldn’t hear of it. Being a former soldier, he understood the value of an assignment like this.

“You take your family to England. It will be an experience you’ll never forget. It’ll help your career. And you never know,
I just might decide to hang around regardless of what the doctors say.”

Ted knew his father-in-law was right. To ease the pain of separation he arranged to take a long leave before departing for
England. They spent as much time as they could with Vikki’s father.

During the final week of their vacation, Vikki was gratified to see that her infant son had formed a very close attachment
to her father. When her father sat down to read or talk, Teddy was content to sit beside him. At mealtime he wanted to be
where he could see his grandfather. At night he wouldn’t go to sleep unless grandpa said good-night. It was a precocious fixation
but a pleasant one for Vikki and her father.

Time for moving came much too quickly, but Vikki’s father did his best to make it a happy time. He hid the pain of his illness
with amazing success. When the Freeman family left for England they were almost convinced that her father would be waiting
for them when they returned.

England and the assignment were everything that the Free-mans could have wanted and more. The job was perfect for Ted. He
excelled at his work and his supervisors were appreciative of his talents and expertise.

The family moved into a rented cottage in a little town some distance from the base. They found the people friendly and the
countryside beautiful. It was almost an idyllic time.

Little Teddy thrived on the brisk English weather. He was growing and changing every day. He was a happy child who continued
to demonstrate a precocity beyond his young age. Everything seemed perfect.

Then one day about two months after their arrival at Lakenheath something happened. Teddy woke up in the morning crying. This
was highly unusual for their normally happy child. He cried continuously. Nothing would quiet him. He was not hungry and would
not eat. He didn’t need to be changed and showed no interest in his toys. Being held and walked and cuddled by either parent
had no effect.

Ted was reluctant to go to work and leave his wife with the child in such a state. Vikki insisted that it was a passing phase
brought on by a nightmare or maybe the beginning of a minor illness. She insisted that Ted go to work. She could handle it.

But as noon approached with the child still crying, she was not as sure of her ability to cope. When Ted called and learned
that Teddy was still upset, he directed Vikki to take him to the emergency room of the clinic immediately.

Ted met Vikki at the clinic just as the doctor called her name. The young pediatrician checked the child over thoroughly and
pronounced him healthy. There was no physical reason for his distress.

He asked if Teddy had been severely frightened recently or if he had been separated from a favorite friend or toy. The negative
answer left him as perplexed as the parents. He told them to take the child home and he gave them a prescription for a mild
sedative that would help Teddy sleep.

The prescription quieted the child somewhat, but he did not fall asleep. His crying diminished to a sad whimper. His grief
was almost unbearable in one so young.

His mother finally fell into exhausted sleep after the baby quieted, but Ted stayed awake, checking on the child every half
hour. It was just after one of these checks that he lay back on the bed to try to get some much-needed rest. As he lay there
wide-awake, his hearing tuned to the slightest change in his young son’s distress, a strange thing happened. He clearly heard
the living room door open and someone walk across the room. He jumped out of bed and grabbed the nearest thing that could
be considered a weapon. It was a bullwhip he had purchased as a souvenir of a recent trip to Spain. So armed, he crept to
the bedroom door. He listened as the footsteps came up the stairs. They were slow and measured, but definitely determined.
As they reached the landing outside the bedroom door, Ted wrenched the door open and leapt to confront the intruder.

There was no one there. The hallway and, for that matter, the rest of the house was empty except for the Freemans. And the
front door that he had heard open was still securely locked.

After searching the house for the third time, Ted was sitting in the living room. He was holding his son, who had overcome
the effects of the medicine and was crying as he had all day. At that moment two things happened at once. There was a knock
on the front door. Ted jumped up, startled, and headed for the door. Then he stopped, amazed. For at the exact moment that
the silence was broken by the knock, Teddy stopped crying. He looked into his father’s eyes and smiled. Then he closed his
own eyes and fell fast asleep.

Ted stumbled to the door in a daze. The visitor turned out to be his first sergeant, the senior administrator for his squadron.
He was surprised to see Ted up at this hour, but the sight of the infant in his arms alleviated some of the surprise.

“I’m sorry to have to bring you some bad news,” the sergeant said. “I thought it best to come in person. I didn’t want to
tell you over the phone. I’m afraid your father-in-law passed away tonight.”

Vikki gasped at the sad news. She was standing in the doorway to the living room, obviously wakened by the knock.

The sergeant left after ascertaining that there was nothing further he could do to help. He told Ted to make arrangements
through the squadron for an emergency leave when he was able to come in.

Saddened by the loss of her father, Vikki was still shocked by the events of the previous night. The recounted story of the
ghostly visitor was one thing, but the actions of their baby added immeasurably to the strangeness of the situation. It was
almost as if the child had been mourning the impending death of his grandfather. And when it finally happened, he relaxed.
It was as if Vikki’s father had visited to say that everything was all right and Teddy was the only one to receive the message.

But the next day something even stranger occurred. It was something that removed all doubt, at least for the Freemans. Vikki
was settling her son in his stroller to take advantage of the mild weather. She was in the hallway getting ready to go out
the front door. As she straightened up she noticed a shadow on the wall behind the stroller. At first she thought it was her
own shadow, but she glanced behind her to see that there was no light source to make the shadow. She looked back at the wall
and watched the shadow turn so as to present a profile. The profile was immediately recognizable to her. It was definitely
her father. She glanced down at her infant son and saw that he was smiling broadly at the shadow. She watched it and, as it
gradually faded away, she was overcome with a feeling not of dread but of peace. She knew in her heart that her father had
come to say good-bye. His ghost had crossed the ocean to assure her that it was all right.