Little Lori, now an old woman, remembers the events of those months spent working at the old movie theater with mixed feelings. Horror intermingles with confusion and disbelief as the memories from so many years ago crowd her mind. The anger had faded over time and a sense of the surreal touched her as she related these events to me. Now, gather around as I relate her spooky tale of mayhem when, once upon a time, she was plagued by a malignant being known as Big John.
It is true that Big John's origins could never be traced accurately. Still unknown, his parentage has been questioned by many who he appeared to. Was Big John a changeling? It's almost certain that he was part goblin, all troll or possibly the dimwitted spawn of the devil himself whose man-like appearance haunted the old, dilapidated theater for a time.
Big John was tall, a few inches above six feet at least, with a hulking build which would have looked like it belonged on a football field had it not been for the fact that his muscle mass had started to turn into softer flesh. His Cro-Magnon like appearance may have been dismissed as inaccurate had it not been for Big John's lower intelligence and lack of hygiene, which could not be hidden when one was in his presence. A general sense of a lumbering fool with bad body odor was the best was to describe the haunt of whom this tale depicts.Little Lori does not remember the first time she spied Big John, nor does she wish to recollect the episode. When she first went to work at the theater she was excited. Having reached adulthood, Little Lori now needed a way to provide for her own self in the world, and the neglected, old theater, even with the creepy feeling that accompanies older buildings, was as good a place as any to start her journey. She enjoyed movies and the atmosphere appealed to her as a place of fun where she might learn and experience new things. Little did she know what was in store...
Lori's earliest experiences with Big John, a fearsome wraith who possessed the theaters and believed he was in charge there despite his lack of work ethic, were not drastic or terrifying. She was, at first, only aware of his oafish nature and learned not to stand too near his person. But slowly she became aware of what she at first thought of as 'Big John's quirks'. She, with the help of the other assistant managers at the theater, learned not to leave her keys, pens, or any other small and portable objects sitting around the office, lest she should enter that place to find Big John eerily lying on the couch digging said pen into his belly button or ear (she preferred not to think of where else he may be using those objects to scratch, touch or...whatever). With feelings of hesitancy, and a sense of foreboding, she would politely excuse herself from speaking with him citing work, although most of the time Big John did not seem to seek her out to exchange words.
Soon Lori began doubting Big John's judgment and sometimes his intelligent quotient. At the end of a shift, Lori would count up the profits from the night's work only to find she was $50 shorter than she should be. Panicking at what might happen if this money was not found, Lori would question the other employees which she soon learned could almost always account for the missing money. One of the box office personnel or concession attendants would have recalled a sighting of the supernatural specter Big John who maliciously took money from their tills in order to buy some supply which he thought essential for the running of the theater. No receipts would be presented for some time to account for the missing funds. Thankfully, the head assistant manager, Timothy, was well acquainted with Big John's scare tactics and Lori had only to tell him of another disastrous episode of 'assistance' from Big John as an explanation of the night's happenings.Loris' great dislike of this malevolent spirit (which frequently left her feeling dyspeptic and slightly queasy) increased with later catastrophes. Big John once decided that their 'waste product' percentage (items such as a popcorn tub returned by customers who wanted their money back) was too high and would take said waste products, which had been damaged after their return to signify them as having been already used, tape them together again and resell them to new, unwitting customers. Other circumstances included Big John deciding to splatter paint the lobby pillars one day while the other workers was at a staff meeting. Returning from their meeting, the employees were greeted by Big John's haunting smile in the middle of a gruesome sight. He had neglected to cover a single object in plastic; paint had been ground into the carpet, flung all along the concession areas, it enveloped the hot dog and food machines, smeared the mirrors, and even sat in globs on the walls across the lobby! Halted by the spectacle of horror, the staff stood stock still in silence. Big John creepily told the group that they had half an hour to clean up the mess that "somebody" created before the theater opened...oh and "somebody" had broken one of the cash registers as well (better get that taken care of). Little Lori's thoughts at that time centered on the idea that some apparitions are just plain evil.
One day Little Lori was working in the office with Timothy while Big John disturbed them (in more than one sense). Somehow a piece of a pipe from some broken equipment lay in the office and Big John, supposedly having nothing else to do, picked it up. Spidey senses on alert, Lori edgily watched Big John as he quietly inched toward Timothy who sat with his back toward them. Piece of pipe extended in his hand, Big John lowered the pipe to the level of Timothy's rear end, and just as Lori was about to give a warning cry, Timothy, sensing Big John's approach, looked around which stopped the demon's progress, and even triggered his regression. But as soon as Timothy turned around again, Big John repeated the process. After about the third time, Timothy irritatingly asked what Big John was doing. The reply was both disgusting and agitating. "I was just seeing if it would fit!" he cackled and whirled out of the office. (Nowadays, this would have been classified as sexual harassment and would have had much harsher consequences, as would many of these experiences come to think of it.)This was not the first nor the last time Little Lori's stomach took a sickening turn while being around this fiend. In abject terror, she once saw Big John write on the wall in his own spittle. He was trying to describe where a store was that he wanted Little Lori to go to in order to purchase needed supplies. Making a muck of it with words, he dipped his finger into his mouth and brought it out with a glob of saliva on it with which he used to draw a map on the wall. Standing with her mouth open and tears forming in her eyes, Lori didn't know what to do. She'd never had to encounter such unspeakable acts before and was as overwhelmed as a young girl could be. She stood in the same place long after Big John had left the office watching as the clear liquid ran down the wall and hoping that she would wake up from this nightmare.
Lori, by this point, as may be expected, was clearly uncomfortable in Big John's presence and reluctant to have anything to do with such a ghoul. Consequently, when she was summoned by Big John one day to help him in the projection booth, she felt like she was facing her execution. She entered the booth to see Big John shirtless and sweating. He had been "fixing" a projector (which meant that he was breaking it into worse condition than it already was to begin with) and wanted to show her something. The horror of that day still prevents Lori from recalling exactly what he wanted, but she'll never forget what happened next. Wanting her to look through the small window from the projection booth into the window of the theater, Big John grabbed Lori and pulled her to him. Her head ended up a few scant inches from his bare, hairy, stinky armpit (his arm being raised to move the curtain over the window). Lori froze. She couldn't think of anything but escape. Mumbling in agreement to whatever Big John had been saying, she wrenched herself free. Stumbling as fast as she could out of the booth, Lori could not prevent herself from watching as Big John took a paper towel (which he had been cleaning the inside of the projector with and which was covered in grease) and with it wiped his face clean of the sweat, thus smearing the grease all over his ghastly visage. Big John's laughter as she ran away still rings in Little Lori's ears to this day.
On a busy weekend night, Big John wreaked havoc. He would try to help behind the concession stand, which every employee at the theater tried their hardest to prevent for hygienic reasons as well as for the fact that he was just a fumbling nuisance, though truly scary. He would insist on checking that the projectors were working (after which they amazingly wouldn't be working as well) or he would offer to take the money drops to the bank every few hours (which they encouraged as it would mean he'd be away from the theater for short bursts of time). Mostly Big John would cause confusion and disarray by quietly stalking around the lobby or uselessly hanging out in the office reading the paper. One particular night Big John was doing these last two things intermittently and while Lori was in the office counting the money, he came in and declared he didn't feel good. Ignoring him and hoping valiantly that he would go away, she was then subjected to the scariest sound in the world: retching. She whirled around to see Big John throwing up all over the office floor. The irony of this situation is that if he didn't feel good, Big John could have easily gone ten steps out of the office door and into the men's restroom which was directly across the hall to take care of his illness. Instead, Big John, not trying to stop himself or trying to find a garbage can or even going any place better to vomit than the on the office floor, finished giving his contribution and got one of the concession workers to come into the office. He threatened the poor child to haunt him forever if he did not clean up his vomit and departed without another word leaving a stinky office and a devastated employee cleaning up his sick. |
| "Somebody broke the..." |
You may wonder, and rightly so, why it was that after so many haranguing occurrences it was so hard to get rid of this phantom that haunted the theater. Rest assured, there were many times Lori and her coworkers gathered together in a seance, trying to communicate with corporate headquarters in order to get big John removed from their theater. It took a lot of hard work, too much time and many exorcisms until they were finally successful and Big John left the theater never to return. There were many a tear shed and many a light heart that day when he was banished forever and peace once again settled on the theater.The legend of Big John (for Big John did become a legend, at least in Little Lori's family) has been told over and over through the years. There are always new listeners who for the first time experience the thrill and the chill of these queer stories and I would wager there are some who think these events to be lies or the product of an overactive imagination. But I assure you that, though the horror has somewhat diminished and Lori can now look at those experiences with much more humor, they were quite real, and the feelings of drastic relief that such a malicious spirit has never crossed her path again have been a blessing to her even to this day.
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