Hello constant listener! I got to meet a new friend who has reached out to me through Facebook. Caitlin hails from New Jersey. As we had our chat I got to ask her my favorite question when meeting anyone new. Can you tell me about a time that scared you?  

She recounted a memory as a young woman helping her mother manage a theater. There were things within its walls she couldn’t explain. It reminded me of a similar story my own mother told me about the Paramount Theater in Provo Utah back in 1976. I asked Caitlin if it would be alright to create a new story for Copper Shock by marrying the two realities together for a new original horror story just for you, Constant Listener. 

The more I thought about the two stories, the more excited I became. I’ve always wondered about buildings that just felt… off. Syndication of bad vibes from wall to wall, resonating, and vibrating throughout a room. Buildings that usually get the most reputation for hauntings are ones that house multiple lives at one time. Hotels, prisons, hospitals, and theater houses. Stage plays have been around for hundreds of years. From Greek tragedies in 700 B.C. all the way up to modern hits like Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, and recently Hamilton. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who has never heard of Shakespeare. In fact, Shakespeare does have a play that is infamous for being cursed. It has many names, “The Bards Play” or “The Scottish Play”. The closest name to help you guess is “Mc B”. For those who speak its name inside a theater house sets into motion old magic known to curse the theater until the offender takes measures to clear the name again.

I don’t have the exact instructions, and a quick search on Google tells me that it has something to do with the order of spitting over your shoulder, turning about a number of times, and being formally invited back into the theater house once you’ve taken the appropriate steps to clear the curse.

Where the curse actually comes from, no one is sure. But my favorite theory is in the writing itself. I once was in a Grassroots Shakespeare production of Macbeth, where myself and two other women played the three witches. As a witch for this particular production I took out my guitar and we sang our lines in a haunting lullaby. Here’s the catch? It is supposed that these very first lines of Macbeth are true curse incantations. That Shakespeare took lines from a real coven of witches. It is bad luck to write down incomplete incantations, so the theory goes he only wrote what he wanted and not the whole thing. A repeated curse done by tradition for thousands of theater houses all over the world. Whether that’s true or not is unproven. But listen to the passage:

“When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won. That will be the ‘ere the set of sun. Where the place? Upon the heath. There to meet with Macbeth… I come, Graymalkin! Paddock calls: Anon! Fair is foul, and foul is fair; however through the fog and filthy air.”

I’m Tasha Wheelhouse and this is Copper Shock.

BODY:

Near the center of Provo Utah, the Paramount Theater rested on Center Street. You wouldn’t be able to recognize it now, because it’s gone. Torn down. I saw a picture of it pop up on my regular feed on my phone and the memories about the place came back to me and the summer that I was there in 1976.

I still remembered my mother standing next to me as I looked up at the exterior of the building. I was fourteen and my body was just starting to show the hints of womanhood I’d be growing into soon, and a hershey’s chocolate bar still cost $0.15 cents.