Phil’s recent post about getting phone calls from the great beyond, compelled me to share this one story that happened to a group of my buddies. It’s just freaky. My friend Ham Tran, who is a filmmaker (check out his award winning Journey from the Fall) also moonlights as an editor for Vietnamese music and variety shows. Believe me, these shows are huge and travel all over the world, entertaining various diaspora communities.

A couple of years ago, they stage a big show in downtown Dallas in a historic theater. They stayed a few blocks away in a historic hotel. Once they checked in, well, let’s just say that strange things started to happen. People in the crew were experiencing nightmares, but that could’ve just been the late night Tex Mex dinners they were chowing down during late night set ups, preparing for the big show. My friend Ham just felt weird in the hotel. After a couple of days, he just mentioned about his nightmare he experienced the night before to a colleague and the guy said he had one too. Before you know it, word started spreading among the crew. But, was it all Jungian collective unconsciousness? Pre-show jitters?

Then one late night, Ham was in his hotel room and gets a call from his colleague, Danny, who tells him to come down to his room right away. Ham goes to room 1308 and enters. Ham immediately notices the view from the window is very similar to the view in the movie 1408. He chuckles.

Then, he immediately feels chilly. But the cold is concentrated in one part of the room, by the bed. Was it simply an A.C. vent directly blowing cold air there? Anyway, Ham shrugs it off as such and is going over some footage on Danny’s Macbook. Danny, who is still kind of spooked by the chilliness in the room, decides to take a bunch of pictures. Hey, he’s seen enough Ghost Hunters, right? So he sets his digital camera on the other side of the room and sets it on a timer:

Ham is sitting on the desk, looking a footage. Pretty harmless photo. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? My friend Ham is chiding Danny to just chill, that it’s all in his head and the late night Tex Mex surely ain’t helping either. Danny is convinced that something is askew in his room, so he takes a couple of more photos. And let me tell you something, true-believers, explain to me what the following photos to me, because it still gives me the heebie jeebies:

What is that black smudge? Doesn’t it look like it’s…. sitting on the bed??? Ham claims that the desk lamp was on his right and the only other light sources were the lamp on the end of the wall and from a ceiling fan, so there shouldn’t be any shadows made. Here’s another photo:

Keep in mind the other odd factor of the photo having that vaseline on the lens effect. Danny insists that he didn’t manipulate the photos in any way and that he just pointed and shot. And from this other photo, it looks like the black smudge has traveled off the bed and is creeping towards Ham.

Well, after viewing these photos from the digital camera monitor, they both kind of freaked and called their boss’ room. He woke up and after hearing the news, he went down to their room. A little pissed from being up at 2am, he saw the photos and just said it was all in their heads and yelled at them for waking him up in the middle of the night. He mutters under his mouth and leaves the room.

Literally, three minutes later, the phone rings! Ham picks it up and it’s his boss, all frantic!

“You guys get up to my floor right now! And use the stairs!”

Ham and Danny take the stairs and get on their boss’ floor. He’s standing in the hallway with another assistant, who he’s roused out of bed. The boss’ face is pale white. Ham then notices the elevator. The doors are open but the elevator car is midway down, exposing the cable and the shaft itself. Apparently, the boss’ room was a couple of floors up so he took the elevator. Once he got to his floor, the nano-second he stepped out, the elevator car swooshed down and was stuck between floors! Basically, he claims if he was a little slower, he could’ve been seriously hurt!

As they calm down their boss, Ham and Danny decide to go downstairs in the lobby and ask questions (they take the stairs again). The night manager is reluctant to answer anything and just tows the company line. Disappointed, Ham and Danny, decide to just hang out in the lobby, sitting on the couches (partly to shake off their jitters). Then, a hotel bellman, who looks like he’s in his late fifties, whispers to them and says he’s experienced strange things in the hotel. Ears perked, they start asking him question. But the old timer sees his night manager and cryptically says never mind and leave it be and goes back into his office.

Over the next few days, word spreads about the photos and the elevator incident. Dancers and performers from the show come out of the woodwork with their own personal stories. The husband of a singing duo, talked about his intense nightmares of killing his wife. Meanwhile, said wife, who was sleeping next to him, would wake up and feel as if a power was trying to suffocate her.

Many of the performers and crew eventually moved to another hotel. In the end, the show must go on! But, then the big show was being held at a historic theater. A really old theater. And that, my friends, is a story to be revisited another time…..