South Kitsap High School
(Win Granlund Performing Arts Center)

Port Orchard, WA

Theaters around the world are known for being hotbeds of ghostly activity.  And the performance hall at the South Kitsap High School in Port Orchard, WA, is no different.

There are several strange occurrences which were reported during the early 1990s, while I was going to school at SKHS.

Story #1:

The first was experienced by a friend of mine, who is the same person who was riding with me in my Mustang in the Glenwood Road story featured on this site.  During one of our rehearsals for the school's production of Camelot in the winter of 1991/92, my friend was sent upstairs to one of the costume rooms, located to the right of the stage (from the audience's view - "stage right"), up three flights of poorly-lit stairs.  I was standing offstage when he returned from his errand, eyes wide in fright and his skin strangely pale and sweaty.  I stopped him, and asked him what was wrong.  His eyes returned to normal, and he only said that there was "something up there."  He pushed me aside with a shaky hand, and went into the men's dressing room, where he closed himself in the bathroom for quite awhile.  The next day, I asked him what he had seen.  He described it as best he could as some sort of "glow" that came out of the wall on the staircase as he was returning from the costume room.  He said at first it was shapeless, but as he watched it carefully, it slowly formed into a vaguely human shape, which "reached" out for him.  That's when he ran down the stairs, nearly tripping himself in the process.

Story #2:

Sometime during the spring of 1992, during preparations for Arsenic and Old Lace, the keys to the light board had been lost.  Since it was a rather expensive and time-consuming process to obtain a replacement key, and it wasn't entirely unknown for theater keys to disappear and reappear (usually in the hands of some theater-loving student), the powers that be decided to wait until the keys reappeared.  Needless to say, the technical director was rather upset, since no light work could be done without that key.  No cues could be set, even the focus of the lights couldn't really be tuned.  But, the show goes on.  One day, during rehearsal of one of the scenes involving the "gentleman callers" which the old ladies in the play poison to death, the lights suddenly came on, full brightness, every single one of them.  They then began to randomly change brightness and turn on and off.  Thinking that someone was obviously playing games with the light board (whomever had taken the key had decided to have a little fun), the director sent someone to check on the light booth (with the lights above going, you couldn't see into the light booth itself, with its tinted window facing the house and stage).  When they got to the outside door of the light room, it was locked, which was usual.  The student knocked on the door, and peered through the window, but could see nothing.  Almost at the exact moment he knocked on the door, the lights abruptly shut off again.  The director came around to see what was going on, assuming that the student she'd sent had made it into the light room and stopped whomever was playing their silly games.  When she found the student waiting outside, they unlocked the door and entered the light room.  There was no-one to be found in the room, and there were no other exits through which the miscreant might have escaped.  To this day, the "official" explanation is that there was a short in the light board.  No more than two days later, the light key was found, sitting on the desk of the director, in the theater.  No one in the theater ever admitted to seeing anyone return it.

Story #3:

Also during the spring of 1992, during one of the curtain call rehearsals for Arsenic and Old Lace (during which all of the "gentlemen callers" arose from their resting place in the basement to take a bow onstage), a figure was seen in the catwalks above the audience area.  The catwalks were where one could find and adjust the lights aimed at the theater's stage.  Generally, access to this area was carefully watched, and often the doors leading up to it were locked (though you could climb up ladders located to either side of the stage).  We all walked out of the "basement" and took the stage in one long line.  Just as we were supposed to take our bow, the person to my left looked up toward the lights, and his eyes widened.  He stood there, stiff as a board, as we took our bow.  The director called out his name, and we all turned to look at him.  He didn't move an inch, merely staring at the catwalks above.  We tried to ask him what was wrong, and he just kept repeating, "I didn't see anything.  Nothing was there."  Days later, we managed to convince him to tell us what he had seen.  He recalled glancing up into the lights (there weren't many on that day, since it was merely a dress rehearsal, no light cues), and seeing a shape up in the catwalks, where we all knew nobody had been that day.  The thing that captured his attention (people on the catwalks wasn't exactly uncommon), was that as he watched, whatever was up there had turned, and he saw two glowing red eyes staring at him from the darkness.

There have been other stories traded back and forth among the "drama geeks" about strange occurrences in the theater, but I don't recall sufficient detail to relate them here.

Source: Clifton Gilley