Westwood Village Theater

So this happened when I was working one night at the Mann Westwood Village Theater in Los Angeles, California back when it was Mann and not Regency, after I had worked there for about a month as a projectionist. I know that pictures aren’t allowed in r/NoSleep posts but the links to pictures here are completely safe for work and give you a good visual of what the theater interior looks like, so if this is still unacceptable please let me know!

A typical night would go like this: the closing manager would close out the concession and ticket office registers about an hour after the last show of the day started and then go back to the office in our other theater, the Bruin, across the street to finish up the day’s paper work, while whoever was working concessions would leave after the they saw the last customer leave the theater. As a projectionist, I was always the last to leave the theater at night as I had to wait for the movie to finish (whether film or digital, there were waits involved with both media), clean up what equipment needed to be cleaned up, and make sure everything was in order for whoever had to open the following morning.

On this particular night at around maybe 1:30 AM, as I was cleaning up the booth, I was alarmed by what sounded like a gun shot or explosion coming from the supply room we have across from the booth, so I decided to check it although I was a bit nervous. I went across to the supply room and found nothing out of the ordinary, but as I stepped out from the supply room and was going to go back to the booth to finish cleaning, I looked down into the auditorium and noticed that the curtain (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GmQj3LxBW7A/SdA4A2od3oI/AAAAAAAABz4/fTGPwk6bMZs/s1600-h/Fox+Village+Theater+-+15.JPG) was fluttering gently. I was a little spooked by now because I knew that the curtain was decently heavy, but I knew I had to check it out in case someone stoned or drunk out of their minds decided to stick around after the movie ended.

When I walked downstairs into the auditorium, the curtain was still fluttering slightly and as I made my way down the aisle, I made sure to look from side to side to make sure no one was hiding between the rows of seats, but no one was. When I reached the curtain, I just held on to it to stop it from fluttering and when it was finally steady, I decided to check the exits off to the sides of the auditorium. Hoping it was just a really strong breeze that came blowing through the a pair of exit doors that weren’t closed all the way that caused the curtain to flutter, I checked all four exit doors but found them all shut tightly. By now I was a little more than just nervous, and was going to leave the theater but I noticed the door to the backstage area wasn’t closed all the way and somehow willed myself to go investigate. The backstage area has 2 sets of light switches, one right when you enter the room leading to the backstage area and then one for the huge backstage area itself that is a little ways into the backstage area. I went into the first room and turned on those lights and saw nothing out of the ordinary, then moved to the backstage area and flipped on that switch, only to have one of the overhead bulbs blow out and scare the bejesus out of me since it was a bigger bulb and the noise it made as it blew out was louder than normal. At this point I didn’t want to investigate any further backstage (where you could see the wiring for the curtain up near the ceiling) and practically ran out of the auditorium and up the stairs back into the booth to get my jacket and backpack to peace the f out of there.

When I got my stuff and flipped off all the breakers in the booth, I went downstairs and was about to exit the theater from the backdoor (where the exit signs are in the far side of this picture http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_GmQj3LxBW7A/SdA20V1OuiI/AAAAAAAABys/X3qJ9QFFfCo/s1600-h/Fox+Village+Theater+-+6.JPG) but I heard faint noises coming from the wheelchair accessible restrooms (they would be to the left of those exit doors in the previous picture, but you can’t see them in picture). I was feeling pretty apprehensive about checking the restrooms by now but maybe I would find the answer to my night if I just took a look, so I mustered up my courage and decided to open both of the doors since I couldn’t determine which restroom the noises were coming from. I first knocked on the door to the women’s room and called out to see if I would get any reply, but I didn’t, so I opened the women’s room and turned on the lights and found nothing. Bracing myself for the men’s room, I knocked on that door and called out for a reply but again got nothing, so I opened that door and turned on the lights only to find nothing out of the ordinary, but I noticed the noises stopped. A bit relieved at finding nothing in either restroom, but still a little freaked, I made my way home and didn’t think about what had happened that night until the next time I came into work.

When I got in that day, my boss (facility engineer of the theaters in Westwood) was still in, so I told him about what happened and he sort of chuckled and turned around and went digging through some folders on the shelf behind his desk. He pulled out this ancient looking newspaper clipping from the 1930’s that reported a murder that went on inside of the theater and I just stared at the picture of the crime scene that included in the article. The picture was taken right where those wheelchair accessible restrooms were, but the area was clearly not a restroom in the picture. I asked my boss about it and he said that when the theater was first built, the manager’s office to the Westwood Village Theater was down there where the now wheelchair accessible bathrooms were and at some point after this murder took place the office was converted into the two restrooms that are now there. Additionally, the layout of the building was such that at the back of the men’s wheelchair accessible restroom was a sort of mini elevator shaft that went up to the supply room that was across from the booth, which may or may not explain why I heard that initial gun shot/explosion noise coming from the supply room direction. In any event, I was sufficiently freaked out about the whole thing but wound up working at the theater for almost three more years, never to encounter anything like what happened that night again.

My Google skills are failing me since I can’t find the original article from the 30’s, but I found some background information at this blog: http://ghoula.blogspot.com/2007/01/village-theater-ghosts.html The TL;DR is that a cop was murdered inside of the theater during a robbery and the two robbers in the theater were ditched by their accomplice waiting outside in a car and were eventually captured and given the death penalty (because of the prominence of the officer shot). Also, if you want to see what the theater looks like in general, you can check out pictures here at the Saturday, June 16, 2012 entry of this blog: http://www.experiencingla.com/