The Noisy Man

Appomattox Courthouse
June 2006.
Image via WikipediaHaunted theaters are a common enough thing and this should come as no surprise, actors being creative and highly susceptible to suggestion. The theater abounds with superstitions, too. Some of them pretty peculiar to outsiders who don’t know the history behind the superstition.

For instance, one must never, ever, on pain of disgrace and banishment, mention the name of the Scottish play inside the theater. The Scottish play is, of course, Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Should a careless slip of the tongue actually allow the name of the Scottish play to be uttered within the confines of the theater, the perpetrator is immediately whisked outside, sprinkled with salt, and required to revolve widdershins until he falls over from dizziness. This is usually enough to remove the curse but if the play should close on opening night, the careless unfortunate may well have a hard time securing a part in the next production!

Another famous superstition known well to nearly everyone is that it is bad luck to wish someone “Good Luck” on opening night. Instead, the appropriate words of encouragement are “Break a leg!” Should the actor then actually break a leg, chances are that the play is a dog and destined to open and close on the same night.

Appomattox, Virginia has it’s very own theater, located in the new old courthouse, the one that was built after the original old courthouse in Appomattox Court House burned to the ground in 1892. When plans to raze the new old courthouse were halted by enraged citizens who feared that a major historical landmark was gong to be sacrificed on the Altar of Progress, it then sat empty for a few years. Finally a local theater group, under the impetus of Gillian Mitchel, took over the building and began presenting plays on a regular schedule.

Now that actors have embraced the courthouse as their own, stories are beginning to circulate around town of the ghosts that still inhabit the ancient structure.

One of these haunts is described as a fairly large man wearing hobnailed work boots. He stomps into a small anteroom where witnesses used to be sequestered during trial and drops a large crate on a desk. The noise is said to be impressively loud, especially the footsteps, sounding exactly like the man is walking on the original plank floors. The room is now carpeted and it is very difficult to create much noise at all while walking around in there.

This spook has manifested in broad daylight, with sunbeams slanting though the windows, and in front of two witnesses. An immediate inspection of the anteroom revealed that the door to the outside was securely bolted and the only other way into the room is through the courtroom where the witnesses were sitting and drinking coffee.

On other occasions the specter of a man in work clothes has been seen entering the back of the courtroom. He is assumed to be a janitor, making his rounds emptying spittoons and sweeping up after the weekly county spectacle of Court Day.

This elderly gentleman has been seen by several people on different occasions and appears to be dressed in early 20th Century clothing, fitting with the history of the courthouse, which would have been in use for less than a decade at the turn of the Century.

Whether these sightings are genuine or nothing more than the fevered imaginings of extremely creative people is open to debate. The folks in question are certain of what they have seen and heard and it is hard to argue with this kind of conviction.

Appomattox surely has the kind of long and colorful history that makes it very attractive to haunts, vapors, and assorted specters and visions. I, for one, am not about to dispute these claims as on more than one occasion I have seen or heard things that seemed not of this world….