The Last Reel at the Meridian

The Meridian Theatre had stood on the corner of Ash and Ninth for over a century, a relic of vaudeville and nickelodeons, its marquee a skeleton of rusted bulbs. The team from the Night Watch Paranormal Society had visited before, and each time they left with tales of cold spots and faint piano music. But tonight, as they gathered in the lobby, the air felt different—thicker, as if the building itself were holding its breath.

Their guide was Elias, the elderly caretaker, a man with a gnarled hand and a penchant for ancient keys. ‘Remember,’ he said, jangling the keys, ‘the Meridian doesn’t like to be ignored. It remembers every performance, every whisper in the dark.’ The team exchanged nervous glances—Sarah, the sceptic with a notepad; Marcus, the tech expert with enough equipment to fill a broadcasting van; and Lena, the psychic who claimed she could feel the building’s pulse.

Their first séance was set in the main auditorium, a cavernous space with velvet seats that had rotted into dust. As they formed a circle around a mahogany table, Sarah noted the upholstery was intact, a detail that made her uneasy. Mid-way through their call for spirits, a single chair in the front row—a heavy oak piece—began to rock, slowly, as if someone were watching them with amusement. Then it stopped. But then, all at once, every chair in the theatre began to scrape across the floor, moving in unison, creating a deafening cacophony that felt like a standing ovation from the dead.

The team froze. Marcus’s gear spiked wildly, his EMF meters screaming. Lena gasped, her face pale. ‘There’s a man in the projection booth,’ she whispered. ‘He’s pointing at the screen.’ Sarah followed her gaze to the empty booth, where a single light bulb flickered. Without a word, they decided to investigate.

Inside the projection booth, dust coated everything, but on the floor were fresh footprints—bare feet, too small for any adult. And on the old film projector, a reel sat, half-threaded. Marcus touched it, and a film began to roll, projecting onto the wall. The image was a home movie of a child, laughing, playing with a puppet that looked like a clown. Lena gasped. ‘That’s him. The child I saw.’ But the film kept rolling, and the child’s laugh turned distorted, and the puppet’s eyes seemed to follow them. Then the film rewound by itself, snapping the strip, and the projector clicked off.

They retreated to the lobby, shaken. Elias appeared, as if summoned, and told them, ‘It was a boy named Benny. He died in the fire of 1924, they say he loved the puppet shows. He never left.’ Sarah, determined to debunk, asked, ‘What about the chair-throwing? That’s not a child’s prank.’ Elias shrugged. ‘Maybe he grew up.’ His eyes glinted with a warning.

They decided to try a table-tipping session in the old dressing room, hoping for something less threatening. They placed their hands on a rickety table, and initially it shifted slightly, tilting like a see-saw. Then, as they attempted to make contact with a spirit, the table began to spin on one leg, faster and faster, until it levitated a foot off the ground. Lena channelled a voice that wasn’t her own, muffled and guttural: ‘You are the audience now.’ The table slammed down, cracking the floor.

As they fled the room, a chair came hurtling past Marcus, embedding itself in the doorframe. Sarah, now terrified, noticed a photograph on the wall—a troupe of performers, and in the centre, a man whose face was blurred, but his suit was identical to Elias’s. She pointed, but when she turned to confront him, Elias was gone. The keys lay on the floor.

The team scrambled to the exit, but the doors were locked. Behind them, they heard the sound of applause, faint at first, then growing louder, from the auditorium. They ran to the balcony, where they saw the chairs arranged in neat rows, and on the stage, a lone figure—Elias—standing under a single spotlight. ‘Every great performance deserves an encore,’ he boomed, and the chairs began to rise, forming a tidal wave of wood that surged toward them.

They barely escaped through a side door into the alley, gasping for air. As they caught their breath, they heard a child’s giggle from within the theatre, and the marquee lights flickered on one last time, spelling ‘THE MERIDIAN’ in a language that wasn’t English. Sarah looked at her notepad; she had written ‘BENNY’ in a frantic hand she didn’t remember. She also saw a phrase she didn’t write: ‘YOU WILL BE BACK.’

They never returned to the Meridian. But sometimes, late at night, Sarah would wake to the sound of a phone ringing, and when she answered, she heard the faint sound of a projector rolling, and a child’s voice saying, ‘Ready for the show?’ The police later found Elias’s body in the theatre, dead for over a week, his hands clutching a director’s megaphone. But the films in his booth showed a different story—reels of every night watch team that had ever visited, their séance circles, their screams. And the last reel, dated today, was titled ‘The Encore.’