Sacramento, CA
The Watchful Old Lady
Oct. 07, 2006
Century 23 Theaters - San Jose, CA
I don’t know if this is a known ghost story or not but I will ask you all about it because with
your field of work, you might possibly know of it.
When I was 16-18 years old I worked at Century 23 Theatres in San Jose. Our
theatre was located directly behind the Winchester Mystery House. I worked there as a
box office clerk and Assistant Manager for over two years. I had never much thought
about ghosts or anything of that nature until I saw what appeared to be an old woman in
the theater who looked to be sleeping in one of the back rows after the last showing of a
feature film that had ended. The lights were not fully up in the house. As I made my
way up to the projection booth to turn on all of the lights, and rewind the film, I called over
to the woman and said “I am sorry but, the movie is over and I need to close the theatre
now”. The woman seemed to wake up and then she looked at me and I felt very cold. It
was only for less than a minute but I could have sworn that her eye sockets were empty.
When I stepped closer to the woman, the house lights came up (another associate had
turned them up from a panel by the snack bar), and the woman disappeared.
I asked a few other people at the theatre who had worked there for a while if they had
ever seen the woman. Many of them had seen her either in the upper rows near the
projection booth (only on the B side of the house), near the dumpster, or under the
seats in the “cave” area of the theatre behind the snack bar when they had gone there to
fetch supplies. The woman had grey hair and was wearing a 40’s style house dress.
She was not threatening in any way, and I believe she is still in the theatre or nearby.
I recently went to San Jose this summer to visit my sister. While there I took in a movie at
my old work place of Century 23. We saw Lady in the Water and my sister wanted to
read the special effects credits at the end of the film. I had forgotten about the ghost
and did not even think of her until the credits were ending and the lights came up. There
in the back of the house only four rows away was the woman. This time she looked right
at me and it scared the hell out of me.
I shared this story with my husband a month ago and he seemed very shocked. He is a
few years older than I am. When he was 17, he had a girlfriend who worked at the
Winchester Mystery House. When he visited her at work one day (this was back in
1976), she took him up to one of the rooms at the back of the property to “make out” or
whatever. After leaving the house, my husband looked back up at the room he was just
in and saw an old woman with gray hair in a 30’s-40’s style dress shaking her fist at him.
He said that when he looked again she was gone, and he felt really cold and numb on his
back. Like me, he shrugged it off and did not think about it much till I told him of my
encounter and he saw how the two images almost matched. Unlike my experience, he did
feel threatened by the presence.
Anyway… I don’t want to sound like a total crackpot. I don’t think this woman is Sara
Winchester (too tall, and too 20th century looking), but I would be interested to know if
you all knew who she was and maybe why she is there.
If you just want to delete this and move on I understand.
Best Regards.
Erin
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