The Mystery Man of the Theater

[00:00:00] Have you ever experienced the unexplainable? Had a close call or a brush with death? What about an eerie encounter with a real life monster? Or something paranormal that scared the living daylights out of you? I'm Bee Buster, horror enthusiast and the host of the Bee Scared Podcast. Each week, I tell the allegedly true stories that are sure to raise the hairs on your arms and keep you looking over your shoulder as you walk home alone at night.

[00:00:28] Tune in every Wednesday to be creeped out, be spooked and be scared. Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. We're visiting an old movie theater in his town. A guy realizes that even though things change, some terrifying stories don't go away.

[00:00:49] My name is Edwin and here's a scary story. I didn't even recognize it at first. The old Silver Savers Theater. It used to be this crumbling brown brick box. It had sun-faded movie posters in cracked plastic cases. A marquee that hadn't lit up properly since maybe 2004.

[00:01:16] For years, it just sat there, boarded up, graffiti tagged. The place people joked about being haunted, but never took seriously enough to avoid. And now, it's one of those clean white facades, big glowing letters, and a polished glass entrance that reflects the neon glow from the smoothie place right across the street. The whole block looks like it's trying to be L.A.

[00:01:41] And even though I hadn't thought about it in years, something about seeing it brought back this weird mix of warmth and unease. Like running into someone you used to be close to, but are too shy to just DM them first. Inside, everything smelled like lemon-scented cleaner, new carpet. They had redone the lobby in this sleek, minimal style. Self-checkout kiosks, LED menus, everything touchscreen.

[00:02:09] No more ticket counter. No more bored teenagers ripping stubs and barely looking at your face. The candy was in those weird bins now, like one of those upscale convenience stores. Even the soda machines were those fancy digital ones where you pick from a hundred flavors, and none of them taste quite right. You know the kind? Anyway, I walked in alone. It felt weird not coming with friends, but I didn't tell anyone I was going.

[00:02:37] I wasn't even sure I was going to stay. I just wanted to see it, you know? How they changed it. What they kept, if anything. It turns out, not much. The old red carpet, the one with the faded swirl pattern that always smelled like syrup and feet, was gone. The walls painted over. Even the snack counter wasn't a new spot. The only thing that looked remotely familiar was the big theater room to the right of the lobby. Theater 1.

[00:03:07] And even that had new seats, reclining ones with built-in tray tables. It was clean. It was quiet. It was freaking weird. I sat near the back just to get a better look. Only a few people trickled in. Mostly college kids and a couple with a toddler who was already halfway through a box of raisins before the previews even started. As I sat there, waiting for the lights to dim, I kept thinking about how different everything looked now.

[00:03:35] Like they were trying to erase what it used to be. And maybe that's what got me thinking about him. The man in the theater. You see, that was the story. Everyone had heard it. Every kid in town swore they knew someone whose cousin or older brother or neighbor saw him. The man who supposedly lived in the theater. No one ever saw him in person. It was always a shadow. A shape. A sound. It was just kind of there.

[00:04:06] Supposedly lived off of leftover popcorn, candy people dropped under the seats, and sodas kids forgot to take with him. People used to joke that if you left your milk duds behind, the theater man would thank you. Back then we thought it was just a funny ghost story. Something to whisper about during boring movies. But as I sat there in that shiny new room, something about the whole thing felt heavier than I remembered. Like maybe there was more to it.

[00:04:35] Like maybe we had all laughed it off too easily. And then, I kid you not, right before the trailer started, the lights flickered. Just once. Barely a second and everyone brushed it off. Nobody said anything. But I felt it. That tiny twist in my stomach. And I thought, He's still here. Of course I told myself I was just being dramatic. Letting old stories get into my head. But I couldn't shake that thought away.

[00:05:05] Back when I was a kid, the Silver Savers wasn't fancy. It wasn't even nice. But it was ours. Fridays after school, my friends and I would ride our bikes straight there. Sometimes without even going home first. They would pull our crumpled up dollar bills and sticky coins to buy a ticket. To whatever PG-13 movie we were barely old enough to see. Most of the time, we didn't even care what was playing. It was a theater. That was the whole draw.

[00:05:34] The ritual of it. The cold blast of air when the doors opened. The smell of popcorn that hits you like a wave. The way your sneakers stuck to the floor. It always felt a little dark in there, even in the lobby. Like the lights were tired. Some of the seat cushions had duct tape patches that peeled up when you shifted around too much. And the bathrooms? Well, they were a horror movie all of their own. We didn't even care though.

[00:06:02] That theater was the backdrop of our entire summers. Of course, there was the man. And there wasn't a single kid in town who hadn't heard about him. We called him the theater man. Some called him the popcorn ghost or just him. Like he was a given. Everyone had their own version of the story. That he lived in the building, they said. He slept somewhere behind the screen or up in the projection room. He came out at night to eat the food people left behind.

[00:06:32] Never heard anyone. Never spoke. That was the part that always gave me chills. The idea that he was always watching. I remember standing in line one summer afternoon. It had to be the fourth or fifth time we were seeing Men in Black 2. And my friend Jordan pointed out the little grating thing high up in the ceiling. That's where he breathes through, he said. Dead serious. He lives up there. My cousin's friend said he saw a hand come out once.

[00:07:01] We all laughed. But we looked. There were spots in that theater that gave us a creeps even in daylight. The hallway near Theater 3. The floors was slanted weird there and light bulbs buzzed constantly. The door marked staff only that never seemed locked. The back row of Theater 5 always just a little too cold. But the projection room was the real deal. Nobody ever saw inside it.

[00:07:28] The door was metal with a sliding bolt and this weird little rectangular window right at the top that was always dark. We used to dare each other to knock on it after the movie ended. Nobody ever lasted more than a second or two before running away. One time, after a midnight showing, someone swore they heard a voice say, thank you, when they left the popcorn behind. That story went around school like wildfire. And by the end of the week,

[00:07:56] kids were accidentally leaving candy on the floor just to see if it would disappear. And it always did. Looking back, I'm sure the janitor just cleaned it up. Or maybe one of the employees picked it up to avoid attracting mice. But we believed it. When you're that young, everything's real. Even the names they call you. I never actually saw anything. But I thought I did once. I was walking back from the bathroom during a movie.

[00:08:26] The hallway was empty. Quiet, except for the muffled bass coming through the wall. As I passed the storage closet, I heard a cough. And when I turned, the doorknob was moving. Just a little. Like someone had let go of it. I told my friends, but they laughed it off. Said that it was probably the sound system, or maybe my imagination. And maybe it was. But something about that moment stuck with me.

[00:08:53] Not because I was scared, but because of how normal it felt. Like the idea of someone being in there with us, living behind the scenes, wasn't that strange at all. We never told adults. Not seriously, anyway. I mean, if you asked someone's mom about the theater man, they would roll their eyes and say, Oh, that old story? As if it was harmless. A town myth. Nothing worth worrying about. The idea of him stayed in the back of our heads.

[00:09:22] He was part of the place. Like the smell of the carpet or the creek in Theater 2's front row. We stopped talking about him out loud, but none of us ever truly forgot. And for a long time, that was it. Just a memory. A weird, harmless story from when we were kids. Until things started getting strange. But I'll get to that. It wasn't sudden.

[00:09:49] That's what I remember most about when things started to feel off. It wasn't like one day everything was fine and the next it wasn't. It was gradual. Quiet. Like the building didn't want to come right out and say it. We were older by then. Teenagers. Not little kids telling ghost stories anymore. We had part-time jobs. Cars. Although beater ones. But real stress about grades and breakups. And where we would end up after high school.

[00:10:17] But we still went to the silver savers sometimes. Especially in the fall. When there wasn't much else to do. Cheap horror movies. Or reruns of old classics. They always had a Halloween series in October. And that's when I started noticing it. The first thing was the smell. Now I know that sounds like nothing. But hear me out. Movie theaters have a certain smell, right? Popcorn. Candy. Soda. The occasional mildew if the carpet's old. But this was different.

[00:10:47] It would come in waves. And it was sour. Like wet bread or spoiled fruit. Almost earthy. It hit you the strongest in the hallway by the projection room. And sometimes in Theater 3. Near the back row. I remember once leaning over to Jordan during a trailer. And whispering. Do you smell that? And he just nodded. Without taking his eyes off the screen. Yeah. It's the theater man. He said. Half joking. But it wasn't funny anymore.

[00:11:16] There were noises too. Soft clicks. Metallic knocks. Once I was in the bathroom alone. Standing at the urinal. When I heard something from the vent above me. Like shuffling. I finished up fast. And got the heck out of there. Didn't even wash my hands. That's not something you'll forget. The next week. The vent cover was gone. Entirely. Just the black hole in the ceiling. Where the metal plate used to be. I came back later. Someone must have fixed it.

[00:11:45] But I never used that part of the bathroom again. A few of us started comparing notes. Quietly. Like we didn't want to admit we were actually starting to believe again. Sam. Who used to work the snack counter. Told us once. That the night crew kept finding popcorn bags missing. Just one or two at a time. But consistently. No money missing. No forced doors. Just food. At first they thought of raccoon had gotten in. But they couldn't find any trace of one.

[00:12:15] No droppings. No scratch marks. Then a manager reviewed the security tapes. And this is the part that stuck with me. One of the cameras in the hallway. Near the projection room. Just cut out. Every night. At a certain time. And no one talked about that outside of the staff. But Sam swore it was true. He said he heard the general manager went up there one night. He was going to check it out in person. Then he quit the next day. People stopped making jokes after that.

[00:12:46] I remember the last time I saw something I couldn't explain. It was during a school field trip. Weirdly enough. They brought us there to see some historical documentary. Half the class was asleep in 10 minutes. And I was in the back row. Bored. Chewing a piece of gum I found in my pocket. When I noticed something. Right out of the corner of my eye. Near the left emergency exit. You know the one with the red exit sign. That closed even during the movie. There was a figure.

[00:13:16] Just a shape. Almost like it was absorbing the light instead of reflecting it. I turned my head fast. Fully expecting it to be a trick of the projector. Or a backpack on a seat. But when I looked. It was gone. There was nobody near that exit. Now I didn't say anything. But I didn't forget. Even now I can still picture it. Not clearly. It's like trying to remember the details of a dream. But I remember the feeling.

[00:13:44] That sharp, quiet knowledge that there was someone else in that theater. We stopped going after that year. Some of us graduated. Some of us just got tired of it. The Silver Savers felt weird. Like it wasn't meant for us anymore. Like the space had changed. But nobody knew how to say it out loud. When the Silver Savers finally shut its doors. It was like the town just decided not to talk about it. There wasn't any news article or official reason.

[00:14:13] At least not that I ever saw. There was no out of business sign. No final show. No goodbye. One weekend it was open. Still selling popcorn and playing second run movies. The next. The place was locked up. Lights off. The marquee blank. At first people assumed it was temporary. Maybe plumbing issues or a busted HVAC system. You know how old buildings are. But months went by. Then years.

[00:14:41] The posters and the glass displays yellowed. One of them. Night at the museum I think. Stayed up for so long it looked like a ghost version of itself. The corners curled inward. The colors faded until Ben Stiller's face looked like it had been soaked in coffee. Eventually someone taped cardboard over the doors. Plywood went up on the windows. People stopped cutting through the alley right behind it. It just became part of the scenery. A dead spot on Main Street.

[00:15:10] Something your eyes slid over without thinking. I moved away for college not long after that. And I didn't really think about Silver Savers again. At least not in any serious way. When I came home to visit my parents I would pass by it and glance over it out of habit. That was it. The building just sat there like a sleeping dog you didn't want to step too close to.

[00:15:40] But every once in a while. Well someone would say something. At parties and group chats and over drinks when people got nostalgic. The topic would come up. You would hear how the Silver Savers still gave people the creeps. How no one ever bought the property. Even though there were rumors of developers being interested. One guy said he saw lights on inside once. Late at night. But when he went to get a closer look. Everything was dark again.

[00:16:08] My friend Marta told me that she swore she heard breathing through one of the plywood boards as she walked past the side door. We laughed at the time like you do. But the way she said it. That she didn't want to be the one bringing it up. Made me wonder if it was true. And then there was Nick. Nick lived down the street from the Silver Savers. His bedroom window faced the back of the building. The part with the old employee entrance and the rusted fire escape. One night he told us.

[00:16:37] He was up late playing Xbox when he saw something in his window reflection. Just a flash. Like movement. He turned around and looked outside. There was a figure standing in the alley. Facing the theater door. Not trying to get in. Just standing there. He said it looked like a man. Maybe tall. Shoulders slightly hunched. Like he was listening to the building. Or waiting. But here's the part that got me. Nick said the guy was barefoot.

[00:17:06] Middle of February. Two feet of snow on the ground. He was barefoot. He didn't call the police. Just pulled the current clothes and didn't look again. A week later he moved his bed to the other side of the room. And I asked him once. Years later if he thought that it was some drifter or a guy on something. He shook his head and said. It didn't feel like that man. It felt like it was supposed to be there. Like it knew the building. That stayed with me.

[00:17:35] By then the theater had been shut for almost a decade. Windows still boarded up. Nobody touching it. Like the whole town had collectively decided to leave it alone. And then out of nowhere it reopened. I remember seeing a post about it on social media. A sponsored ad. Clean white logo. Shiny concept photos. The Silver Savers experience. Now open. Completely renovated. Luxury seating. All new atmosphere.

[00:18:06] At first I thought it was fake. Some scam or art project. But it wasn't. They had really done it. New investors. New management. Total gut job. They stripped it down to the bones and rebuilt it. Grand reopening. People lined up for hours on that first weekend. Posting selfies under the new neon sign. Kids with bubble teas. Couples with wine spritzers. Like it had never been abandoned. But I kept thinking.

[00:18:34] They had no idea what used to be there. Or what still might be. Because the thing is. When buildings sit empty that long. They don't always stay empty. Something always fills a space. And not everything likes to be disturbed. I held off going for as long as I could. Everyone else jumped right in. Posting videos. Tagging their new location. Raving about the recliners. And elevated concessions.

[00:19:04] There was even a cheese board on the menu. A cheese board. At a movie theater. The same place I once found a used band-aid stuck to the back of a seat armrest. It felt like everyone had agreed to pretend the past hadn't happened. Like we all collectively forgot the boarded windows. The strange smells. The stories we swore we believed only half seriously. I kept telling myself it was just a building. Bricks and drywall. Whatever weird vibe it had back then.

[00:19:34] Was probably just mold or bad wiring. But I couldn't stop watching the videos. People were documenting everything. TikToks. Blogs. Instagram reels. Come tour the new Silver Savers. Watch me try every soda flavor in the freestyle machine. Most of it was harmless. Flashy edits. Dumb jokes. But there was a few clips that made my stomach tighten. One of them was just a girl filming a review after the movie. Front facing camera. Casual.

[00:20:04] She's walking through the hallway on the way to the bathroom. Talking about how comfy the seats were. When behind her. Just for a split second. You can see someone standing in the shadow under the emergency exit sign. Not moving. Not a blur. Just there. And then the motion sensor hallway light flicks on. And there's no one. People in the comments were debating it. Just another guest. Could be a reflection. But she swears that she was the last one out.

[00:20:34] And her caption said. I thought the theater had emptied. No one else came out behind me. Who TF is that? Here's another clip too. A different account. The short video of a kid running around the new game lounge area they built in the old snack bar space. The mom's filming him laughing when suddenly the camera tilts toward one of the big air vents high up on the wall. And you hear it. Just a slow rhythmic sound. Like breathing.

[00:21:04] It's slow and human. And then it cuts off. Now the mom's follow up post said that they left early. And the kid refused to go back. Kept saying that the man in the wall was watching me. She said it like a joke. Added the laughing emoji and everything. But her face in the video didn't match the caption. And here's the part that really got under my skin. The silver savers started deleting comments. Not all of them. Just the ones asking questions.

[00:21:34] People saying. Did anyone else hear this? And those would vanish within a day. I even tried commenting once. Just to test it. Like. That vent noise is creepy right? And the comment was gone the next time I checked. That's when I started digging around. Just a little. I still knew someone who worked there. Claire. An old friend from high school. She was managing the night shifts. And remembered the theater from the old days too. I messaged her. Half joking.

[00:22:03] So how's a ghost treating you? She didn't laugh. Instead she called me. She said she didn't want to put it in writing. Saying that some weird stuff had been happening during the cleanup shifts. Popcorn machines running by themselves. Trash bags torn open when no one had gone near them. She swore she heard someone whisper her name from the back hallway during closing. The cameras showed nothing. No one there. But the weirdest part.

[00:22:32] That security footage started cutting out again. Just like before. Same time every night. Around 3am. One of the lobby cameras goes fuzzy. Just for a few seconds. Always the same stretch of hallway. Always the same few frames missing. She asked the tech guy to look into it. And he said the files were technically fine. No corruption. No sign of tampering. It was like the footage never existed in the first place. Claire said the owners told them to ignore it.

[00:23:02] To focus on customer experience. Smile. Clean. And keep things moving. She asked me then. Kind of quietly. Do you think it's possible someone stayed here all this time? And I said the first honest thing that came to my mind in weeks. I don't think they ever left. Because the thing is. It doesn't make sense. Nobody could survive in there for that long. Not without being seen. Not through all those winters.

[00:23:30] Not without heat or food or someone noticing. But the stories are all the same. The same shadows. The same sounds. The same feeling. And if it's not a man. Then what the heck is it? I didn't tell anyone I was going back again. I told myself I wasn't going to. I was just being dramatic. But about a week after that first visit. I bought another ticket. A late show. Almost empty theater. And I sat in the back row again.

[00:24:00] Same seat. Left side. Wasn't even about the movie at that point. Barely remember what it was playing. Something loud and forgettable. I just needed to see if that feeling was still there. Or if it had just been in my head. It wasn't. It was worse this time. The theater was quiet when I got there. There were maybe four. Or five other people. All scattered through the lower rows. One guy in front of me was eating out of a takeout container with chopsticks.

[00:24:29] The glow of his phone lighting up on his lap. Another girl sat alone with a blanket over her knees. Huge headphones over her ears. The lights dimmed. Everything felt tight. Like the room was one size too small for the people in it. The air had that stale, over-filtered quality. Like a hotel room where the windows don't open. I tried to breathe through it. Focus on the screen. Then I heard the sound. A soft click.

[00:24:57] Up behind me and slightly to the left. Not part of the movie. Like metal tapping against metal. Rhythmically. But without purpose. I turned to look. But all I saw was the ceiling and the glowing exit sign near the projection room door. I shifted in my seat. That click kept happening. Faint. But there. Then the vent near the ceiling. The one I hadn't noticed until just then. Made a low creaking noise.

[00:25:27] Like pressure building up. Or something inside adjusting. I looked around again. No one else seemed to notice. It was like I was the only one tuned into it. Like the room was splitting in half and I'd somehow ended up on the side that could hear what was real. Halfway through the movie, my phone died. Not run out of battery. It died. One second, I was at 62%. The next, black screen. Nothing. I held the power button.

[00:25:55] Tried plugging it into the seat's USB port. Nothing. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. Down in the far right corner of the theater, near the emergency exit. A shadow passed along the wall. Not someone walking out. There was no door sound. No handle rattle. No exit light flashing. Just a shape. And a little taller than most people. Thin. Shoulders angled forward. It didn't move like a person.

[00:26:26] I didn't stay until the end. I waited until the next big sound effect hit. A crash. Something with bass. And I used it to cover the sound of me getting up and leaving. I just walked out calmly. Trying not to give whatever it was the satisfaction of knowing that it had gotten to me. Once I was out in the lobby, I looked back through the glass doors. Nothing. Just the dim light of the hallway. And the far away flicker of the screen.

[00:26:53] I haven't gone back since. Sometimes I think about telling someone. A podcast. A reporter. Someone who investigates that kind of thing. But then what? What do I say? That a woman's kid saw a man watching him from a vent? That I felt something watching me in a perfectly clean, modern building where nothing officially ever went wrong? Who would care? People don't believe in that kind of thing anymore.

[00:27:22] Not now. Not with phones in every pocket. Cameras on every ceiling. Not with everything scrubbed and modernized and made safe. They think ghosts are supposed to be old, crumbling things. Creaky floorboards and candlelight and dusty attic doors. But the worst ones. The ones that stay. They adapt. They learn how to hide in plain sight.

[00:27:49] So now, when I drive past the silver savers, I keep my eyes on the road. If someone brings it up, I nod and smile like everyone else. I let them talk about the chairs and the drinks and how the sound system is just incredible now. I don't say anything. Because I don't know what it is. I don't know if it was ever a man. I don't know if it wants to be seen.

[00:28:15] Or if it's just waiting for the people who remember it. Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me, Edwin Cobarrugues. A huge shout out to our Scary Plus members and supporters. We got an overwhelming amount of story ideas, so I'll be getting to those and keep everyone posted on what's coming.

[00:28:41] Oh, and if you want to listen to some stories submitted by listeners, find my show called Paranormal Club. And check out the episodes that say listener submissions. It's where we get together to tell creepy stories. To find the podcast on your app, just search for Paranormal Club. Anyway, if you're following the show, I will tell you another story next week. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.