The Mystery of the Ominous Opera House: A Cozy Mystery (Eden Patterson: Ghost Whisperer Book 4) Read online

  The Mystery of the

  Ominous Opera House

  by

  Constance Barker

  Copyright 2016 Constance Barker

  All rights reserved.

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

  The Prologue

  In the summer, Grandpa Winky and Grams would take me to their small town’s festival that was held every fourth of July. It was more of a gathering for the townsfolk who would sit on old bleachers and listen to the local talent as they sang or strummed guitars on the makeshift stage. Baby contests were held there as well, and a few preachers would give a sermon on the Sunday morning of the Fourth weekend. As a child I always looked forward to the Fourth Gathering as the town called it.

  Winky would buy me grape snow cones or pink cotton candy and Grams would scold him when my tummy would hurt later on. But it was difficult for him to deny me these treats and I would beg him for quarters so I could ride the scrambler or the Ferris wheel. Winky and I would also watch as the judges tasted the raspberry cobblers or apple pies and hoot and holler when Grams would win. She often did. I had many fond memories of those days.

  After Winky passed, Grams and I would still visit the Fourth Gathering, but it wasn’t the same without him. When he started to appear to me in his ghostly state, I asked him why he didn’t go with us to the Gathering, or anywhere there were other people. He said he didn’t want me to mess up and speak to him whereas others couldn’t see him. I told him I’d be careful and that I missed him when it was time to go to the Gathering every Fourth of July. And that’s when he told me something that has stuck with me to this day.

  “Child, you don’t have to see me to know that I’m always with you.”

  Chapter 1

  “An opera house huh?” Sydney, my best friend and associate on our ghost hunting team turned her nose up. “Sounds snooty to me. And what in the world is an opera house doing in a small town anyway?”

  “There were many of them built during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in small towns.” Gerry, aka Goog, was our resident historian and another worker bee on our ghost team headed by myself, Eden and Luke, my husband. “There might have been a few operas held in them, but most of the time it was some kind of theatrical production, like a play or musical.”

  We were in route to Virginia to a small town right across the West Virginia border called Egypt Pike. Luke had received the call a few days ago from a Mr. Steinbeck, the artistic director of the newly restored Bell’s Opera House. It was the dream project of some rich benefactor he hadn’t named. The whole affair had been plagued with any number of troubles from day one, but they had gotten especially bad after the first small show was produced there, to the point that contractors and staff and even performers had refused to keep working in the place. Of course Mr. Steinbeck had traveled the regular roads first… hiring electricians and plumbers to seek out why lights turned on and off and if the old pipes were causing the knocking noises.

  Many times electrical or plumbing trouble would be the culprit inside old buildings or houses. But if that was ruled out, well then, the owners of the establishments would usually turn to more unconventional methods of determining what was wrong. And that would be us, The Paranormal Investigative Services, created by Luke and me after we graduated from college and got married.

  The team was actually created while in college. We were a paranormal society that met twice a month and were called out to homes or old cemeteries to investigate odd circumstances. Rounding out the team is Matt. He runs the equipment and doesn’t really believe in ghosts, but has been having difficulty with that belief system in the recent past. We’re still waiting for him to become a full convert.

  Matt had traveled a day ahead of us to Egypt Pike with his utility truck full of our ghost hunting equipment including EMT meters, video cameras, infrared thermometers, and motion sensors. Today Luke and I, along with Sydney and Goog traveled in our SUV through the mountains of West Virginia to the town of Egypt Pike.

  Syd popped a cough drop into her mouth. She’d been suffering from allergies all week. “So what’s the problem? The ghost singing off key?”

  I smiled. While Syd’s dry humor might put off some people, it tickled my funny bone. “Funny you should ask, actually, but I’m sure they’d enjoy that more than what’s going on.”

  “So what’s the story?” Goog asked.

  “Well, the opera house was built in 1859 and as Goog said was used for theatrical productions until 1945, managing somehow to survive the Great Depression, though not by much,” Luke explained.

  “About that time, the owners went bankrupt and it fell into disarray. The town bought it for a song in the ‘50’s but they didn’t have the money to renovate it. They didn’t want to tear it down because it was part of the town’s history plus the outside of the building is ornate with the name, Bell’s Opera House, etched into the concrete on the front of the structure.”

  Luke kept his eyes on the road as he continued the story. “Anyway, in 1996 a local pharmacist wanted to rent the bottom floor of the building and open a drugstore. Besides the pharmacy he also installed a soda fountain with a long counter and stools.”

  “Ohhh, that sounds cool!” Syd squealed. “Please tell me the soda fountain is still there.”

  Luke nodded. “Yes and the drugstore and pharmacy too. Seems that the drugstore owner, Mr. Robbins, and his wife encountered the haunting back when they first opened.”

  “So they’ve had a haunting for 20 years?” Goog asked. “What’s the problem now?”

  “And what kind of haunting did they experience?” Syd threw another cough drop into her mouth.

  “You’re eating those things like candy,” Goog offered. “Pretty soon your stomach’s going to revolt.”

  Syd looked at Goog. “Would you rather listen to me hack all the way there? This is for you all’s benefit believe me.”

  “Just don’t come running to me when your tummy throws a fit.”

  Syd rolled her eyes. She and the guys liked to bicker with one another. It was how they communicated. I knew they cared about one another through all the grousing. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t speak at all.

  “Okay, back to the story.” Luke had a way of taming the crew and bringing the focus back to the work at hand. “At first it was little things. Flickering lights, clogged pipes, knocking noises, the usual fare. But at about 8pm, when most of the customers were gone and Mr. And Mrs. Robbins would be alone locking up; that’s when they’d see him.”

  Syd leaned up in her seat. “Him? What kind of him?”

  Luke grinned. “Handsome young man, brown or black hair, white shirt and suspenders and slacks, a straw boater’s hat. Full deal, straight out of the depression.”

  Syd sat back in her seat dejected. “Why is it always white? Can’t these ghosts come up with something colorful to wear? Maybe a leopard print.”

  Goog guffawed. “Now that I’d like to see!”

  I turned around in my seat to look at them. “Could be that spirits don’t want to look threatening and white is a subtle color.” I thought of my Grandpa Winky and how his spirit always wore his derby hat, brown pants, white shirt and suspenders. It was his Sunday go-to meeting duds and the sight of him in those clothes always made me smile. Maybe that’s why he chose them.

  I missed him terribly. His spirit would appear to me soon after he departed this earth when I was a youngster. He continued his visits until
I left for college. Even in high school however, the visits became less and less. My quest as a ghost hunter was to someday find him again. And along the way, hopefully help others as well.

  Luke continued. “According to the stories, they never saw an apparition in full view, just in reflections from the windows, or in the metal around the Soda Fountain, or in mirrors behind the counter. The spirit didn’t seem to want to harm anyone, so one night the Robbins’ decided to stick around and see what he would do. Around 8:15, he’d start singing, a sad song they couldn’t ever quite make out. But they said it was like listening to an angel. So many nights they’d stick around and listen to him. He’d sing for about five minutes and then fade away.”

  “So has he been doing this all these years?” Syd mumbled through around her cough drop.

  I picked up where Luke left off. “Apparently it died down after a while. The small town is growing, though, and the city was offered more money than they could turn down to sell the opera house to Mr. Steinbeck’s investor. The Robbins’ family now consists of a son and daughter who are taking over the business. Their parents told them the stories, but they never believed them until just lately. Apparently the new changes have raised the cost of rent on the Robbins’ kids and they can’t afford it so they’re being pushed out.”

  “Which brings us to the present,” I continued. “As of the night of the first production, after years being quiet, our dapper young crooner no longer just sings. Apparently he drove half of an already small audience out of the opera house, and has been making things difficult ever since.”

  “Oh great…why can’t it ever be a nice Casper ghost?” Goog lamented. “They always have to be disgruntled.” I hoped one day poor Goog would find a spirit like Grandpa Winky who might soothe his fears.

  “Stage lights flickering, moving, or getting so bright they burst,” Luke said, “ladders falling over, doors locking in the dressing rooms, and seats in the house rattling and creaking like someone invisible is sitting down next to audience members. Plus, some of the pretty young actresses have apparently caught glimpses of a young man watching them in their mirrors.”

  “Let me guess,” Syd groaned. “Young man, boater hat, white getup, singing? What is it with ghosts and women’s privacy?”

  I shook my head. “If only. He’s all in black now, and sometimes crying, sometimes angry; sometimes the light bulbs around the mirrors burst. Once, a stage light fell right off the rigging onto the stage, though luckily no one was on it when it happened.”

  Goog flinched, as though it had just happened right in front of his face. “Falling lights and flying glass,” he sighed. “Great.” He slumped a little in his seat, and already looked nervous wreck and we weren’t even there yet.

  “So,” Luke finished, “we’ve been brought in to find out what’s going on.” As if on cue, we drove past the sign welcoming us to the small town of Egypt Pike. Little did we know at the time that this adventure would unearth a host of secrets from the past.

  Chapter 2

  Bell’s Opera House was the picture of vaudevillian pizazz, even all these years later. Mr. Steinbeck’s people hadn’t changed a thing about the outside, only restored the original decor, lights and all. It was the clear outlier of Egypt Pike’s main street which wasn’t exactly busy, but had something of a bustle going on none the less, and had the look of a town that had never quite escaped the ravages of the Depression but was doing its very best. I have to admit, why anyone would want to reboot an opera house in a little town like this, I couldn’t fathom.

  We had called ahead and Matt met us at the Emporium Drugstore on Main Street. The interior was plain on the drugstore and pharmacy side, but the soda fountain area was adorned with Tiffany light covers and a long mirror on the back wall facing the counter. I could see stainless steel cups used to make milkshakes, and at one end of the counter were freezers full of barrels of ice cream concoctions. Wood tables with wrought iron chairs dotted the back end of the drugstore where people could gather to enjoy their sundaes or root beer floats, and behind that was a winding staircase leading upstairs to what I assumed was the opera house proper. The steps of the stair case were a deep, rich cherry wood or oak, and the same wrought iron as the chairs was lavishly accented by the railing. I loved the place immediately.

  Matt was at the back of the drugstore, and waved his hand for us to join him at one of the tables. With him sat an older gentleman. Both of them stood up.

  “Mr. Robbins, this is the rest of the paranormal team.” Matt made the introductions and we pulled a few more chairs over to the small table.

  “You all can call me John. My wife, Laura is right over there working the register.” John caught her attention and she smiled and waved.

  The couple was in their late 60’s, but they looked younger. Laura was tiny with short brown hair. John was medium height with dark brown hair that was graying slightly at the temples. I could see a young man working in the pharmacy area and another young woman stocking the shelves.

  “The young man in the pharmacy is our son Jack and the girl is our daughter, Selena,” John explained as he motioned towards them.

  “John here has been telling me a bit about the haunting and what’s been going on upstairs,” Matt said.

  John sighed as he invited us all to sit. As we pulled up chairs and settled in attentively, he told us a bit more than what Mr. Steinbeck had said over the phone. “For years the boy in white was a visitor my wife and I had grown accustomed to. At first it was jolting, of course, but in time he simply became one of the family. Although we didn’t communicate with him, we always felt a certain closeness with him. It was like he was showing up and singing his strange, sad song just for us.”

  Syd nodded towards the drugstore area. “Have your children ever seen him?”

  “That’s one of the curious things,” John said. “He never appeared when anyone else was around. In fact, and I know this will sound odd given the current circumstances with the young ladies upstairs, but he only ever appeared when my wife was in the shop with me, or, on some rare occasions, when she was here by herself. It went on like that until, oh, 1967 or ‘68? And then, all at once, he just stopped appearing.”

  I leaned forward in my chair. “What do you mean?”

  John rubbed his chin. “I don’t know what changed, to be honest. We didn’t attempt to send the spirit away, or anything like that. If anything, we tried to be as inviting as we could. As I said, he was never a trouble; far from it. Not like now. Nothing like this.”

  “So our supposed ghost,” Matt said, “disappears all together for almost fifty years, and just when the opera house starts opening up he’s suddenly acting out? I understand the development of the theater upstairs has started making things somewhat difficult for the drugstore, is that right?”

  I shot Matt a sharp look. I knew what he was getting at. It was Matt’s job to be the skeptic, to look at things from a different perspective than the rest of us and rule out causes of apparent haunting like bad wiring, rusty pipes, or outright trickery. But suggesting that the Robbins were possibly sabotaging the theater rankled me a bit. Least he could do was start with the wires.

  Unfortunately, his insinuation wasn’t entirely lost on John. “Don’t get me wrong, the property value has gone up, and we’ve never made more than a modest living off the store to begin with,” he said warily, but sincerely. “That’s not why we started it. But if the opera house does well, that’s good for all of us. For my store, and for this town.”

  He waved a knobby knuckled hand at the stairs in the back. “Anyone going to see a show here will come through my store. That’s good for business, and we’re even in talks to offer concessions on their behalf. We have no reason to cause Mr. Steinbeck any problems what so ever.” Throughout, he managed to say it with patience that had me convinced. Plus I just got a sense about him, maybe because of how much he sort of reminded me of Winky.

  “So,” Luke said, pushing on past Matt’s freshly a
ired suspicion, “after years without being seen, the apparition becomes active again. When precisely?”

  At that moment Selena, John’s daughter, walked up. “Opening night,” she said. “We noticed people trickling out of the show, thought maybe it just wasn’t that good. But we heard a few people talking, saying they’d felt someone in the seat next to them. Plus stage lights kept going out, and the rafters rattled a few times like they were going to fall in.”

  “There are old, original wooden beams across the top of the house,” John provided. “They creak and groan from time to time.”

  Selena shrugged. “People around here know all about that. This was different, I guess. I went up, once, to see for myself.” She sighed, and rubbed her arm self-consciously. “I won’t be going back up there any time soon.”

  John nodded slowly as he put an arm around his daughter. “Selena’s witnessed a few of these events herself. It’s how I heard about them, and what made me think of our old friend the ghost.”

  “More than a few, Dad.” She folded her arms over her chest, tightly. I could tell she was nervous just speaking about what had occurred. “Before the third show, when they were setting up the stage or whatever, I heard someone yelling, like there was trouble. I ran upstairs to see if they needed any help, or for me to call an ambulance or something.”