Your True Tales
April 2005 – Page 1

Ghostly Applause
by Hannah

This story was told to me by my drama teacher, who has been an actor for years. He told me that before he started playing roles in stage productions, he worked backstage, and his biggest dream was to take a bow to the crowd.

It might help if I explain the stage, as this will be useful later on. It was like most others: a back wall with several backdrops, and an entrance from backstage via either side behind the curtains. Any sound on the stage would echo through the massive theatre. At the stage left entry, there was a ladder leading up to a a wide plank, which ran across to the center of the stage, and was hidden behind the curtain that ran across the top of the stage. The only way to get on or off this plank was by climbing the ladder.

One night, my teacher had stayed late to work on the props, and as he placed them on the stage he looked out to the hundreds of seats in the theatres. He quickly checked that there was nobody around, and walked to the front of the stage, and theatrically took a bow. No sooner had he lowered his head, when he heard clapping coming from the seats. He looked up thinking that he had missed another member of the stage crew, but what he saw was much stranger.

He squinted his eyes and saw a shadowy silhouette, clapping. One by one, the hundreds of seats filled with these shadows, and the theatre filled with the applause. Then, just as it had begun, one by one the applause faded. The only clapping he could hear was from the plank above. He saw the figure, and hoped the it had all been a hoax. Slowly he climbed the ladder and stepped onto the plank. The figure was facing away from him, and while he was clapping, started to walk backward. With each step, the figure faded away a little more, until he simply ceased to exist.

As I said before, the only way the get off the platform would be via the ladder, which my teacher was standing in front of. If he had jumped off, the sound would have echoed through the theatre.

I've heard a lot of stories about dark shadows or silhouettes, but all the stories I read seem to depict the forms as evil in some way. From what I heard, the figures were there only to congratulate my teacher -- and inspire his acting career.

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