The Haunted Zoo House

The greenhouse as seen from the cold outside

I was lucky enough to get a call from an old post supervisor friend about some work on a show. I need the money. The only thing was that the show started at 4:30pm. This meant I would be working, provided the shoot day is a standard twelve hours with one hour lunch, until 5:30am. As it turns out I did.

The location was a house located on metro zoo land. It's huge, three floors and a green house. According to some of the crew members it's haunted. Supposedly a murder took place. Who, what, when, I didn't get the details on. The story I heard was that it was the third stair that was haunted. It didn't make much sense to me that only one stair of an entire house would be haunted.

Later on another version of the story was told to me that made more sense. The third stair was updated to the third staircase. That would make sense as I walked up the staircase earlier that night I got that neck hair standing straight up feeling. It was in a secluded corner of the house and to add to the creepy factor it was poorly lit. It gives me shivers just thinking about that part of the house.

I didn't see anything in the house. No ghosts, lens flares, wispy things, nothing. During lunch I even sat on the third stair in the main room just to make sure. It would be kind of neat to see a ghost or "thing". The stand in, Brooke, told me that the last time she was shooting a movie in the house she was standing next to a brick wall and heard a voice of a little boy saying "Don't hurt me.". That kind of creeped me out a bit. I then proceeded to go along the brick walls to see if I could sense anything.

I went along one wall at a time. I felt like Spock mind melding with the Horta. Slowly going through the hallway feeling, listening and looking for any evidence of something unnatural. Eventually I got to a brick wall that gave me cold shivers. It was creepy. It wasn't physically cold. It just made my nerves stand up on end. I immediately made a dash for the craft services table. Hunting for ghosts and feeling the cold brick wall made me crave some hot apple cider.

The house is located in a valley. To get there from the crew parking lot you had to go down a small winding gravel road. A small road that became darker as you approached the house. It was while going up the road, once I finished work, that I thought I saw something in the shadows following me. When I turned around and there was nothing there. At first I thought it might just be some other crew members going home. Nope. I thought it might be the tree shadows blowing in the wind but when I checked the trees nothing was moving, there was no wind. Yet on the ground there was a shadowy blob moving slowly towards me. Once three quarters up the hill and in the light I turned around again to see if I could get a better look. Nothing. Weird.