Prologue

It's been a long time since I've set foot in that building, the one where they used to have the dance classes and acting camps. It's haunted, you know. Of course, if you went there and asked somebody about it, they'd think you were crazy. Only the true "veterans", as we call them, know about the curse. We never did find out where the curse came from. We just knew it was there.

A girl played a cripple in a scene. She spent all her stage time in a wheelchair. A month later, her circle of friends witnessed her standing, enjoying herself one moment, and screaming on the floor the next. She was in a wheel chair for several weeks after and on crutches for months. As a matter of interest, her house was haunted as well.

Some people think that the play "Macbeth" is Shakespeare's only cursed play, but what happened after a girl recited this monologue in a scene from Richard the Third proved that theory wrong :

O, gentlemen, see, see. dead Henry's wounds

Open their congeal'd mouths and bleed afresh.

Blush, Blush, thou lump of foul deformity;

For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood

From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;

Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,

Provokes this deluge most unnatural.

--The Tragedy of Richard the Third, Act I, scene II.

Several years later, during a camp, a common pass time seemed to be trying to stop nosebleeds. Two people in the same five minutes ran out of the room, with their hand to their nose. A third person's nosebleed started in the middle of the performance, but luckily, stopped several minutes later. The fourth person, the girl who had recited the monologue years before, was not so lucky. Her blood started flowing halfway through the show and did not stop till near the end when help finally came. The end of the show was canceled, as their leading lady had been losing blood for half an hour.

Two boys participated in a comedy camp in this building. As part of a skit, they did a slow motion fight scene with half a dozen other people. They were the first two to die in the scene. A year later, the headlines read about two boys who had died in a car accident nearby. The comedy camp always collected donations for their lost actors, at performances.

These are the victims of that curse. There are probably more stories that I never heard of. The only other story I know is my own.