As a part of their Christmas card for 2007, the great granddaughter and great-great grandsons of F.E. Starnes included a story inspired by the Albemarle Opera House. From the author, photographer and subject Susan, John Parker and Christopher Epps here is that story......

Parker sat at the computer, quickly scrolling through the pictures he’d just downloaded from his camera. “Good grief, I took over a hundred pictures! What was I thinking?” he muttered to himself. He kept scrolling. The pictures rolled by on the screen - piles of ceiling tin, old signs, rickety tables, chairs with well worn seats, the stage and side rooms, a box of light fixtures, people…

And then Parker’s hand froze on the mouse. “Oh. My. Gosh.” He stared at the picture on the screen in disbelief. 

The old man climbed slowly up the stairs. “It’s been a long time since I was here,” he thought to himself. The Opera House had been closed for so long he doubted anyone in town besides the building owners had been up there. And he had been there. Many years ago when he was, what? Six? Seven? Yes, seven. He no longer remembered why he’d been there, just that he had been.

Finally, he reached the Opera House floor; the chairs with velvet seats were long gone. The room was empty except for a few piles of ceiling tins, some old signs, and radiators no longer needed or used.

The old man stood still and listened. He listened for the music, for the footsteps, for the sputtering of the gas lit fixtures. If he was quiet enough maybe he would hear them.

Most people laughed at the stories about ghosts in the Opera House but the old man believed them. He had been visited by the ghosts and their music that day so many years ago when he was seven. He wanted, needed, to hear them once more. He couldn’t explain why, he just did.

The room was getting crowded so he took a deep breath and moved slowly toward the stairs to the balcony. A small smile played across his lips as he remembered scrambling up the stairs as a little boy, pretending he hadn’t seen or couldn’t read the chalked warning on the door to “Keep Out”.

Oddly, with each step the climb seemed a little easier. He looked ahead to the large windows on the front of the building; windows that for years had been covered by a façade only recently removed. Except for the light shining through those magnificent round windows, the balcony was dark. And quiet.

The old man made his way to one of the windows and looked out. How little the view has changed he marveled. Then he closed his eyes and listened.

He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, but he heard it – ever so faintly – the music. The music he’d remembered all these years. The music he knew no one would have believed he’d heard, not then and certainly not now.

He kept his eyes closed and for a few minutes as he listened to those familiar strains, he was seven again, playing hide and seek with the shadows, standing in this same window, while the ghosts of the past played to an audience of one. 

“Hey, cool picture!” Parker’s roommate was looking over his shoulder. “I love the way the little boy is silhouetted in the window – that’s great!” Parker was still staring at the screen. He sat back in his chair, not sure what to think or say. All he could do was stare at the picture - the picture he’d taken of an old man.