As you might know from reading my ramblings in this space… I walk. I try to do two to four miles a day, but I suffer from boredom-laziness. If I don’t have something entertaining to listen to, I’m lucky to make it a mile. If I have an entertaining podcast in my ear… two or three miles is a piece of cake.
Sadly, most of my favorite podcasts are weekly at best and some of them are only monthly. You can see my problem. Not enough good content for the distance I need to cover. But this week two of my favorites replayed some past Halloween ghost stories which reminded me of my own.
First, I listen to a podcast from the Smithsonian called Sidedoor. This one covers many interesting stories out of the Smithsonian including a great ghost story called Spooked at the Smithsonian. It was totally entertaining and just a bit creepy.
Second, I’m a big Mike Rowe fan. You might know him from some of his TV work in Dirty Jobs or maybe Deadliest Catch… among others. But I follow his podcast… The Way I Heard It, which started as a great salute to Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story. After hundreds of five- to ten-minute podcasts, Mike expanded the show into longer stories and interviews, including a great one called Not Really A Ghost Story.
I say all that to say I have my own career-specific ghost story. Over 40 years ago I was Director of Creative Services at a small TV station. This was back in the dark ages when news stories and commercials were still shot on film. We had a popular local restaurant that had us come shoot some film for a new commercial. They went all out and had their staff all there along with many of their regular customers and we outdid ourselves with great lighting and beautiful shots. Within a few days we had produced one of the best commercials I had worked on up until that time and the client was thrilled with it and could not wait to get it started airing.
A few days after the commercial began to air, I received a call from the salesperson who handled the account. “The client just called. He needs us to change the commercial. One of the girls in the spot has passed away.” Needless to say, I went to work, found a different shot that we had not used and re-edited the commercial, removing the poor girl who was no longer with us. Sad but taken care of… or so I thought!
Less than a week went by and the sales guy was actually in my office this time. “I thought I asked you to fix that commercial. The family does not need to see their loved one on TV after she has passed and the client is not happy!”
I assured him I had corrected the spot but I would look into it. All I could think of was that the backup copy of the spot had not been replaced and had somehow got on the air. I went to the control room, had the engineer pull the air and backup copies of the spots and we looked at them. Sure enough… the young lady was back… ON BOTH! The re-edited spot was nowhere to be found. Again, we replaced the offending shot in the spot, made a new backup copy and replaced both. I took the old videotapes with me. That does it.
Less than a week later I was sitting at home eating my dinner and watching our 6pm News when a commercial break started. Got goosebumps yet? There she was. The young lady who had passed… on my TV in the same commercial. I had not finished my dinner before my phone was ringing and you could hear the salesguy screaming all over the room. “The client just called me… at home… and he is furious and says if we can’t solve this he will never advertise with us again.”
I left my dinner to get cold, got in my car and headed for the station. I went straight to the control room and as soon as the news was over had the engineer rack up the spot. There she was in beautiful color on every monitor in the room. I was speechless. I didn’t even bother looking at the backup copy. I told the engineer to give me both tapes. “You can’t do that. The spot airs several more times tonight.”
“If that spot airs again tonight you’re fired!” I told him. “Run Smoky the Bear. Run anything. But that spot better not be on the air.”
I took both spots and threw them away. I pulled all the film we had shot and any shot with the young lady in it… I destroyed. The next day we worked with the client to shoot a new… similar shot to go in the spot and we did a complete re-edit of the commercial. Thank God… it aired for months without further incident.
No one was ever able to explain how or why the young lady kept turning up on our TVs after being removed and to this day I get goosebumps thinking about it. And that’s my career-related ghost story!
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