The Ghost Light, Pilot Episode: “Exits & Entrances”

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Light at end of tunnel – a voice from somewhere in the vast darkness: the end is the beginning. 

It’s followed by a faint ticking sound – a pocket watch in the distance. Suddenly we’re somewhere else…

 

Interior: Sitting room in a Gothic, English Manor House, 1890 – all the trappings of a Haunted House. 

A seance is enacted by a fragile but unafraid, middle-aged clairvoyant, struggling to connect to the other side. Lights flicker, thump – a dead body falls. A voice calls out from the dark: Hold on stage!

 

The Manor House is actually a set on a stage in an Orpheum Theater outside Chicago in 2022. 

Breaking in and out of character, Actors jockey for position – their huge personalities and hidden agendas wreak havoc on the rehearsal process, as Clara (a real life medium cast as a such, in a play titled 

The Ghost Light), falters in timing her lines and cuing her “character’s death.” Making up for “lost time”

 in rehearsal, the Director endeavors to wrangle the actors without bruising their egos, forcing the 

Stage Manager to navigate the director’s whims – all while keeping rehearsal afloat. The stop-start, 

topsy-turvy world of technical rehearsals is overwhelming for all but especially for …

 

Clara, who steadies herself, grabs holds the crystal ball – triggering terrifying visions: blood runs… 

down a pocket watch, a brick wall fills in, shadowy figures dart backstage… With only a few minutes left before lunch, the cast and crew run the scene one final time – it works. Cues fire without a hitch; lights flicker, then go out. But when they return – Clara is gone. Vanished. Poof! Disappeared. Everyone else

stares at each other in utter shock and disbelief: Where did she go?

 

Clara “wakes up” on the same stage, same set, surrounded by a different cast and crew in 1922! 

Back in her original time, she aims to decipher her futuristic visions, but it’s deja vu all over again as both Casts, Crews, and the plot of the play itself eerily parallel each other – like reflections in a funhouse mirror.

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Mysterious mayhem ensues on-and off-stage and throughout both timelines.

Rumors swirl in 2022 of unsolved disappearances on opening night of the 1922 production. Props go missing, moving on their own, disappearing from one time and reappearing in the other. Actors call for lines – disembodied voices answer.Producers arrive, threatening the Directors who acquiesce.. Love triangles further complicate the situation, when once lost letters are found hinting at secret passions, jealousies, and betrayals. On-stage drama is surpassed by off-stage theatrics as the Casts and Crews alike unwittingly self sabotage themselves while deliberately sabotaging their cohorts, in an effort to gain status, glory, wealth, love, and power. 

 

When haunting manifestations from her previous terrifying visions, materialize in real life…

Clara senses she is in grave danger inside this theatrical time maze of secrets and disguise as both

casts and crews have gaps of time unaccounted for… 

 

Dodging shady intentions, shadowy people, and actual “shadow-people,” Clara escapes into the lower lobby’s bathroom, where something or someone follows her in. Shortly thereafter the sound of a dead body falls – her own. And yet…

 

Clara’s “waking self” finds her way back onstage in 2022… Back, where it all began.

Transfixed by something, the Cast and Crew ignore her – all except the producer’s granddaughter, a steely eyed 12-year-old Girl, who senses a “kindred spirit” in Clara. Eventually breaking through the crowd, Clara comes face to face with herself and her rotting corpse, buried inside a brick wall of the theater – her boney fingers clutching a missing prop watch – miraculously still ticking!

 

Confronted with the grim reality that she's a GHOST, Clara learns that in order to free her spirit from the confines of this haunting time loop and unravel the mystery connecting the theater, play, and two timelines, she will have to solve her own murder and uncover the role she played in her own demise. But in doing so, she risks setting her own murder into motion.

 

Over the series Clara pulls back the curtain, uncovering clues, motives, and real spells embedded into the play's dialogue, conjuring spirits through the timelines – all while fake blood flows as more real dead bodies are unearthed. The Cast, Crew, and Clara struggle to know if and when they are coming or going – entering or exiting (the stage or life itself), as people in both timelines disappear and reappear! Plot twists offstage rival the ones onstage – culminating in a 2-hour finale in which the entire play “plays out” on stage and during which the mystery of Clara’s murder is solved and the creation of the time loop is revealed.

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If you like… 

Ghost Stories, Paranormal Podcasts, Sci-Fi, Time Travel, Mystery Thrillers

Period Pieces & Witty Workplaces

You will love The Ghost Light!

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