About me: This story is inspired by 'Phantasm', 'Salem's Lot' with a little 'Lady in White' mixed in for good measure. I'm working on the screenplay.
!!!SPOILER ALERT!!! THE STORY SO FAR.....'The Phantom of Woodward Avenue'.....
Our story begins with the grand opening of Monster Burger. A classic movie monster themed restaurant, complete with plasma TV's and a haunted house you can go through while you wait for your food. The owner of Monster Burger narrates how he had a rough childhood, including going insane, but surviving it all with help of an imaginary friend. This friend was none other than Sir Graves Ghastly, a Detroit area Horror Host who everyone watched in the days before cable and satellite. This relationship and the events at the Woodward Avenue Sanitarium became his inspiration for Monster Burger.
Rewind about 30 years!
Billy Kraemer is an average child, except for his strange fascination with old horror movies and the macabre. Growing up in a suburb of Detroit in the early 70's was easy until he got caught throwing the family cat over the fence to be eaten by the neighbor's hunting dog. A few months of being grounded from watching Sir Graves Ghastly and other horror movies, weekly visits to the psychiatrist and some medication should have fixed him. His acting out is a result of his parents divorcing. His Dad, a Detroit Homicide Detective is too busy for Billy and his problems. Continually in trouble both in school, and at home, Billy begins to crave negative attention more and more. That is, until he winds up in the worse trouble imaginable. He is found choking an abusive babysitter with an extension cord, trying to end her constant insults. Although a huge misunderstanding,this earned young Billy a court ordered trip to the Woodward Sanitarium where he undergoes experimental therapies and psychotropic medications. In order to feel normal in the sanitarium, Billy develops an imaginary relationship with the local horror host, Sir Graves Ghastly! Billy begins to disconnect from reality and his drug induced imagination starts to get the best of him. Billy begins to hallucinate. It starts with an evil version of Sir Graves in reflections. Billy starts to be afraid of windows, mirrors and anything else that has a reflection. At night, Billy begins to be stalked by this phantom of his imagination! The more he gets subjected to his medications and experimental treatments the more chaos he creates at the treatment center. His delusions of a menacing Sir Graves figure slowly becomes blurred with reality. True to everything he has learned from the old movies, he starts to believe that this phantom vampire is infecting those in the sanitarium. The more he imagines terrible things, the more they come true! The phantom in Billy's imagination is not the lovable Sir Graves Ghastly from the TV! This one is a blood thirsty killer! He stalks Billy at the facility in the form of mist, a wolf, and even possesses his doctor and other staff. Billy has to escape soon or risk becoming infected too! He cleverly escapes and starts to head home to steal his Father's guns, but is intercepted by a gypsy in a horse driven carriage. On board, he watches other movie monsters cruising Woodward Avenue in various muscle cars. Frankenstien's monster, the Wolf-Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Phantom is dropped off in view by King Kong's giant hand! He calls out to Billy, his voice echoing in the night air. When the evil version of Sir Graves approaches in slow motion with shadows and wind and fog all about, it is just too much! Billy passes out on the carraige. In reality, he is actually being sedated at the sanitarium. He had never even left. He had to be sedated to calm him down from his worse night terror yet. The sedation creates a calming effect and Billy finds himself on the set of Sir Graves Presents! A place he had actually been to a few years ago before his parents split up. He finds himself there with the actor who portrays Sir Graves as he is putting on his make up. The actor, Lawson Deming from Cleveland, begins to assure Billy, as he is getting into character, that Sir Graves is a friendly vampire loved by young and old alike and that the evil vampire is a phantom of his imagination! He gives Billy advice on how to conquer his imagination. He reminds Billy that his character and the movies he hosts are all make believe! He wishes Billy the best and gives him an autoghraphed headshot with the TV station logo on it. It reads, 'To Billy, Happy Haunting! Sir Graves Ghastly!' He hears his mom's voice in the TV studio, Sir Graves and Billy look at each other with a puzzled expression. He slowly wakes up and his parents and Dr.Deming are in the room with him. They brought something from home, it is the same Sir Graves autographed picture he just had in the dream! They tell Billy to hang it in his room as part of his therapy, to remind him that Sir Graves isn't real and vampires aren't real either. That night, Billy is visited again! After being stalked around the facility and witnessing a lot of carnge, he locks himself in his room. He grabs the Sir Graves picture off the wall for security. A mist enters his room from under the door, Billy hides under the sheets! Scared witless he tries to bide time. "You're not real! You're not real!" Billy keeps repeating. "I am real!" insists the phantom, "and I'll prove it!" Locked together in Billy's room the sheets are torn off the petrified Billy by a glance from the phantom vampire! "Doesn't your own beating heart, and your own sweat convince you that I am real! You should be more afraid of me!" "No!" Billy shouts back, "you should be afraid of this!" Billy thrusts a piece of the broken picture frame into the phantom vampire's heart yelling, "because if you're real then this is real!" The phantom violently fights to remove the wooden stake Billy had made hiding under the sheets! "Doesn't your own heart tell you that I'm real...the one that just stopped beating!" Billy exclaims to the surprised vampire."Noooooooo!" screams the dark wraith. Dripping with decay the phantom melts into a skeleton and a whirlwind of light disintegrates the bones in a loud, violent, swirling mist that finally dies out along with the phantom's last echo.
Fast forward back to the grand opening.
The older Billy Kraemer finishes his narration, assures us that the rest of his childhood was great, including his parents getting back together and goes on to invite the audience into the haunted house, where we see a lot of what the young Billy went through. The last surprise is a very familiar vampire rising from his coffin and wishing everyone "Happy Haunting!" followed by a very familiar laugh, "Neeeeyaaaaaaaaaa!"
....THE END?
Who I'd like to meet:
The Phantom of Woodward Avenue's Friend Space (Top 26)
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